life-cycle analysis bev versus conventional versus hybrid

since this question came up on another thread, I mentioned it to a friend, and she sent me this link. I am always distrustful of life cycle analysis. They are highly dependent on assumptions and often are done to show something is good or bad. This seems fairly well done by the folks at UCLA, but was funded by CARB so look out for pro BEV bias

http://www.environment.ucla.edu/media_IOE/files/BatteryElectricVehicleLCA2012-rh-ptd.pdf

conclusions -

They used unsubsidized prices (no tax credits) in that analysis.
They also found the bev to be least polluting and used the least energy over its lifetime. Both of which seem like good honest answers.


The assumptions, they used a leaf, versa, and prius for their modeling, though tried to equalize the weights of the gliders a little for energy and pollution costs. Each car had a useful life of 180,000 miles, and they replaced half the cells in the bev battery. The california grid was used, but they also showed figures for california in 2020, the US average, and china.

These life-cycle analysis are highly dependent on battery size and useful life (number of miles). I may have shortened the useful life of the leaf type vehicle, burdened it with a 100 mile pack, and not charged it with replacing the battery. The analysis also shows various battery replacement scenarios.

The effects of burning tar sands oil instead of conventional are also included. More of this will be burned as time goes by.

 

Agree with that, but some tout these things with much worse assumptions, to say BEVs won't make it. They did talk about all the assumptions. At least we have reasonable costs environmental costs here for batteries. They did give costs for full replacement, and you can change mileage assumptions. We see on the prius, some replace cells, some the battery, most nothing. The old greet had the full battery being replaced, but now 2012_2 model fixes that, and now the prius is not charged with replacement.