[charmerci]

An African, has Invented a car that never needs charging. He will have a hard time getting this one on the market.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=viGjXV38qvY

Politics? In this case, African or not, the claims sound bogus. He really lost me when he said that generator creates 100x more energy than goes in it.    Powering the batteries through radio frequencies? Give me a break.

[genjamon]

Links this data please.
Regardless power plants are more efficient then ICE.

I’m a EV lover. I acknowledge that battery production at this time is a disatvantage. Do you expect the technology to wait until a battery can be made pollution free and get 100 miles per charge? Serious question, how would you want new better technology rolled out?
The joy of driving an EV is very high. Do not discount how nice it is to never go to a gas station. Full every morning. So quite and smooth.
I own two Bolts and love it.  You don’t have to own an EV to save the world. They are just better.

I agree guys.  We can do way better than this half-assed sniping speculation.

US Energy Information Administration has what we need right here: 
https://www.eia.gov/electricity/state/

Click on your state: 
(in my case) https://www.eia.gov/electricity/state/arizona/ 
.9lbs CO2 emissions/kWh

(for all the Minnesota guys) https://www.eia.gov/electricity/state/minnesota/
1.1lbs CO2 emissions/kWh

And what is the electric efficiency of electric cars?
I found this site with a range of efficiencies of between .18-.25 kWh/mile
https://pushevs.com/2017/05/23/electric-car-range-efficiency-table-nedc/
(though it doesn't include Tesla, and I would assume Tesla would be on the less efficient range of electric cars due to its sporting nature, possibly MUCH less efficient than the best)

So, let's just say .25kWh/mi just to take the worst case scenario for the electric car - for the sake of argument - that equates to .225lb CO2 emissions/mile for an electric car in AZ, and .275lb CO2 emissions/mile for you Minnesota boys.


EPA also has us covered on CO2 emissions of ICE cars
https://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/greenhouse-gas-emissions-typical-passenger-vehicle
Assumes 22mpg avg fleet fuel economy for U.S.
404g CO2 emissions/mi, or .9lbs CO2 emissions/mi

Easy to adjust this ICE figure for your own individual fuel economy.  If you get 45mpg with a Prius, it's easy:
45mpg Prius/22mpg US avg = 2.045 times more efficient than avg
(.9lbs CO2 emissions/mile for a 22mpg vehicle)/(Prius 2.045 more efficient than avg) = .44lbs CO2 emissions/mile for a Prius

Comparing the two - even the most efficient ICE vehicle out there, averaging 45-50mpg over their lifetime, are still quite a bit more carbon intensive to operate than an electric car on the less efficient end of the spectrum.  Even for two relatively coal-intensive states. 

This doesn't negate the concerns about environmental impacts from manufacturing, mining, etc.  I am also quite concerned about these, and wonder how we'll ever manage the issues as this industry scales up.

Lastly, I'm surprised no one has brought up local air pollution.  The one thing electric cars do exceptionally well is remove all local air pollution.  Most cities are having increasing air quality problems, and electric cars push the emissions away from town, which is a benefit for the health and wellbeing of the city dwellers.  That said, the people living near or downwind of the coal plants are not doing so well.  But coal is dying a slow death due to the economics of natural gas taking over, anyway, which is a helluva lot cleaner from a direct air quality/health perspective than coal. 

No easy choices, to be sure. 

[WGH]

By coincidence, today's 1A radio program has a discussion on the economics of coal fired power plants. Robert W. Godby, Director for Energy Economics & Public Policies Center and Associate Professor at the University of Wyoming said that the cheapest source of electricity generated by new power plants is wind, solar and natural gas is a toss up, then comes coal.

Tucson Electric Power (TEP) is quickly moving toward renewable sources. TEP stopped using coal in 2015 and recently demolished their coal barn replacing it with new reciprocating internal combustion engines, or RICE units, are designed to operate much like car engines, providing fast, flexible generation that will help compensate for intermittent output from wind and solar resources.

TEP also has a Real-time Solar and Wind Generation Dashboard that shows current output, right now it is at 13%, no wind today.
https://www.tep.com/solar-dashboard/
Check with your local electric utility to see if they have something similar.



Guilt free charging coming soon.
 

[genjamon]

I would feel very guilty charging my electric car at night - knowing full well that all that electricity is coming from coal/nat gas.  Especially if I'd invested in solar on my roof.  The lack of utility-scale storage is going to be a major impediment to electrifying transportation in a carbon-neutral way. 

For all those who are in love with net metering, I'd suggest boning up on the "Duck Curve": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duck_curve


That said, just look at the math above.  Even if you take out the solar argument and assume power from fossil fuels, electric vehicles still win on the pure efficiency front. 

[DaveC113]

I agree guys.  We can do way better than this half-assed sniping speculation.

US Energy Information Administration has what we need right here: 
https://www.eia.gov/electricity/state/

Click on your state: 
(in my case) https://www.eia.gov/electricity/state/arizona/ 
.9lbs CO2 emissions/kWh

(for all the Minnesota guys) https://www.eia.gov/electricity/state/minnesota/
1.1lbs CO2 emissions/kWh

And what is the electric efficiency of electric cars?
I found this site with a range of efficiencies of between .18-.25 kWh/mile
https://pushevs.com/2017/05/23/electric-car-range-efficiency-table-nedc/
(though it doesn't include Tesla, and I would assume Tesla would be on the less efficient range of electric cars due to its sporting nature, possibly MUCH less efficient than the best)

So, let's just say .25kWh/mi just to take the worst case scenario for the electric car - for the sake of argument - that equates to .225lb CO2 emissions/mile for an electric car in AZ, and .275lb CO2 emissions/mile for you Minnesota boys.


EPA also has us covered on CO2 emissions of ICE cars
https://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/greenhouse-gas-emissions-typical-passenger-vehicle
Assumes 22mpg avg fleet fuel economy for U.S.
404g CO2 emissions/mi, or .9lbs CO2 emissions/mi

Easy to adjust this ICE figure for your own individual fuel economy.  If you get 45mpg with a Prius, it's easy:
45mpg Prius/22mpg US avg = 2.045 times more efficient than avg
(.9lbs CO2 emissions/mile for a 22mpg vehicle)/(Prius 2.045 more efficient than avg) = .44lbs CO2 emissions/mile for a Prius

Comparing the two - even the most efficient ICE vehicle out there, averaging 45-50mpg over their lifetime, are still quite a bit more carbon intensive to operate than an electric car on the less efficient end of the spectrum.  Even for two relatively coal-intensive states. 

This doesn't negate the concerns about environmental impacts from manufacturing, mining, etc.  I am also quite concerned about these, and wonder how we'll ever manage the issues as this industry scales up.

Lastly, I'm surprised no one has brought up local air pollution.  The one thing electric cars do exceptionally well is remove all local air pollution.  Most cities are having increasing air quality problems, and electric cars push the emissions away from town, which is a benefit for the health and wellbeing of the city dwellers.  That said, the people living near or downwind of the coal plants are not doing so well.  But coal is dying a slow death due to the economics of natural gas taking over, anyway, which is a helluva lot cleaner from a direct air quality/health perspective than coal. 

No easy choices, to be sure.

This is a poor analysis imo...

I'm not going to pick it apart but the facts are generating electricity is only 1/3rd efficient or so, then charging the battery and using the energy stored in the battery reduces efficiency further, to the point it's less efficient vs burning gasoline in an engine.

Then if you factor in energy required to build and retire the car it gets MUCH worse. A simple car like a Honda Fit is much cheaper and takes much less energy to manufacture and decommission. This is called EROEI, or energy return on energy invested, and is the main factor that needs to be looked at when evaluating this kind of tech.

The factor in the ridiculous environmental and human catastrophe that is rare earth mining and the thought of Ecars seems a bit ridiculous. It's on the scale of buying several thousand smartphones.

As far as charging at night, you need to look into this further, because there is often a surplus at night. Large power plants can't start and stop on a dime so there is often surplus energy capacity at night. Now, if everyone starts charging Ecars at night this will change and be an issue but right now it's often the best way to charge your car.

I got an engineering degree focused on renewable energy, took classes on it, did my Sr project with NREL in Golden, CO and went to work for the world's largest wind turbine manufacturer. So I'm not exactly biased... in fact I'm biased towards Ecars working out and they will certainly be the future, but right now we need to be realistic about what's truly best for the planet and what will truly help with mitigating climate change.

[avahifi]

You can check out a Tesla 3 here:

https://www.tesla.com/model3

Frank

[sts9fan]

EV are more fun and satisfying to drive. No gas stations, smooth strong acceleration, no local emissions and no oil changes. Much less maintenance.
I agree that the federal tax credit is going to those that do not need it.

[macrojack]

I assume that all of us who express concern over the dirty coal powered electricity being used by EVs have taken the step to install solar panels or some other means to produce clean energy for their own homes. Since we seem to agree that only about 1/3 of power generated at the power station actually reaches your house for use, we must realize that on site electric generation like I get from my solar panels give you some 98% in usable watts --- about 3 times as efficient as the power station. Consider also that politics and greed aside, the mining of precious and/or rare earth elements is greatly if not completely offset by the amount of coal mined for power generation.

Instead of throwing down nonsense you heard from corporate media be grateful that these early adopters are paving the way for your own inevitable, cheaper, and less complicated EV ownership in the future. Show some gratitude and respect. And heed JLM's advice ... reduce your commute. That by itself will help the planet and will amount to more cash in your pocket than the tax break everyone is lying about. Do yourself a favor.

[avahifi]

Well, I for one have reduced my commute, long ago, to zero!

My sound lab is the lower level of my split entry home and has been for the past 40 years.  No drive to work, car never sits out baking in the sun, no traffic hassle, no wasted hours in bumper to bumper rush hour traffic.

This is one of the reasons my 2002 Audi S6 Avant is still in near new condition.  Actually I don't care that it gets 15mpg city and 21 mpg highway, I don't put enough miles on it these days, maybe 6000 a year, that it makes much difference.

Anyway my interest in the Tesla 3 is mainly that it is just a joy to drive (even better than my 340HP Audi) and that is worth something to me.

Anyone interested in a very rare (only about 1200 ever imported to the USA) 2002 Audi S6 Avant sport wagon.  No door dings, no rust, no accidents, never driven to work, rarely driven in snow or when road salt abounds, always maintained at Audi dealership.  I see them going at $10,00 to $14,000 at rare car dealers, but I bet none have had the care mine has.  Somebody make me a good offer please.

Frank

Frank

[DaveC113]

I assume that all of us who express concern over the dirty coal powered electricity being used by EVs have taken the step to install solar panels or some other means to produce clean energy for their own homes. Since we seem to agree that only about 1/3 of power generated at the power station actually reaches your house for use, we must realize that on site electric generation like I get from my solar panels give you some 98% in usable watts --- about 3 times as efficient as the power station. Consider also that politics and greed aside, the mining of precious and/or rare earth elements is greatly if not completely offset by the amount of coal mined for power generation.

Instead of throwing down nonsense you heard from corporate media be grateful that these early adopters are paving the way for your own inevitable, cheaper, and less complicated EV ownership in the future. Show some gratitude and respect. And heed JLM's advice ... reduce your commute. That by itself will help the planet and will amount to more cash in your pocket than the tax break everyone is lying about. Do yourself a favor.

Mining materials for EVs is worse vs coal, not even in the same league actually. It's done by children in Africa and, well, google pics of rare earth mines in China, the scale is unbelievable.

Your solar panels took some energy and resources to manufacture, but I agree at this point it's a good idea and I will invest in solar when I can.

As far as early adapters, IDK, many seem to be rich folks buying luxury Tesla vehicles who don't need the government's money and are deluding themselves that their cars are environmentally friendly. Not sure about corporate media, I do my own thinking and have gone to school to study these subjects and have taken classes on evaluating renewable energy technology.

Despite the drawbacks I mention there are also many situations where EVs are better vs ICE, it depends on how the car is charged. People want to get emotional and decide one is always better than the other but it's not the case, it's more complicated than that... as are most things in life. A lot of it is simply because anything is better than pumping more carbon into the air, if it weren't for that EVs would seem like a bad idea because of expense and environmental impact, but this one pro outweighs all the cons because of climate change. It's like a lifelong smoker switching to heroin, it's not an improvement in the general sense, but it certainly might be for a smoker who has lung diseases. 

If we can improve energy generation and storage technology it will only get better and it will be clear-cut. That time is in the future, hopefully not too far away.

[artur9]

I also worry about hot summers and run the AC, besides the heater and heated seats in 5-30 below weather here in MN.

In both my electric cars, the A/C was a relatively light load.  Today, in 95deg heat, running the A/C at Max only cost me like 5 miles of range over a 45mi commute.

Now, the heater, whooo boy!  that drains the battery like there's no tomorrow.  Heated seats only help a little with that.

[FullRangeMan]

He really lost me when he said that generator creates 100x more energy than goes in it.

I have never seen such an efficient generator, it seems a collector of scalar energy like those of the genius Nicola Testa imo.

[ctviggen]

In both my electric cars, the A/C was a relatively light load.  Today, in 95deg heat, running the A/C at Max only cost me like 5 miles of range over a 45mi commute.

Now, the heater, whooo boy!  that drains the battery like there's no tomorrow.  Heated seats only help a little with that.

They've made the AC very efficient.  The heater is brutal. In my Chevy Volt, cold weather caused a dramatic decrease in range, about half, and the engine came on to add heat. 

[2bigears]

  in a cold climate a little 45mpg car can't be beat. Buy it used with 20,000 and save a bundle. 450,000 trouble free miles if your luckey and treat it right.  Can't be beat. Electric ain't the answer. A small gas car is simple and cheap. KISS ..  but we love to fool ourselves and go goo-goo over new and latest.  Bunch of bs. 650 coal burning power gens in the USA.  We are not going to stop that. 270,000 new babies each and every day.  All needing more power. Happy motoring,,,,,

[WGH]

Bunch of bs. 650 coal burning power gens in the USA.

That number is way out of date:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/06/13/climate/coal-nuclear-bailout.html

"In 2010, the United States had 580 coal-fired power plants. They provided 45 percent of the nation’s electricity.

"By March 2018, the number of plants had fallen below 350 and coal’s market share had dropped to 30 percent, mostly because of competition from cheap natural gas, state efforts to boost renewables and stricter pollution rules.

"At least 40 more coal plants have announced they will close or reduce capacity by 2025, and others may soon follow."

Interactive map of the world's coal power plants:
https://www.carbonbrief.org/mapped-worlds-coal-power-plants

[genjamon]

This is a poor analysis imo...

I'm not going to pick it apart but the facts are generating electricity is only 1/3rd efficient or so, then charging the battery and using the energy stored in the battery reduces efficiency further, to the point it's less efficient vs burning gasoline in an engine.

Then if you factor in energy required to build and retire the car it gets MUCH worse. A simple car like a Honda Fit is much cheaper and takes much less energy to manufacture and decommission. This is called EROEI, or energy return on energy invested, and is the main factor that needs to be looked at when evaluating this kind of tech.

The factor in the ridiculous environmental and human catastrophe that is rare earth mining and the thought of Ecars seems a bit ridiculous. It's on the scale of buying several thousand smartphones.

As far as charging at night, you need to look into this further, because there is often a surplus at night. Large power plants can't start and stop on a dime so there is often surplus energy capacity at night. Now, if everyone starts charging Ecars at night this will change and be an issue but right now it's often the best way to charge your car.

I got an engineering degree focused on renewable energy, took classes on it, did my Sr project with NREL in Golden, CO and went to work for the world's largest wind turbine manufacturer. So I'm not exactly biased... in fact I'm biased towards Ecars working out and they will certainly be the future, but right now we need to be realistic about what's truly best for the planet and what will truly help with mitigating climate change.

Take another look, Dave.  There's more in the EIA I cited than you're giving credit for.  Those emissions for electricity I cited are the sum of all emissions from the power plants - so they do take inefficiencies in production into account.  You do have a point that I didn't include the transmission/distribution losses in my analysis, but they're much less than what you and others are suggesting.  Again, let's look at some data instead of just repeating armchair speculation.

Instructions for examining T&D (transmission and distribution) losses:  https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=105&t=3

And we see that all the data is available in that very same page I cited earlier - the State Profiles in EIA.

For Arizona, there's a link for the full data tables in the lower portion of the state profile: https://www.eia.gov/electricity/state/arizona/

And here's the direct link to the Excel spreadsheet of all those tables: https://www.eia.gov/electricity/state/arizona/xls/az.xlsx

And if you follow the EIA instructions, go to that Excel spreadsheet, tab over to Table 10, and you'll see estimated losses of around 4million out of about 108million MWh for 2016.  That's 3.75% in T&D losses by my calculation.  NOT 67%, as you all are suggesting.  Indeed, EIA estimates approx 5% of total electricity generation lost in T&D losses per year (https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=105&t=3).

So, transmission losses are important, but nowhere near a dominant factor in the overall energy performance of electric vehicles vs ICE.

I'm not debating any of the manufacturing or end of life arguments being made here, but I'd be interested in any citations or data to support claims being made there as well.  I mean, come on guys - it took me about 15 minutes to look up all this stuff, and about 30 minutes to type each of these messages.  A little bit of actual information goes a long way.

[WGH]

270,000 new babies each and every day.

In 2017 there were 3,853,472 babies born in the United States (10,557 per day). Though 3.8 million-plus newborns might seem like a lot, the tally is actually a 30-year low and is down 2 percent from 2016.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/the-big-number38-million-babies-were-born-in-the-us-last-year-thats-a-drop/2018/05/25/ce96af5a-5f6f-11e8-a4a4-c070ef53f315_story.html?utm_term=.915f70baada8

The CDC website states there are 2,712,630 deaths or 7,432 deaths per day in the US.

UNICEF estimates that an average of 353,000 babies are born each day (2016) around the world but I thought we were talking about the US.
Remember there are 154,889 deaths in the world as daily average.

That took me about 30 seconds to research and type.

[JerryM]

Good grief guys, this is a thread about a test drive, for cripes sake. 

[WGH]

Good grief guys, this is a thread about a test drive, for cripes sake. 

Not any more 
Keeping threads on track is like herding cats.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pk7yqlTMvp8

[macrojack]

Good grief guys, this is a thread about a test drive, for cripes sake. 

Conversation is a living thing. It expands and grows in proportion or languishes and dies depending on input and interaction. To me this is much more interesting than what somebody is "listening to right now". There are a lot of bright people gathered here and all of us can benefit from a discussion like this whether we realize as much right now or not.

There is only so much 30 to 50 year audio veterans can discuss that doesn't violate our strict discussion taboos (and their over enforcement and misapplication) or the tweak of the week. This energy topic will have much to do with our quality of life on earth and maybe even whether or not we continue to live here as humans. We are changing the living conditions around us inexorably and this may continue unchecked unless we can adapt as quickly as we destroy.

The subject of population growth lies at the center of all of this. When there were but a few million people in North America, we had no need to worry about pollution. We could all cook and heat with open fires without ruining our air quality. How long do you think we could live like that today with 350,000,000+ humans using wood as our only fuel? We have adapted as we've grown by developing more  efficient ways of meeting our needs but there are limits imposed by physics as to just how efficient we can become. And there are limits within our physiology as to how much we can tolerate pollution and climate change. So we are forcing ourselves to adapt or perish. Most of the world knows this and is trying to impose restrictions and standards that slow the destruction. Too many in this country, however, are willing to ignore the problem claiming that it does not exist. This denial will be shown to have a short shelf life as the conditions become impossible to ignore. Will it be too late before we force that nonsense out of the way and move as a nation to correct our destructive ways? I hope so. Don't you. Profits are nice but you need to be alive to spend them.

And please recognize that this is a survival topic, not a political discussion. The mere fact that some politician chooses to exploit a topic does not make it political. This is about the great big listening room we all depend on for our means of survival. It is time to co-operate --- not compete.