Leaf C02 versus Prius C02

And yet you keep coming back to your one bullet point: A Leaf using coal-fired electricity produces as much carbon overall as a Prius does at its tailpipe. Never mind that for the next year or so, all or nearly all Leafs will be sold in areas that get their electricity from hydro, wind, and natural gas.

But the government is HEAVILY subsidizing gasoline right now! If we paid the true externalities of gasoline (including the multi-trillion-dollar wars for oil and the pollution and the oil spills) gasoline would probably cost about twenty dollars a gallon and the trade-in value of my Zap Xebra would be seventy-five thousand dollars.

Instead we're bankrupting the country borrowing up to our gills from China to finance the oil wars, and letting the oil spills just soak into the sea bed and generally sticking our heads in the sand about the REAL cost of gasoline and leaving it to the next generation to worry about it.

Electric cars make it POSSIBLE for us to move to sustainable energy. Gasoline cars do not.

And for me, that's more significant than the one bullet point about the non-existent bogeyman of coal-powered Leafs

 

Well, those costs ARE being paid. But they aren't being paid by the people creating most of the costs. How do I get the gasoliine burners to pay for me having to breath their dirty air? How do I get them to pay my share of the interest on the massive debt we incur every day for importing oil?

We aren't charging people for their poor transportation decisions. In fact we have a wonderful record or *rewarding* them. The most obvious is in making sure gas prices remain as low as possible.

 

No argument from me. As I said, much higher taxes are needed for fossil fuel consumption.

Daniel, although you live in an area that is say 100% clean energy based, am I right in thinking that electricity not used locally is exported to neighbor areas that would otherwise use fossil fuels ?

 

In other words, fossil fuels are highly subsidized, which means their true impact is much greater than implied by the economics.

I presume this area exports electricity. However I do not know that. All I know is that my local utility does not have a program to pay extra for renewable power because all our power is already renewable. And I gather that we are building more renewable power all the time in order to meet growing demand. (Since as a species we seem unable to control our breeding rate. In the end, of course, mathematics is going to win out and the population:resource bubble will have to burst. I really don't want to be around when that happens.)

 

The numbers are so difficult to find, and calculate as it really depends on where when and how. If all you care about is CO2, you really are better off buying a honda fit and spending the rest of the money to clean it up, but if you are interested. If you already have a prius you are doing well on that CO2 scale. If you think beyond the mantra of CO2 and care about the environment and economy your answer may support the leaf or other bev or phev for the long term.

Some of the washington state customers end up using some coal, but does it really matter? It also exports hydro. The net is very low pollution from electricity. When hydro is low it is replaced almost entirely with natural gas, which also is much lower in polution and even CO2 than gasoline.

Last year United States electricity use dropped 3.6%.

EIA - Electricity Data, Analysis, Surveys

I'm not sure how anyone thinking in the long term, that electricity is going to get dirtier. Polution from coal is dropping fast, coal capacity is increasing slowly, but coal use in absolute and relative terms is decreasing as well as SO2, NOx and CO2.

 

I very much appreciate the civil discussion. And I know that we're typically on the same page when the broad strokes are considered. Se seem to have a few differences in the details, however.

I'm going to take you to task on this one:

First off, none of us can ever hope to include all facets of every subject into every post. Normally I'm responding to somebody else's misinformation, or distortion of the facts when somebody takes ME to task for being a myopic cheerleader of EVs. Please don't confuse a pro-EV fact as any sort of all-inclusive, "EVs are perfect and have no faults" notion. Like you, I simply like to point out some of the myths and misperceptions that non-EV drivers often have.

Second... your complaint about a "one pullet point about fossil fuel angle" should be aimed at the OP! This whole thread was started to point out the one "fact" about the Prius causing less CO2 than an EV. Should we not be taking the OP to task for that instead of folks like me who drive an EV that basically has about as low a carbon footprint as possible in motorized transportation (eight years old, and solar powered)? I can guarantee that my Prius creates more CO2 than my EV. WAY more.

So the one bullet point is right up there in the original post. Go get'im!

 

Darell,

I didn't take OP's thread as a call to limit discussion of fossil fuel use to only CO2, but to discuss the CO2 angle. I see a difference between a focused discussion of one facet of a topic, and attempts to force a conclusion by only focusing on facets that support one's viewpoint.

I find like you that forum threads really do lend themselves to increasingly myopic discussion and debate. I'm sure I am as guilty of it as anyone, and will be cognizant in the future to try and avoid this pitfall. As someone who *hates* powerpoint, I do not want to add to bullet point thinking.

Daniel is a fine example to follow.

 

I am curious about the pie-in-the-sky EV hopes that you've read. Are there any examples you can point me to? Has anybody said that EVs will be perfect for every driver? Or anything even close to that? Somehow, I've not stumbled across all these super-hyped EV hopes that you've mentioned a few times. Now if we were talking FCVs, then I can list hundreds for you!

Where's the bullet itme that says "convential" should not be subsidized as it is today??

 

Roger that! Thanks, Sage.

 

:blush: Thank you.

 

Yes, In the fine print, not the big number that is meant to capture the reader's attention.

 

Indeed. This has been an interesting thread.

 

There is no mystery at the tailpipe as Leaf has none. EPA label does say "tailpipe only". Nissan is still promoting Leaf as Zero Emission, without the word "tailpipe". That paints entirely different picture.

Consider cable cars. They have no tailpipes. If the cable is powered by a huge gas engine, cable cars would get zero emission rating from EPA as well.

The mystery is the master of puppet - what is behind the strings / power cables.

Well, the discussion is MPGe (not kWh equivalent). Equivalent assumes the same upstream emission but they are not the same.

Well-to-Wheel is the only way to compare between the gas power cars (including hybrids) and the plug-in cars (including plugin hybrids). DOE has done the WTW study and I think EPA needs to use it.

 

AG,

I used part of your earlier post linking federal data on power plant emissions to look at Nox emissions for EV charged from the grid vs the 2010 Prius. I started from national averages rounded to 1 gram Nox per 1000 gram CO2, which underestimates real emissions when coal is involved, and overestimates if a relatively pure NG source fuel is considered. I assumed plant to wheel of 1 kwh/mile for the EV, and used EPA tailpipe for the Prius.

Works out to 0.5 gram/mile NOx for the EV, and
0.003 grams/mile NOx for the Prius.
166X more NOx emissions per mile by the EV compared to the Prius.

This seems hard to believe (even by me, who has been under the assumption for a long time that powerplant emissions are pretty ugly), so I hope others check my figures. If true, while Nox might kind of sort of be 'capped', and fractional emissions are improving as you note, absolute numbers have a tale to be told. This could be the ultimate 'no child left behind' analog

 

Is it really that simple? A good size contingent of present day EV'rs also have PV arrays. Some counties now make new home constructions include PV. It messes with the WTW mix. Additionally, WTW studies fail to count for military 'interventions' (to say it nicely) to control dwindling reserves. WTW studies do nothing to stave off necessary conversion costs (to another/alternate fuel) as oil (ultimately) becomes more & more difficult to obtain. By the time you amortize all that into the WTW mix (and there's more) ... the car buyer's eyes would glazed over. I suppose you COULD factor in more of the variables (wind power, geothermal, nuke, hydro, PV) and make WTW some kind of an average ... if one feels that's more accurate.

.

 

This about sums up my opinion too, for the gamut of emissions.

 

DOE included all and came up with an average. The number would change from time to time but it would represent the reality more accurately. Right now, the largest emission for EV is being ignored. I am not sure it is the right approach to get EVs off the ground.

 

So the big 99 is the biggest thing on the sticker, with the $561 per year a close second, but the 34 kWh per 100 miles is not exactly fine print. It's big and it stands out.

MPG equivalent is meaningless, no matter what you do. There is no "equivalent." But they give the relevant information for anybody that wants to see it. And the people who might take the 99 mpge seriously are not going to buy an EV anyway.

 

Your in the right ballpark. I got 0.2 grams but could have a math error. For the leaf you can use the epa's 0.34kwh/mile. The big problem with NOx is concentration, which many older cars in LA grandfathered in and putting out higher emissions. The prius is much cleaner when it comes to NOx, which is one reason I bought it.

I would like the NOx and SO2 caps to go down faster. No matter how much electricity we use, the amounts will likely be at the capped levels. So if you want the marginal cost in NOx polution as you add BEV cars to the grid the best estimation is 0. There is a chance a little more would be generated, or alternatively less might as better scrubbers may be added or new cleaner power plants likely wind or combined cycle NG to supply the cars. There still are steam NG plants that can be converted to Combined cycle with more night demand which reduces fuel and all pollutants per kwh.

 

The original remark was meant to point out the obvious in a humorous way. (The point you make in your second sentence.) The one thing I would find worthwhile would be a EV range for summer conditions and an EV range for winter conditions (much like city/hwy mileage for gas vehicles).

The part of the discussion I find interesting is how the EV somehow gets some of the "blame" of Electric Generation Pollution. You can only clean up the pollution of the transportation vehicle 100%.