Volt's Latest Bad News-Couched as Good News

breath in. breath out. count to 5. take a look in the mirror. maybe have a coctail and remove that thing from... sorry.

Since we were talking about carb, which is trying to look at LA pollution, tail pipe emissions are important. They are also important in my city, SF, NYC, Washington, Atlanta, Mexico City, Tokyo, London, and many others. Albuquerque may not be one of them. Good for you. I understand. You should also understand that some of us study the world and not just your corner of new mexico. We may have different opinions and legitimate points of view. Ok take another deep breath. Now go ahead and rant.

Somehow the MIT energy labs agree with me, but global warming conferences are so provincial. There happens to be a major university here that studies these things, but why look at university research when you have plain old common sense in new mexico.

Let's talk about pnm and Albuquerque. I can't find the specific peek power plants for albuquerque, but for the state natural gas is used. Unlike your statement, solar does indeed correlate peak power provided to peak demand. That isn't really fair though, as solar is one of the most expensive sources. In NM it is relatively cheap compared to less sunny states. Pnm also has Demand response. Implemented correctly there is no reason for PHEV and BEVs to increase peak demand (equipment warns about this condition). I beleive what you really meant to say is that coal power plants are added to increase the base line load. This is true for pnm. This is also what skews high bev usage to be more poluting than in other areas. I hope you can understand that there are over riding issues. In many places the utilities will add more expensive green energy for higher loads.

I only skimmed the study you provided. The conclusion and tables that I read had lower pollution figures for bev and phev than gas or hev. This agrees with stanford, cal, and ucla research. Can you provide your smoking gun?

 

AG, you are so full of shit.
You spend 5 pages telling me how Austin justifies your argument, and then purport to "study the world."

Read the article for understanding. I think their conclusion that a weighted average BEV in California would have about 86% the GHG/km as a Prius is reasonable though perhaps less charitable to the Prius than deserved since they they set Prius mpg at 46, but their underlying point can be easily read as simply saying that NG is less carbon intensive than coal, even if used in an EV. Who wudda thunk ?! Guess what happens when you go to a geographic area supplied by coal ? hmm ?

 

First, thank you for taking the time to explain your position without the inflammatory remarks. I understand your position much better now.

For your first point, MN also tends to use NG for margin demand. I believe most states that have access to NG do as a NG plant can ramp up or down it's production in minutes, whereas coal plants take hours.
As for EVs increasing the size of the baseline, it would take quite some time before there are enough EVs on the road to do this, There is a ton of spare capacity at night.

As to the fallacy you mention, you have a incorrect, I believe, assumption.
Your scenario has someone using a Prius using an equivalent of 200kWH of 'dirty' fuel switching to an EV which then, in your scenario, uses 200kWH of fuel from the grid.
An EV is 2-3 times more efficient than a hybrid (Efficiency | Tesla Motors). Even considering well to wheel an EVis still twice as efficient. Now, these numbers do use NG for electrical power generatio and I do understand you get yours from coal. So perhaps an EV isn't a gain for you based on your local power generation. Florida and west VA may not be great places either. But I believe the numbers work out in favor of EVs for most of the country as 100% coal use isn't common.

In addition, if we are talking about EVs suitability for the nation, not everyone is driving a Prius. So the efficiency gain gets even better.

 

Zythryn, I looked at articles today analyzing marginal use by PHEV and BEV in California and Colorado assuming current realities, and both found the major incremental fuel was NG. The CA article found that PH(ev) use realized about 86% of well_to_wheel (wtw) GHG compared to Prius, low Sox and high Nox -- all features of NG combustion.

Driving an NG vehicle gives a similar profile, at least in terms of Sox and CO2.

I think the more interesting and relevant question though, is what happens to emissions over time as PH(ev) electrical demand becomes anticipated and modeled by the electric companies ? From their standpoint the money imperative leads them to incorporate PH(ev) demand into baseload generation as much as possible. This leads us back to coal, because it is the cheapest excess capacity that utilities can (and want) to use for baseload. I am not arguing that more coal plants will be built, but that more coal than would be otherwise required without PH(ev) will be used. Although clean energy will continue to increase and offset baseload dirty energy production, this does not change the fact that adding more baseload energy demand will be coal driven. it does not matter if baseload demand prior to adding PH(ev) demand is 2x or 1x; whether the 1x used to be 2x but decreased with clean energy input -- in both cases increased demand from PH(ev) will preferentially be supplied by coal. Saying that PH(ev) electrical demand will be supplied by the clean energy input just leaves the other dirty energy demand higher. This is why I call EV a shell game. This seems to be a subtle point, and one that I have misrepresented since the actual problem is a case of how additional (may I say marginal?) increase in baseload is supplied.

I will parenthetically add my prior remark, that the capital cost of EV in order to realize a 15% reduction in GHG emissions (assuming "best" case of NG use) is a really poor use of societal capital in the form of subsidy. It is also a poor use of limited family capital interested in pollution reduction. Conservation measures applied to the home, windows, insulation, and solar thermal are *much* higher yield measures. Use of the capital to increase clean energy generation makes a *whole* lot more sense.

Your last point I take in humor. Certainly if my neighbor gave me a choice of him driving a hummer or an EV I would choose an EV for him. In answer to your question about the validity of using the same energy consumption in a car regardless of it being electrical or liquid fuel, I use the same values because I start from axle energy requirements. The efficiencies have pretty much evened out in a WtW analysis, although as I write below fuel sources from NG is about 86% the GHG of WtW petrol, while coal is worse.

 

I should have included it with my CARB quotes. CARB encourages Equinox and Clarity FCV to have 3 year leases, at which time GM and Honda are free to crush said vehicle and get full credit.

 

Buried in the list of standard equipment published today, that little gem of a detail emerged.

Now more than ever some are wondering what the heck efficiency in CS-mode will be.
.

 

The fictitious "Flex-Fuel" is gone. GM now can
bally-hoo the upgraded for 2011, New and Improved...

Chevy Volt with FARCE-FUEL.

(Note to GM: As payment for my advertising and
promotional services, don't send money, send me a
Nissan Leaf or Toyota Prius-PHV. Thank you very much)

 

:suspicious: What is the curb weight of this mythical vehicle? Estimated 80 hp is supposed to recharge the battery + move the car? :ballchain:

 

The charging will occur when you are not accelerating or going up a hill.

 

In a recent article, it said 4,000 lbs for the Volt and 3,500 lbs for the Leaf.

Remember, even in CS mode the battery can still assist the ICE just like in Prius with two red bars and you flooring it. HV battery will assist with that 2 bars buffer but ICE will aggressively recharge the battery.

 

My Prius weighs < 3000 lb but when the battery gets down to two bars and you accelerate from a stoplight, it feels like the car has been submerged under water. :madgrin:

 

Yea, it is just the sound. The gas engine is working harder not because it does not have enough torque or power. It is because Hybrid ECU execute a more aggressive algorithm to recharge the HV battery when it is best to do so. The best case of course is when the gas engine is running.