I don't see how learning that a human may have been a monkey at some point in the past million years should be required for the guy who needs to know what my appendix looks like and how to cut it out successfully. Of course, I also don't need him to know how much a mole is either. I just need him to know that I'm going to need some good pain meds afterwards.
Here's your first problem: Humans were not "monkeys at some point" - Humans and modern monkeys share a common ancestor, but humans did not "come from" monkeys. If we were to travel back in time and locate one of these common ancestors, we may or may not even recognize it as a monkey but only as a type of primate.
But the point of learning Evolution is not that humans and monkeys are related. That is merely an example of a much larger framework of the Theory of Evolution (note: Big "E" here to differentiate it from just the verb "evolve") which describes how and why the genetic traits of populations of organisms change over time, particularly in response to external forces.
I sure as hell WOULD want my doctor to understand that. That kind of understanding is important for epidemiology and treatment of disease. See also: MRSA.
If you had basic high-school education in biology and all you got from the Evolution portion was "Humans evolved from monkeys" then I unapologetically suggest you weren't paying one damn bit of attention. =Smidge=
Around here there are spots where the "on ramp" is roughly 20 feet or so, and the turn before it is so tight you're not likely to be going much faster than 15-20mph (traffic usually around 60-70). Robert Moses was a dick, basically.
Oil is pretty much as bad. Both oil and coal use massive steam boilers with lots of thermal mass that takes time to heat up and cool down. For maximum efficiency the boilers operate at a set point pretty much constantly except for maintenance periods and the plant is throttled by essentially pissing away the excess energy as waste. Power stations lose tons of money when this happens, so they would rather sell that electricity even at a loss than have it all go up the chimney - that's why many places have lower nighttime rates.
Now just imagine if every house had maybe 5kWh of battery storage in it. Recharge at night, use to shave peak demand. The sine-wave looking demand curve flattens right out and everyone wins.
In recent months there have been dozens of coal powerplants closed in favor of natural gas. Natural gas can be burned directly in an internal combustion turbine, skipping the boiler, which increases efficiency and gives much better throttling capabilities. It also helps that all the reserve tapping has caused the price of natural gas to plummet... at least natural gas is cleaner and produces marginally less CO2 per kWh. =Smidge=
Goalposts moved yet again! You're like an adorable encyclopedia of cliché anti-EV talking points. loshwomp covered this one good enough for me, though. =Smidge=
So do I want an EV, or should I stick with my fuel-efficient diesel?
You can split the difference and get a hybrid. They do make hybrid SUVs and pickup trucks for your towing needs, and something like the plug-in Toyota Prius might be a good fit for your long commute vehicle - if they need to be separate vehicles. In terms of fuel efficiency you're quite near the edge where the Prius outperforms the Chevy Volt, which has a longer all-electric range but slightly worse fuel economy so for longer trips the Prius wins out. =Smidge=
Wow, I stand corrected. I'm amazed that the average trip length is only 10 miles. We folks in Wisconsin must be busy folks!
I drive more than 10 miles to get my mail. Do you people ever go anywhere? We road trip to the cities all the time.
Here's the problem: Apparently you folks in Wisconsin live in the middle of fucking nowhere! Of course even the most basic of errands will require a full compliment of rations and an overnight stay. The majority of the country, however, lives in a neighborhood where most if not all of the things you need are within a few (under 10) miles at least. That includes most recreational needs. =Smidge=
CO2 is not a pollutant. It's a greenhouse gas. These are two different things entirely. Needless to say actual pollutants like soot, sulfur oxides and nitrogen oxides are all zero at the local level with EVs which means improved air quality and improved health for the citizens.
The greenhouse effect is based on high school level physics. CO2's ability to absorb infrared in certain wavelength has been known since the 1950s or so. This is established fact. If you want "observed emirical" (sic) evidence, talk to the air force about heat seeking missiles since the development for those is what the original research into how CO2 (and other atmospheric gasses) interact with infrared light.
And since I know it's going to come up eventually if this thread continues, yes water vapor also absorbs infrared light and contributes to the greenhouse effect. However there are two important reasons why that's a non-starter for arguing against CO2 emissions reduction: 1) The amount of water in the atmosphere is limited since it precipitates out when it gets too high, and 2) Water and CO2 absorb different wavelengths of infrared light.
Alrighty then. This report conducts an analysis that includes manufacturing the vehicle itself. I've givem my opinion of the report and the overall conclusion is EVs are still a winning proposition.
specifically the batteries that use some very nasty chemicals, and toxic elements
More nonsense. All production EVs available now use some form of lithium chemistry. Lithium "mining" is comparatively benign with most of the lithium supply coming from salt flats where the brine is pumped to the surface and allowed to evaporate until the salt you want starts to precipitate out. The electrodes are usually carbon and/or aluminum and the electrolyte - while not something I'd want to be drinking - is typically a volatile organic compound and poses virtually no long-term environmental risk. You must be thinking of nickel batteries. No production EVs I'm aware of use Nickel batteries.
And they have to be replaced
So do engines and transmissions, or at least they need a major overhaul. And like traditional automotive parts, batteries are extremely recyclable.
Least you think you'd need to replace the battery every year or whatever, the standard warranty is equivalent to any other drive train warranty. Even the most pessimistic estimates place the estimated service life of an EV battery at 8+ years (level of abuse notwithstanding). So the issue of cost is moot. Battery packs are also serviceable, in that being highly modular you can replace individual cell sets if that's all that's wrong with it.
Not saying this is still not better
That's pretty much what you were implying, though, wasn't it?
Everyone calls them "zero emission vehicles"
The vehicle itself produces no emissions. "Zero emissions" is actually a legal definition. I seriously doubt any EV owners, much less EV advocates is there are any non-advocate owners, are under any delusion that their vehicle has zero cradle-to-grave environmental impact. Owners of gasoline powered vehicles, however, seem completely unaware - sometimes deliberately so - of the true environmental costs of their chosen mode of transport. =Smidge=
Renewable power does not run at peak all the time. It's the old forms of power - coal especially - that runs flat out 24/7 because throttling those kinds of powerplants is incredibly costly, inefficient and slow to react. It's called "spinning reserve" because the only reasonably way to reduce the output of a coal powerplant is to de-energize the generators and let the turbines keep spinning. If they turn off the furnaces it would take hours to get running again. Throttling a coal powerplant means complete waste of money and resources.
Electrical generation capacity is critically underutilized at night. You need generating capacity to handle peak demand, but most of the time you are running nowhere near peak demand. The reason why many people in CA are eligible for Time-Of-use metering is because increasing off-peak use actually reduces costs. Many utility providers desperately want people to plug in electric cars at night to "fill the tub" and level out the 24-hour demand curve, allowing more efficient and less costly operation.
And that gasoline comes from somewhere too. Funny how people who drag out this dead horse of an argument so easily overlook that.
But whatever. For California the electricity source breakdown looks something like this:
46% Natural Gas 18% Coal 14% Nuclear 11% Hydro 11% other renewable (wind, solar, geothermal, biomass, etc)
Probably newer data out there but I'm fairly confident it's close enough for our purposes. So if we weigh emissions by source type and assume a miles-per-gallon and miles-per-kWh for ICE and Electric vehicles, we can get an approximation for how the two compare emissions-wise.
Total: 406.42 (Say 407) grams of CO2 per kWh generated. We'll bump that up a bit to account for transmission losses (90%) to 452 g/Kwh. Gasoline gives about 8,200 grams of CO2 per gallon. That's just basic a chemistry.
We'll be again generous and say 30MPG for gasoline and again pessimistic and say 3 mi/kWh for Electric - really stacking the odds against EVs here.
Gasoline vehicle @ 30MPG = 8200 g/mi / 30MPG = 273 grams CO2 per mile. Electric vehicle @ 3 mi/kWh = 452 g/kWh / 3 mi/kWh = 151 grams CO2 per mile.
So even being pessimistic we see that driving electric vehicles, with their electricity coming from "somewhere", releases nearly half the CO2 as their gasoline counterpart. More importantly - and the brunt of what the OP was saying - is that the local in-city pollution is reduced to zero. Not only are you producing less pollution, you are producing that pollution away from population centers where it does the most harm. =Smidge=
Not in this context. "Quality" refers to the capacity of a single refinery, "Quantity" refers to the number of refineries. Total refinery capacity is the sum of all the individual refinery capacities, yeah? Well if I double the capacity of each refinery (improve quality) I can decommission half my refineries (reduce quantity) while keeping the same total capacity.
I'm sorry I had to explain that.
According to the data I linked earlier, the US has ~17,000,000 barrels per month refinery capacity. This is about the same as it was 5 years ago. However we have five fewer refineries now as we did in 2007 and we're down a total of 11 if you count refineries that are sitting idle. Yet capacity is the same.
Here's an alternate hypothesis for why ND doesn't have enough refinery capacity for the oil it produces: They refined products aren't needed in ND. It makes no sense to refine locally then ship the products out when you can just ship the raw material out for less cost. Sorry if you don't "buy that" but one truck/pipe carrying one product is easier than ten trucks/pipes carrying ten different products. =Smidge=
Utilization rate for the refineries is around 90%, and has been hovering around 90% for decades. Refinery capacity has increased more than fuel demand while utilization has remained roughly constant, yet prices continue to rise. There's something else at play here. Our capacity to refine the petroleum has pretty much kept pace with demand.
And the "Mr. Coward" quip had more to do with lack of any other handle to address the poster by, rather than anything derogatory. Though creating an account is easy enough so maybe you, too, should consider risking your reputation on a public forum - if only a pretend reputation. =Smidge=
an 'electric' vehicle operates o on electricity. Period.
As in, the only thing you put into the car is electricity. If you are capable of put anything other than electricity into the vehicle as an energy source, then it's a hybrid at best. =Smidge=
It's not hard to actually dig up the data. You don't have to presume or guess anything.
Where would the power for 10,000 EVs come from? all sources. It's not as if they run Hydro at 100% until they max it out, then run up Coal until that's maxed out, etc... If anything, they run coal flat out all the time because that's the most economical way to operate it. Coal and other thermal cycle powerplants are slow to respond to changes, Hydro is not. So I'd actually posit that the lion's share of power for 10,000 EVs would be from untapped Hydro power.
Scraping Wikipedia, Washington State has over 27,000 MW of potential hydro power installed. Obviously not all of that will be usable year-round or necessarily all at once, but even if we cut that in half (say 13,000 MW) that's 113,880,000 MWh of electricity per year. In 2011 they used 59,576,028 or 52% of that. 52% of half their installed capacity. There's plenty of headroom there.
To put that into perspective, 10,000 vehicles driving the national average of 15,000 mi/yr with a very conservative 3 mi/kWh would need an extra 50,000 MWh of electricity... a 0.05% increase over the 91,106,272 MWh they already use. Drop in the bucket. If everyone in the entire state bought an EV - even the ones who don't currently own or are even eligible to own a car - power consumption would rise about 37%. You're still well within the state's installed hydroelectric generating capacity.
So no, I don't think the coal plants will burn any hotter at all.
For what reasons they don't use 100% hydro I cannot say - probably a mix of political, economic, engineering and practical reasons along with selling power outside the state. =Smidge=
No new refineries in the US, and yet refinery capacity is nearly at an all-time high.
It's about quality, not quantity. There are no new refineries being built because we've been improving the existing ones so much. We have the capacity to refine more fuels now than at any point in the past 30 years.
It's not about conversion per se, it's about input.
For a "Pure Electric" vehicle I put in electrical energy. How that energy is stored is almost completely irrelevant by the way - could be a chemical battery, could be a capacitor. The important part is I put in electrical energy and I get back out electrical energy.
For a diesel-electric train, I put in diesel fuel. But I can't use diesel fuel to power the wheels directly - I need to futz with it. The energy comes out of the storage mechanism (which is the liquid itself) as heat - something completely different from what I put in. Loaded as chemical bonds, used as heat. Contrast this with loading electrons, used as electrons.
If you are able to load or store energy in more than one form, with each form used for the same purpose (eg electricity + hydrocarbon fuel to drive wheels) then you have a hybrid system. From there we can classify different types of hybrid systems based on the mechanisms used.
Not all diesel trains are capable of accepting external electricity, mind you, but that's not really relevant. Just a point to note. =Smidge=
But to put in quintessentially offensive terms, you're claiming that African-Americans aren't really Americans?
I find it more offensive that you can't tell the difference between a phenotype and a nationality. "Inability to see the forest for the trees" seems to be a recurring theme with you, actually. =Smidge=
So you're saying a diesel electric locomotive isn't moving entirely by electric power? You might want to look that up...
You are arguing against a semantic that is already well established. "Pure Electric" means, in EV discussions, a vehicle that operates only on and directly from electrical energy with no intermediary energy conversion.
A diesel electric train, to use your example, uses heat (via combustion) as an energy intermediary. A necessary intermediary, not a waste product. It then uses mechanical energy as a second intermediary before producing the electricity, which then goes to the traction motors. This is called, again in the context of EV discussions, a "Serial hybrid."
When talking to EV people, "Pure Electric" means there's no fuel burning, only electrons. =Smidge=
For those interested there is a report from a few months ago on the same topic with a US centric view (PDF warning) that comes to a similar conclusion. The main difference is Europe has much higher standards for fuel efficiency (both in legislation and public preference) so there is less potential gain for GHG emissions reduction to start with. For example:
Use phase energy requirements were assumed to be 0.623 megajoules/kilometer (MJ/km) for the EV, 68.5 milliliter/kilometer (mL/km) for the gasoline ICEV, and 53.5 mL/km for the diesel ICEV
To break this down into units most of us are more familiar with:
Electric: 3.591 miles per Kilowatt-hour Gasoline: 34.34 miles per US gallon Diesel: 43.97 miles per US gallon
Anyone in the US driving a vehicle made for the US market and getting those MPG figures would be justified in being a tad smug about it. Electric efficiency also seems generously high - I usually figure 3.2 mi/kWh, or pessimistically 3.0 to make the math easier, which correlates fairly well with anecdotal "real-world" reports from EV owners across the country. (5, 6 or even 7 mi/kWh is not unheard of, though these are usually your hyper-miler type drivers.)
Notable omissions from this report are include the energy and environmental impacts of obtaining the fossil fuels for either case. For example there is mention of the energy required to refine and process the metals used in battery production but no mention of the energy required to extract, refine and transport petroleum fuels. There is no mention of extraction costs for coal and natural gas for electrical production either.
There are several mentions of aluminum costs for production of EV components but having worked with both EVs and ICEVs I'm fairly confident there is more aluminum in an ICEV. Most of the engine block, come of the internal engine components, and most or the transmission body are aluminum. They are correct that there is more copper in an EV however.
Fossil depletion potential (FDP)may be decreased by 25% to 36% with electric transportation relying on average European electricity. EVs with natural gas or coal electricity, however, do not lead to significant reductions.
Nobody sensible has been arguing that EVs are magical. However, they are even at worst equivalent to what we are doing now but with the added benefit of future-proofing. A diesel engine will always need diesel, bio- or otherwise. It will always need a carbon based fuel. Always. An electric vehicle can get its electricity from carbon and non-carbon based sources alike. This means the bar to reducing fossil fuel use is dramatically lowered with the electrification of our vehicles.
tl:dr; Electrified vehicles are still a winning proposition despite not being perfect. =Smidge=
Since over 50% of US electrical production is from coal
False. Not just false but so false you have no excuse for saying it. The amount of electricity produced in the US on average is currently under 40%. It's been in steady decline for at least five years now, being displaced by natural gas for the most part and is in rapid decline... so much so that the assholes in DC are running in circles trying to ban "coal killing" regulations that nobody ever proposed in the first place. You can argue that Natural Gas still releases CO2 - and that's true. But it produces less CO2 per MW-Hour generated than coal, and a lot less other pollution as well. US GHG emissions have been declining dramatically as a result.
But let's assume you weren't outright lying and half our electricity came from coal. Let's assume you live in Colorado, which has the highest proportion of coal power in the US and is consequentially the dirtiest electricity in the country. In terms of CO2 emissions your typical EV is still getting the equivalent of 33 miles per gallon or better (PDF warning).
So even if your EV is 100% coal powered, it is still an improvement over gasoline power. Since it is unlikely that any EV is 100% coal powered, that just amplifies the environmental benefit. Any "greening" of the electrical grid is automatically amplified by every plug-in hybrid and battery EV on the road. =Smidge=
Slashdot Mirror
I don't see how learning that a human may have been a monkey at some point in the past million years should be required for the guy who needs to know what my appendix looks like and how to cut it out successfully. Of course, I also don't need him to know how much a mole is either. I just need him to know that I'm going to need some good pain meds afterwards.
Here's your first problem: Humans were not "monkeys at some point" - Humans and modern monkeys share a common ancestor, but humans did not "come from" monkeys. If we were to travel back in time and locate one of these common ancestors, we may or may not even recognize it as a monkey but only as a type of primate.
But the point of learning Evolution is not that humans and monkeys are related. That is merely an example of a much larger framework of the Theory of Evolution (note: Big "E" here to differentiate it from just the verb "evolve") which describes how and why the genetic traits of populations of organisms change over time, particularly in response to external forces.
I sure as hell WOULD want my doctor to understand that. That kind of understanding is important for epidemiology and treatment of disease. See also: MRSA.
If you had basic high-school education in biology and all you got from the Evolution portion was "Humans evolved from monkeys" then I unapologetically suggest you weren't paying one damn bit of attention.
=Smidge=
Four sheep, three pairs of gloves. Avoid cross-contamination. Hmm...
Put on pair #1 of gloves.
Put on pair #2 on top of pair #1. Do whatever it is you're doing to sheep #1. (I won't judge!)
Remove pair #2, leave pair #1 on. Put on pair #3. Do whatever to sheep #2.
Remove pair #3, turn inside-out and put them back on over pair #1.Do whatever to sheep #3.
Remove pair #3 and discard. Turn pair #2 inside-out and put them back on over pair #1. Do whatever to sheep #4.
Remove and discard pair #2 and pair #1.
You don't learn practical problem solving like that in Public Speaking class! :)
=Smidge=
Around here there are spots where the "on ramp" is roughly 20 feet or so, and the turn before it is so tight you're not likely to be going much faster than 15-20mph (traffic usually around 60-70). Robert Moses was a dick, basically.
But at least there's no trucks...
=Smidge=
The 3 kWh per mile is "from the wall" and already includes all the charging and drive train inefficiencies.
=Smidge=
Oil is pretty much as bad. Both oil and coal use massive steam boilers with lots of thermal mass that takes time to heat up and cool down. For maximum efficiency the boilers operate at a set point pretty much constantly except for maintenance periods and the plant is throttled by essentially pissing away the excess energy as waste. Power stations lose tons of money when this happens, so they would rather sell that electricity even at a loss than have it all go up the chimney - that's why many places have lower nighttime rates.
Now just imagine if every house had maybe 5kWh of battery storage in it. Recharge at night, use to shave peak demand. The sine-wave looking demand curve flattens right out and everyone wins.
In recent months there have been dozens of coal powerplants closed in favor of natural gas. Natural gas can be burned directly in an internal combustion turbine, skipping the boiler, which increases efficiency and gives much better throttling capabilities. It also helps that all the reserve tapping has caused the price of natural gas to plummet... at least natural gas is cleaner and produces marginally less CO2 per kWh.
=Smidge=
The range problem is STILL not addressed.
Goalposts moved yet again! You're like an adorable encyclopedia of cliché anti-EV talking points. loshwomp covered this one good enough for me, though.
=Smidge=
Justin Bieber owns a Fisker Karma, not a Tesla. :P
=Smidge=
So do I want an EV, or should I stick with my fuel-efficient diesel?
You can split the difference and get a hybrid. They do make hybrid SUVs and pickup trucks for your towing needs, and something like the plug-in Toyota Prius might be a good fit for your long commute vehicle - if they need to be separate vehicles. In terms of fuel efficiency you're quite near the edge where the Prius outperforms the Chevy Volt, which has a longer all-electric range but slightly worse fuel economy so for longer trips the Prius wins out.
=Smidge=
Wow, I stand corrected. I'm amazed that the average trip length is only 10 miles. We folks in Wisconsin must be busy folks!
I drive more than 10 miles to get my mail. Do you people ever go anywhere? We road trip to the cities all the time.
Here's the problem: Apparently you folks in Wisconsin live in the middle of fucking nowhere! Of course even the most basic of errands will require a full compliment of rations and an overnight stay. The majority of the country, however, lives in a neighborhood where most if not all of the things you need are within a few (under 10) miles at least. That includes most recreational needs.
=Smidge=
CO2 is not a pollutant. It's a greenhouse gas. These are two different things entirely. Needless to say actual pollutants like soot, sulfur oxides and nitrogen oxides are all zero at the local level with EVs which means improved air quality and improved health for the citizens.
The greenhouse effect is based on high school level physics. CO2's ability to absorb infrared in certain wavelength has been known since the 1950s or so. This is established fact. If you want "observed emirical" (sic) evidence, talk to the air force about heat seeking missiles since the development for those is what the original research into how CO2 (and other atmospheric gasses) interact with infrared light.
And since I know it's going to come up eventually if this thread continues, yes water vapor also absorbs infrared light and contributes to the greenhouse effect. However there are two important reasons why that's a non-starter for arguing against CO2 emissions reduction: 1) The amount of water in the atmosphere is limited since it precipitates out when it gets too high, and 2) Water and CO2 absorb different wavelengths of infrared light.
No bullshit. Basic physics.
=Smidge=
Goalposts moved!
Alrighty then. This report conducts an analysis that includes manufacturing the vehicle itself. I've givem my opinion of the report and the overall conclusion is EVs are still a winning proposition.
specifically the batteries that use some very nasty chemicals, and toxic elements
More nonsense. All production EVs available now use some form of lithium chemistry. Lithium "mining" is comparatively benign with most of the lithium supply coming from salt flats where the brine is pumped to the surface and allowed to evaporate until the salt you want starts to precipitate out. The electrodes are usually carbon and/or aluminum and the electrolyte - while not something I'd want to be drinking - is typically a volatile organic compound and poses virtually no long-term environmental risk. You must be thinking of nickel batteries. No production EVs I'm aware of use Nickel batteries.
And they have to be replaced
So do engines and transmissions, or at least they need a major overhaul. And like traditional automotive parts, batteries are extremely recyclable.
Least you think you'd need to replace the battery every year or whatever, the standard warranty is equivalent to any other drive train warranty. Even the most pessimistic estimates place the estimated service life of an EV battery at 8+ years (level of abuse notwithstanding). So the issue of cost is moot. Battery packs are also serviceable, in that being highly modular you can replace individual cell sets if that's all that's wrong with it.
Not saying this is still not better
That's pretty much what you were implying, though, wasn't it?
Everyone calls them "zero emission vehicles"
The vehicle itself produces no emissions. "Zero emissions" is actually a legal definition. I seriously doubt any EV owners, much less EV advocates is there are any non-advocate owners, are under any delusion that their vehicle has zero cradle-to-grave environmental impact. Owners of gasoline powered vehicles, however, seem completely unaware - sometimes deliberately so - of the true environmental costs of their chosen mode of transport.
=Smidge=
Renewable power does not run at peak all the time. It's the old forms of power - coal especially - that runs flat out 24/7 because throttling those kinds of powerplants is incredibly costly, inefficient and slow to react. It's called "spinning reserve" because the only reasonably way to reduce the output of a coal powerplant is to de-energize the generators and let the turbines keep spinning. If they turn off the furnaces it would take hours to get running again. Throttling a coal powerplant means complete waste of money and resources.
Electrical generation capacity is critically underutilized at night. You need generating capacity to handle peak demand, but most of the time you are running nowhere near peak demand. The reason why many people in CA are eligible for Time-Of-use metering is because increasing off-peak use actually reduces costs. Many utility providers desperately want people to plug in electric cars at night to "fill the tub" and level out the 24-hour demand curve, allowing more efficient and less costly operation.
Also, there's that lie again. See my other post in reply to you. But even if that were the case and electric vehicles were actually "coal powered" like you want to believe it's still cleaner than the typical gasoline engine. There are no areas of the country where electric vehicles have higher global warming emissions than the average new gasoline vehicle. (PDF warning, quote from page 11)
=Smidge=
That electricity comes from somewhere...
And that gasoline comes from somewhere too. Funny how people who drag out this dead horse of an argument so easily overlook that.
But whatever. For California the electricity source breakdown looks something like this:
46% Natural Gas
18% Coal
14% Nuclear
11% Hydro
11% other renewable (wind, solar, geothermal, biomass, etc)
Probably newer data out there but I'm fairly confident it's close enough for our purposes. So if we weigh emissions by source type and assume a miles-per-gallon and miles-per-kWh for ICE and Electric vehicles, we can get an approximation for how the two compare emissions-wise.
Natural Gas = 0.46 * 443 = 203.78
Coal = 0.18 * 1050 = 189 (being pessimistic here)
Nuclear = 0.14 * 66 = 9.24
Hydro = 0.11 * 10 = 1.1
Other = 0.11 * 30 = 3.3 (also pessimistic)
Total: 406.42 (Say 407) grams of CO2 per kWh generated. We'll bump that up a bit to account for transmission losses (90%) to 452 g/Kwh. Gasoline gives about 8,200 grams of CO2 per gallon. That's just basic a chemistry.
We'll be again generous and say 30MPG for gasoline and again pessimistic and say 3 mi/kWh for Electric - really stacking the odds against EVs here.
Gasoline vehicle @ 30MPG = 8200 g/mi / 30MPG = 273 grams CO2 per mile.
Electric vehicle @ 3 mi/kWh = 452 g/kWh / 3 mi/kWh = 151 grams CO2 per mile.
So even being pessimistic we see that driving electric vehicles, with their electricity coming from "somewhere", releases nearly half the CO2 as their gasoline counterpart. More importantly - and the brunt of what the OP was saying - is that the local in-city pollution is reduced to zero. Not only are you producing less pollution, you are producing that pollution away from population centers where it does the most harm.
=Smidge=
"Capacity" is inherently about quantity.
Not in this context. "Quality" refers to the capacity of a single refinery, "Quantity" refers to the number of refineries. Total refinery capacity is the sum of all the individual refinery capacities, yeah? Well if I double the capacity of each refinery (improve quality) I can decommission half my refineries (reduce quantity) while keeping the same total capacity.
I'm sorry I had to explain that.
According to the data I linked earlier, the US has ~17,000,000 barrels per month refinery capacity. This is about the same as it was 5 years ago. However we have five fewer refineries now as we did in 2007 and we're down a total of 11 if you count refineries that are sitting idle. Yet capacity is the same.
Here's an alternate hypothesis for why ND doesn't have enough refinery capacity for the oil it produces: They refined products aren't needed in ND. It makes no sense to refine locally then ship the products out when you can just ship the raw material out for less cost. Sorry if you don't "buy that" but one truck/pipe carrying one product is easier than ten trucks/pipes carrying ten different products.
=Smidge=
Utilization rate for the refineries is around 90%, and has been hovering around 90% for decades. Refinery capacity has increased more than fuel demand while utilization has remained roughly constant, yet prices continue to rise. There's something else at play here. Our capacity to refine the petroleum has pretty much kept pace with demand.
And the "Mr. Coward" quip had more to do with lack of any other handle to address the poster by, rather than anything derogatory. Though creating an account is easy enough so maybe you, too, should consider risking your reputation on a public forum - if only a pretend reputation.
=Smidge=
an 'electric' vehicle operates o on electricity. Period.
As in, the only thing you put into the car is electricity. If you are capable of put anything other than electricity into the vehicle as an energy source, then it's a hybrid at best.
=Smidge=
Technical solution: Mount a weapons-grade laser on the aircraft and return fire.
=Smidge=
It's not hard to actually dig up the data. You don't have to presume or guess anything.
Where would the power for 10,000 EVs come from? all sources. It's not as if they run Hydro at 100% until they max it out, then run up Coal until that's maxed out, etc... If anything, they run coal flat out all the time because that's the most economical way to operate it. Coal and other thermal cycle powerplants are slow to respond to changes, Hydro is not. So I'd actually posit that the lion's share of power for 10,000 EVs would be from untapped Hydro power.
Scraping Wikipedia, Washington State has over 27,000 MW of potential hydro power installed. Obviously not all of that will be usable year-round or necessarily all at once, but even if we cut that in half (say 13,000 MW) that's 113,880,000 MWh of electricity per year. In 2011 they used 59,576,028 or 52% of that. 52% of half their installed capacity. There's plenty of headroom there.
To put that into perspective, 10,000 vehicles driving the national average of 15,000 mi/yr with a very conservative 3 mi/kWh would need an extra 50,000 MWh of electricity... a 0.05% increase over the 91,106,272 MWh they already use. Drop in the bucket. If everyone in the entire state bought an EV - even the ones who don't currently own or are even eligible to own a car - power consumption would rise about 37%. You're still well within the state's installed hydroelectric generating capacity.
So no, I don't think the coal plants will burn any hotter at all.
For what reasons they don't use 100% hydro I cannot say - probably a mix of political, economic, engineering and practical reasons along with selling power outside the state.
=Smidge=
No new refineries in the US, and yet refinery capacity is nearly at an all-time high.
It's about quality, not quantity. There are no new refineries being built because we've been improving the existing ones so much. We have the capacity to refine more fuels now than at any point in the past 30 years.
Try again, Mr. Coward.
=Smidge=
Washington State Electrical Power (2011) (PDF)
73% Hydroelectric
14% Coal
8% Natural Gas
3% Nuclear
1.12% Wind
0.49% Biomass
0.37% Waste
0.08% Petroleum
0.05% Landfill gasses
0.02% Geothermal
0.03% Other
When you have to lie to make a point, you should realize that your point is not worth making.
=Smidge=
It's not about conversion per se, it's about input.
For a "Pure Electric" vehicle I put in electrical energy. How that energy is stored is almost completely irrelevant by the way - could be a chemical battery, could be a capacitor. The important part is I put in electrical energy and I get back out electrical energy.
For a diesel-electric train, I put in diesel fuel. But I can't use diesel fuel to power the wheels directly - I need to futz with it. The energy comes out of the storage mechanism (which is the liquid itself) as heat - something completely different from what I put in. Loaded as chemical bonds, used as heat. Contrast this with loading electrons, used as electrons.
If you are able to load or store energy in more than one form, with each form used for the same purpose (eg electricity + hydrocarbon fuel to drive wheels) then you have a hybrid system. From there we can classify different types of hybrid systems based on the mechanisms used.
Not all diesel trains are capable of accepting external electricity, mind you, but that's not really relevant. Just a point to note.
=Smidge=
But to put in quintessentially offensive terms, you're claiming that African-Americans aren't really Americans?
I find it more offensive that you can't tell the difference between a phenotype and a nationality. "Inability to see the forest for the trees" seems to be a recurring theme with you, actually.
=Smidge=
So you're saying a diesel electric locomotive isn't moving entirely by electric power? You might want to look that up...
You are arguing against a semantic that is already well established. "Pure Electric" means, in EV discussions, a vehicle that operates only on and directly from electrical energy with no intermediary energy conversion.
A diesel electric train, to use your example, uses heat (via combustion) as an energy intermediary. A necessary intermediary, not a waste product. It then uses mechanical energy as a second intermediary before producing the electricity, which then goes to the traction motors. This is called, again in the context of EV discussions, a "Serial hybrid."
When talking to EV people, "Pure Electric" means there's no fuel burning, only electrons.
=Smidge=
For those interested there is a report from a few months ago on the same topic with a US centric view (PDF warning) that comes to a similar conclusion. The main difference is Europe has much higher standards for fuel efficiency (both in legislation and public preference) so there is less potential gain for GHG emissions reduction to start with. For example:
Use phase energy requirements were assumed to be 0.623 megajoules/kilometer (MJ/km) for the EV, 68.5 milliliter/kilometer (mL/km) for the gasoline ICEV, and 53.5 mL/km for the diesel ICEV
To break this down into units most of us are more familiar with:
Electric: 3.591 miles per Kilowatt-hour
Gasoline: 34.34 miles per US gallon
Diesel: 43.97 miles per US gallon
Anyone in the US driving a vehicle made for the US market and getting those MPG figures would be justified in being a tad smug about it. Electric efficiency also seems generously high - I usually figure 3.2 mi/kWh, or pessimistically 3.0 to make the math easier, which correlates fairly well with anecdotal "real-world" reports from EV owners across the country. (5, 6 or even 7 mi/kWh is not unheard of, though these are usually your hyper-miler type drivers.)
Notable omissions from this report are include the energy and environmental impacts of obtaining the fossil fuels for either case. For example there is mention of the energy required to refine and process the metals used in battery production but no mention of the energy required to extract, refine and transport petroleum fuels. There is no mention of extraction costs for coal and natural gas for electrical production either.
There are several mentions of aluminum costs for production of EV components but having worked with both EVs and ICEVs I'm fairly confident there is more aluminum in an ICEV. Most of the engine block, come of the internal engine components, and most or the transmission body are aluminum. They are correct that there is more copper in an EV however.
Fossil depletion potential (FDP)may be decreased by 25% to 36% with electric transportation relying on average European electricity. EVs with natural gas or coal electricity, however, do not lead to significant reductions.
Nobody sensible has been arguing that EVs are magical. However, they are even at worst equivalent to what we are doing now but with the added benefit of future-proofing. A diesel engine will always need diesel, bio- or otherwise. It will always need a carbon based fuel. Always. An electric vehicle can get its electricity from carbon and non-carbon based sources alike. This means the bar to reducing fossil fuel use is dramatically lowered with the electrification of our vehicles.
tl:dr; Electrified vehicles are still a winning proposition despite not being perfect.
=Smidge=
Since over 50% of US electrical production is from coal
False. Not just false but so false you have no excuse for saying it. The amount of electricity produced in the US on average is currently under 40%. It's been in steady decline for at least five years now, being displaced by natural gas for the most part and is in rapid decline... so much so that the assholes in DC are running in circles trying to ban "coal killing" regulations that nobody ever proposed in the first place. You can argue that Natural Gas still releases CO2 - and that's true. But it produces less CO2 per MW-Hour generated than coal, and a lot less other pollution as well. US GHG emissions have been declining dramatically as a result.
But let's assume you weren't outright lying and half our electricity came from coal. Let's assume you live in Colorado, which has the highest proportion of coal power in the US and is consequentially the dirtiest electricity in the country. In terms of CO2 emissions your typical EV is still getting the equivalent of 33 miles per gallon or better (PDF warning).
So even if your EV is 100% coal powered, it is still an improvement over gasoline power. Since it is unlikely that any EV is 100% coal powered, that just amplifies the environmental benefit. Any "greening" of the electrical grid is automatically amplified by every plug-in hybrid and battery EV on the road.
=Smidge=