EV's: They're Only as Green as Your Grid's Fuel

I burned about 6,000 calories on my ride. I made the executive decision to not replace ALL of those calories with beer... just the first several hundred.

I'm not sure if this was brought up earlier of not... but it seems that this whole thread is based on a worst case scenario for EVs and a best case scenario for ICE Hybrids. Does anyone have info on the following:

Hybrids fueled by tar sands derived petrol

Second, actual efficiencies of the vehicles. Namely, how inefficiently can you realistically drive an EV vs a hybrid?

The last century I did was slightly down hill and ended at a brewery ;-) I have to admit didn't get all my nutrition from the beer.

The whole topic is rather distorting. If you have already made it a hybrid, making it at least a phev10 doesn't add much cost or weight. Then the user can decide. In states like ours phevs are much cleaner, but focusing on the worst states, the cleanest fuel, and the best hev, and the least important measure, co2, you can make a case for the current gasoline cars. Even Alaskan oil will cause more greenhouse gasses in well to wheels in a prius than modern coal generated night charging on a tesla. Heavy oil needs more refinery power to clean up than west texas intermediate. How do you make the numbers add up? Use old inefficient coal plants and assign their polution production to the new cars, then count the hydrogen and electricity needed for refining as from their cleaner sources. Tar sands are worse, especially if you include water pollution and other air pollutants but why look at these when you have a global warming agenda? why would you want to compare average to average when you can compare worst to best?

This is really another problem definition bias. In the ORNL study they assumed that phev and ev would be built into the general fleet, while hybrids would mainly be prius sized cars and smaller. If you have an ev rav4, ranger, or tesla you expect to use more energy.

:focus:

Here's a GE site. It gives an example of fuel used in EV's hybrids and standard ICE vehicles (over the memorial day holiday). According to GE's calc's ... EV's are STILL a better/efficient use of fuel ... whether electricity is coal fired or otherwise:

GE : Memorial Day Driving

(click on any of the 3 cars)

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Coda Automotive has been saying that all along. Not that either GE or Coda would want to say otherwise... but given the cost of transport of oil and gas around the world, I'm inclined to believe them. And I'm going to hope that renewable energies become a greater share of our electricity.