Nissan and Renault sell 200k electric vehicles worldwide

Canada is loaded with hydroelectric power (which has it's own environmental problems) but Alberta is an exception, where most of our power is generated from coal or natural gas. I read somewhere that much of the US gets it's power in a similar way, therefore I referenced it as such.

 

You have to keep the comparison like to like. If you are looking at the power plant to wheels for the plug in, you should be looking at the refinery to wheels for the ICE with all the energy used to make the gasoline and ship it, possibly hundreds of miles, to the gas station.

The EV wins on efficiency simply because a natural gas turbine power plant is more efficient at making electricity than a car ICE at producing motive force, and losses incurred in getting the electricity to the BEV's wheels are, at the very worse, the same as getting fuel to a station.

Depends on locale. 50% coal for the national average gets tossed against plug ins, but it is an average no one can plug into, and reference numbers several years out of date. Some areas are heavy on coal, which brings up the average, and if getting a BEV for cleaner air is your goal, then you should probably rethink your plan. The East Coast has a fair number of nuclear reactors though, and the Washington state is heavy on hydro. Most of the new fossil fueled plants coming online are natural gas, with most of the old plants shutting down being old, dirtier coal.

 

It's hard to find unbiased research into this topic, because everyone seems to be on one bandwagon or the other, but here's two sources that appear to at least try to be balanced:

Shades of Green: Electric Cars’ Carbon Emissions Around the Globe | shrinkthatfootprint.com

BBC News - How environmentally friendly are electric cars?

The upshot seems to be if you burn fossil fuels, it's less-green, but if you use hydro or nuclear, it's more-green. I was referring specifically to fossil-fuel produced electricity in my post.

 

It's good to be skeptical!
If you want more detail, here is a pretty good, conservative calculation with a well written narrative.
Wells to wheels: electric car efficiency | Energy Matters

If you are looking at the well to wheel efficiency of electrics, you need to compare it to the well to wheels efficiency of ICE vehicles as well. This comes in around 15% (details on how that is calculated can be found in the link).

 

The article seems to be downplaying the efficiency losses of generated power to about 30%. I think it's ignoring all the losses incurred from generation, transmission and conversion before it ever gets to the car. As I said, it's hard to find "honest accounting" on this subject.

 

I didn't mean to criticize canada, but every region is different much like the US. In 2013 39% of US was coal, 27% natural gas, 1% oil, and 33% other (nuclear, hydro, and renewables that don't really work to figure out efficiency of fossil fuels). The thing is when you add plug-in cars to the grid in the US additional energy is likely to come from natural gas and wind, the energy we are building. That coal is shrinking not in a straight line (some years it goes up) but fast. Large hydro and coal are already built and marginally don't go for cars. But yes, in calgary your prius may be more efficient on oil than a leaf would be on natural gas, wind, and coal, but this is not the case for most of north armerica, and overly complicates things.

Right now wind is less expensive than new nuclear, so most would not consider nuclear the green choice, especially in Germany. If all you care about is ghg though, both require natural gas or coal back up, so there is some fossil fuel cost, and places with majority coal can not easily build wind without first replacing some coal with cycling (ocgt or ccgt) natural gas. Yep it gets complicated quickly unless you look at a specific city. The bbc is uk centric so it considers fracked natural gas worse than coal, most in texas think that is absurd. It helps to define green before you compare, but you can make any car look brown (see hummer versus prius) if you make bad assumptions.

If I was canadian, I would sit back and wait for the US, Germany, and Japan to push the tech forward and make it cheaper. In the US though, huge imports of oil even from friendly canada, perpetual war in the middle east, inexpensive fracked natural gas, means its smart to push for alternatives at these battery prices. Canadians can simply wait and see if we drop the price of plug-ins low enough that they seem better.

 

He calculates those losses and spends time discussing them.

I wasn't sure if you were looking at GHG emissions or just efficiency.
If GHGs, this is a great paper with full references so you can drill down as much as you want.
How do EVs Compare with Gas-Powered Vehicles? Better Every Year…. - The Equation

In short, for 60% of the population driving electric is cleaner than driving even the most efficient ICE (Prius).
This was using the 2010 grid which has gotten cleaner since.

Of course, one of the things I like about EVs is I can produce my own power. So my cleaner energy is either used by me, or someone else on the grid, and I get to use the grid as a battery

 

Across the whole US the average losses for the grid are around 5-7%.
Meanwhile, when you run your Prius on gas you may have noticed that in just the first 5-10 minutes while warming up your mpg can be as low as 25 mpg...50% less than normal. With the PIP, depending on your driving pattern, you have much fewer low mpg trips.

Plus you aren't taking into account the fact that getting fossil fuel to your gas station has costs beyond getting fossil fuel to a power plant. Coal is transported in bulk right from the mine to the power plant on relatively efficient rail cars. NG goes in pipelines...relatively efficiently.
The oil we are replacing with electricity comes from half way around the world, typically. But even if it was more local oil it would be pumped and sent to a refinery via pipeline, then from there get trucked to a gas station and an empty truck returns after several stops. Pumping oil via a pipeline or transporting across the ocean has lot higher energy costs than sending NG through a pipeline then electricity over a wire.

Mike

 

TV report today with gas prices predicted under $2.00!!

What will even the possibility do to alternative fuel vehicle sales? And what effect will it have on manufacturers willingness to invest in alternative fuel vehicles?

What it has done recently is spike trucks and vans and SUV sales while popularly priced hybrids wait for their refresh.

Will even new popularly priced alternative fuel vehicles be successful at that fuel price point for any but the ecologically committed?

 

i wonder how much a leftover lift back would cost when the gen IV's are arriving if gas is that cheap. might be worth making an investment.

 

So, at $2.00 a gallon, gas driving cost = electric driving cost Compare Side-by-Side

 

I expect it fill slow the growth, but not stop it.
Environment and gas prices are the only reason to buy a hybrid.
EVs give many reasons in addition to those.

 

How low it will go needs to be compared to how long it will last.

 

Agreed. Just look at any price chart from 1900 on.

 

As soon as Putin or ISIS goes, the cost of oil will spring back up again, or we'll have WWIII?

Is this all a new way of fighting a war or at least hurting those we don't like? Everyone knows the price of oil is manipulated as shown in the past, this is just a new manipulation, the cost of which is probably cheaper than a multi $trillion war - and the public win too (apparently).

Maybe it is a giant conspiracy to kill off the electric car by short term pain to the oil companies, but I think people, at least here, are wise to the up, down, up higher than before, cost of petrol.

 

Decade after decade - that was the comment .... "let's see how in year blah blah". Decade after decade I've seen the low quantity continue on. But hey - if Charlie Brown wants to try & punt again, then here we go again.

 

And level of fossil fuel electric requires more precision than by country to judge whether they are a cleaner choice or not for an individual.

Alternative Fuels Data Center: Emissions from Hybrid and Plug-In Electric Vehicles
That gives the percent for locales in the US. Note that it is using older data than what Austingreen posted. Coal has dropped from the 50% grid average it has listed. So the coal listing for a locale likely is lower, while the natural gas is higher. Still a fossil fuel, but NG already burns cleaner than coal and the new plants are more efficient.

The UK seems to have a relatively high mix of coal, but a plug in still emits less GHG than a conventional car there.

BEVs are worse in China, because they are heavy into coal. BEVs do move the directly harmful emissions(NOx , particulates, etc.) out of the cities, and China is investing in cleaner electricity. Pushing plug ins now and investing in clean electricity is probably cheaper than waiting for the clean electric and then trying to get people out of their older fossil fuel cars.

 

Not sure what you define as "relatively high". Canada was said to have 50% coal and US 39%. Ours is 34% coal.

The UK electricity split for 2013/14 was as follows;

Coal 34%
NG 25.6%
Nuclear 21.6%
Other (Oil) 2.1%
Renewable 16.7%

Apparently this equates to 428g CO2/kwh. Not sure if that's good or bad.

The above figures are the total UK generation for homes, businesses etc. But we have the option of purchasing off the company of choice. There are many companies that offer 100% renewable electricity - such as my utility provider. And many coal stations are now switching to part renewable.

Our Fuel Mix - Our Green Energy - Ecotricity

My electricity company are in partnership with some EV manufacturers offering clean, green electricity for the new EV. They also have a free charge network using 100% renewable electricity and give a discount if you own a BEV.

 

Apparently it's not as easy to retrofit natural gas into an existing coal-fired generation plant, as it would seem at first-glance. Most new gas-fired plants are new installations and not retro-fits. Without the benefit of knowing all the engineering restraints, I wonder how many of these new-builds are the result of commercial and political influence more than practicality?