The Potential Pitfalls of Electric Cars

Right. Or the energy involved in shale extraction. Lee should be sensitive to that issue since it is part and parcel of the gasoline in the Rocky Mountain region.

 

When the energy cost of petroleum is calculated, all of that is included.

 

You all should read this:

Energy returned on energy invested - Wikipedia

Some highlights:

"In physics, energy economics, and ecological energetics, energy returned on energy invested (EROEI or ERoEI); or energy return on investment (EROI), is the ratio of the amount of usable energy (the exergy) delivered from a particular energy resource to the amount of exergy used to obtain that energy resource."

Coal: 80
Oil production: 20
Wind: 18
Oil imports 2007: 12
Natural gas 2005: 10
Photovoltaic: 6.8
Oil shale: 1.1-15.8 depending on type and location
Ethanol corn: 1.3

 

when you speak of cost, are you talking about environmental cost, or the lost lives in the middle east?

 

I used the words "energy cost" for a reason.

 

understood, cost is a relative term.

 

GHG of PV compared to coal, by NREL back when panel efficiency was ~ 14%

Spoiler:
40 grams per kWh for PV, 1000 grams for coal.
Now that PV is closer to 20% efficient, it is ~ 37x cleaner than coal.

 

Yeah, well, duh! Coal is close to 100% carbon.

So if the above is true, a kWh of battery production production produces about the same CO2 as around 20 gallons of gasoline. That means the 78kWh battery produces around the same CO2 as 1,560 gallons of gasoline which, in a Prime, would move the car about 85,000 miles. That's probably more miles than the engine in a Prime will produce over its lifetime.

 

Well Duh, that is the point; similar to but somewhat worse than your favored oil

It is not, where Tesla is concerned ... or any battery manufacturer who cares to operate like Tesla

 

This article from China published in 2017 outlines local battery production energy costs

56 kWh of NMC battery is associated with ~ 5800 Kg CO2e emissions of which ~ 40% are electricity. Produced with clean electricity, the Tesla Model 3 SR produced in China would then have 5800*0.6 = 3800 Kg associated battery manufacturer emissions.

Using 11 Kg/gallon CO2e emissions from combusting gasoline in a car, a 50 mpg Prius could travel 50*3800/11 ~ 18,000 miles before the GHG cost of the battery manufacture is covered.

That is for the first iteration of the battery. Subsequent recycled batteries will do much better.

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The article in Table 6 also summarizes GREET studies in 2015 that report ~ 35 Kg CO2e per kWh battery. I think GREET presumes national grid average CO2 emissions, resulting in 37*56 = 2072 Kg CO2e emissions. Tesla battery production will be much cleaner, and Tesla battery recycling even more.

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This entire thread is FUD and trolling.

 

Nice article:

One interesting find in the paper:

The data on American batteries come from the GREET-2015 Model of the Argonne National Laboratory. Generally speaking, GHG emissions during the manufacturing process of Chinese LFP, NMC, and LMO batteries are respectively 3, 2.8 and 2.9 times greater than those of their American counterparts. Anode active materials and wrought aluminum are the main causes of the differences. Due to complexity of the process and uncertainty of the data, the GHG emissions in production of anode materials show an apparent difference with those in the U.S. The second biggest contribution is from wrought aluminum, particularly in China. As China’ s average electrical structure leads to higher GHG emission factors and aluminum production consumes a considerable amount of electricity, it generates a remarkable amount of GHG emissions​

Bob Wilson

 

I would simply state, that instead of saying "The Potential Pitfalls of Electric Cars", I would call them "Challenges". While it's true that a electric car future is not without challenges and realities that aren't as green as some people think, and if we move more and more towards that future we will have to figure out how to deal with those realities, I see those pitfalls much more as challenges.

Some may accuse me of semantic nitpicking here, but for me, I would much rather face the potential challenges of an Electric Car future, than continue with the "working" reality of dependence on gasoline and fossil fuel based automobiles.
One path is ultimately doomed...finite and toxic, the other while it does come with challenges, offers potential improvement.

When you present challenges as pitfalls, many people don't get past the headline.

 

I very much agree. The pitfalls are in the gas burning engines as I see it. It is simply an inefficient way of converting a form of energy into motion. As far as I know there is no development to create a 80% efficient ICE. ICE is at the end of its evolutionary cycle. Battery tech and electric vehicle infrastructure is in its infancy. I full y agree it's not without challenges, but certainly not pitfalls. We have solved a problem of pumping oily smelly substance from under the ocean floor, etc, refining it, shipping it all over the world, distributing it all locally and burning it (inefficiency) in millions of vehicles in just under 50 years. Just think of what 50 years from Tesla Model 3 may look like. I don't think it will look like an ICE dominated world any more. So the pitfalls are with the ICE, not electric. It has served us well, but it's outdated and will go the way of the horse and buggy. Even if we do not run out of oil, ICE is going to be dead soon simply because electric is better in so many ways. Energy density of electric storage will improve, no doubt because that tech is only ramping up and has lots of room to grow.

 

I see this differently.

EVs have the potential to run off sunshine and wind.
Mine run off sunshine collected from some panels in my yard.

End of oil story.

 

It sounds to me like you and VFerdman are basically on the same page. How is it you see it differently?

 

If my *EVs were running off electricity made from oil/coal, I would not have bought them.

The difference is stark in the winter in my area:
EV: about 400 Wh/mile with cabin heating, and about 1 Kg CO2 emissions per kWh at the coal plant
So 50 miles emits about 20 Kg CO2
Out of politeness I'll not mention Nox and Sox from the coal plant

50 miles in a Prius is about 11 Kg CO2
Nox and Sox are a rounding error compared to the coal plant.

Why doesn't the famed EV motor efficiency keep the EV in the running ?
Simple. The coal plant has worse combustion efficiency than the Prius ICE, and it's waste heat ... goes to waste. The lion's share of the energy inefficiency happens before the car. It is a mistake to compare the Prius ICE to the EV motor. The Prius ICE CHP should be compared to the fossil fuel turbine.

Unless ... the electricity is not made from oil/coal. Electricity from a highly efficient NG power plant is at least a discussion worth having as an alternative to oil sourced Prius since the year round numbers are competitive (better in the summer, worse in the winter.)

 

It does get complicated.

I personally am not a fan of purchasing green electricity because it feels like a game of musical chairs to me. Meaning if I use the clean kWh, someone else is not. If I could assure myself that my green payments translated into MORE clean kWh production, I would view them as equivalent to putting up panels in my yard.

This can be very locale dependent. E.g in my Colorado wind is often curtailed in order to keep the coal plants running in a price optimized manner. Wind purchases here may well mean less curtailment ... or not. The details are hard to come by, but my close reading of contracts in my area are typically not encouraging.

 

The point of EVs is to use energy that has several ways of being generated. That is the big advantage - flexibility. In today's world most EVs are probably not much greener than gassers, but that does not mean they are are not better in terms of a future path. If we develop battery tech, charging tech and infrastructure for EVs, we will have a foundation on which to build a greener future. That is the big point of EVs. If we make our decision TODAY on weather or not our car can run on wind ans sunshine we will not get very far because it's too early in the evolution process for EVs to win. Solar panels are pretty dirty business to produce and also take a LOT of fresh water, which is also a very important resource that we will soon be very concerned with. Similar statement can be said about batteries. As was stated, things are a bit more complicated than would appear on the surface. However EVs still need to prevail over ICE cars simply because they provide flexibility in energy production and use. We don't know what the future holds, so it's good to have a more flexible approach than just burning oil.

This is my take on why it's important to develop EVs.

 

Would you care to provide data and references ?