Just How Green Are Electric Vehicles?

Plus, if you have a solar array at home, you can make you own petrol, so to speak. We've debated this ad nauseam... and I mean nausem here. I hope this thread doesn't turn into another such "discussion".

 

I was pleasantly surprised at the green mix of UK power (~25% coal). So that makes the EV look a little greener than USA (~50% coal). In USA I do not think there is an EV eco-advantage compared to your nice black Prius, but there is an advantage if you compare to the average USA SUV or mini-van. I guess that diesel exhaust explains some of the particulate issues in London that was mentioned? Gasoline cars like your Prius are quite low emissions with the bladder gas tank in USA (although you may not have that in UK).

I struggled with the comment in the text that EV is 90% efficient.
My calc for a Prius- burns 1/2 the amount of gasoline compared to coal to make an EV go at 3 mile per KWhr. So I get the EV as 50% fossil fuel efficency of a Prius on a coal basis, but this approaches equal fossil fuel burning with all the nat gas/nukes the UK electric mix.

 

This is one thing I love about electric vehicles, as the grid gets cleaner so do our cars!

 

GrumpyCabbie- Does 49 UK MPG equal 49 US MPG, or is there a conversion factor?

 

UK is imperial gallons, which are somewhat bigger than US gallons. 1 UK gal = 1.2 US gal.

 

US gallon = 3.78541178 liters

you cannot go by exchange rate, it is not necessarily the reflection of actual cost, more of how much country in debt. If it were there wouldn't be people flying from London to NYC to shop in Manhattan, one of the most expensive shopping places in US.

Gas here is 4.19$ per gallon but even if we pay less then 50% of what you pay for gas we actually spend more income percentage-wise. Imagine the cost of driving 3,000mi a month in 14MPG SUV.

 

3000mi/month? what percentage of the population does that consistently?

 

Cool. I don't be-grudge you one minute for using a Prius as a cab.
That's sounds like Yankee ingenuity at work. If we paid $8 bucks a gallon for gasoline, we'd all be Grumpy too. Can you imagine if the PriusChat website was located in London instead of USA? We'd have GrumpyTripp, Grumpy Cyclpopathic, just one too many Grumpy's. And I'd be getting 56.4 MPiG.

 

much higher then you'd expect if look at large metropolitan areas like Chicago, SF, Wash DC, etc. It is only x2.4 times of national avg, which btw does not include commercial traffic, only residential.

with 2 driver household we had put 48,000/year avg for last 18 years. Less now but still Prius gets ~2,500mi/mo at the moment. YMMV

 

Just look at DaveinOlyWA 's signature ...

'if my Prius was a Leaf, it would have cost $15 to fill up instead of $40'

Assuming his electric rates aren't ridiculously cheap, the above tells me the Leaf is incredibly efficient.

 

He's in the PNW so I think he pays a bit less than avg for electricity.

 

A lot less IIRC. 6 cents/kwh ?

http://www.seattle.gov/light/accounts/rates/ac5_erps10.htm

 

GrumpyCabby respectfully requested no debate on his thread, so I am speechless. But can I say? I paid $13.88 to fill up my Prius in Dec_2008. At this May_2011 snapshot in time, gasoline is highest ever and electricity is pretty much cheapest ever. We should not equate point-in-time fill-up $$$ with economic/environmental impact. OK Cycledrum - you can equate that if you want to, but please start another thread. I almost did so myself.

 

Buying green power from PSE ( the local utility) comes at ~.10 kwh. Seattle City Light is a city owned utility that has much of it's own old school hydro generating capacity. PSEis an investor owne utility that serves much of Western WA.

The other often overlooked aspect of EVs is the ability to absorb excess power from the grid at times of surplus,but to also sell back to the grid at times of peak demand, doing two things. The first is that it allows the idle, spinning capacity of the grid to be reduced. That unused idle energy is the biggest waste/ emission factor, since it in essence is not used, so all is waste. The second thing that EVs can do by being plugged in ~23/7 is that they create a huge dual purpose battery bank to absorb excess solar and wind energy.

Icarus

 

it is less then 1/2 what we pay in summer

 

That $.06/kwh is for only the first 10 kwh/day. The rate ramps up quite quickly with bigger use. Just FYI, 10 kwh/day would equate to running your drier for ~ 5 hours. The average US household uses ~30 kwh/day.

Icarus

 

Icarus, the first 10 kwh/day is 4.3 cents/kwh. If Dave conserves energy and has solar thermal he can stay in the uber-cheap tier, even with an EV.