The Potential Pitfalls of Electric Cars

So is burning fossil fuels to produce electricity to charge an Ev.

Batteries have been around longer than ICE's.

Unfortunately, there is doubt about this. None of the rampant announcements have resulted in a commercial product that improves on lithium ion technology.

Only if you are off grid or if you bought your solar panels specifically to power your car. If you'd have bought them anyway, then you are running off grid power.

400Wh/mile is horrible.

Either way, you're assuming 100% of your electricity is coming from coal, which is not true anywhere.

Further, it's more likely that the marginal electricity your ev is using comes from natural gas. In other words, adding ev's to the grid probably doesn't result in more coal burn simply because of the nature of the way coal plants work and are utilized.

It may feel that way, but it's wrong.

RECs cause installations to happen or be expanded. In other words, buying those RECs cause more renewables to be installed on the power grid, sometimes even more than 1-for-1.

 

Solar Energy Isn’t Always as Green as You Think - IEEE Spectrum

This is from 2014, but worth a read. I am sure things are and will continue to improve. And that was part of my point. If we have EVs and infrastructure for them, then we can charge them with whatever energy is best at the time. It's kind of an obstruction layer to energy production. With ICE you MUST burn fossil fuel, which is usually non-renewable (but what if we developed plant-based fuels that are renewable? Corn, hemp, switch grass, etc.) and produces air pollution. Also, even if you charge your EV with fossil based energy you are enjoying economy of scale of a plant vs. an individual ICE. Fossil power plants are way more efficient than car engines (but there are transmission losses to consider). The point is to have flexibility in how transportation is powered. EV provides this flexibility like no other technology so far.

 

You have finally said something that is correct. Congrats !

And indeed, I argued for years (just ask Zythryn!) that home PV and EV have no dependency: put up PV if you want to add clean kWh to the grid; but view an EV as an opportunity cost. But then I behaved just like so many EV buyers do: I finally got off my butt and installed PV when the EV in my driveway was charging off the grid. So as a matter of behavior for me and quite a few others the EV purchase lead to a PV purchase.

 

Virtually everything I say is correct for the simple reason that I don't talk about things I don't know about - from primary sources and/or my own analysis.

 

Sand mines (of which some is silica) in my state cause close to a billion dollars a year in road damage, does that count as dirty?

 

That’s why vehicles like the volt or prime exist, you can run 99% EV Orrin 100% gas

 

The one-tool analogy is ridiculous. I own thousands of tools, each well-suited to its task. Almost no one can afford to own thousands of cars, each suited to one task.

I have one car. My wife has one car. We've taken both to the mountains, we've taken both on long trips (of different types) and we've hauled both people and cargo with each. Each has to be able to do many tasks.

I find the idea of owning a car that can't do almost everything I need done to be distasteful. It means having to store an additional car, maintain and additional car, pay insurance on an additional car, license an additional car, etc. And that's why I don't own a pure ev. I would if they were comparable in performance, cost and capabilities, but they just aren't.

 

ROFL !

Thanks for the laugh. Always a good way to continue the day

 

I think we've covered this ground several times. It's obviously more challenging if EV is your only mode of transportation. Owning an EV is a lot easier if you can rely on another vehicle for those occasions where EV range, availability of charging, etc. is not yet ideal/possible.
One poster a while ago even suggested you could rent or fly if those occasions were infrequent enough.

We all have different circumstances. EVs work well in many cases but not in others. Things are improving, more charging stations, less expensive batteries, longer range vehicles but it will still take time. Hybrids like the prime do a great job bridging the gap.

 

Picking the number from memory, the CO2 emissions of a BEV on grid that is nearly all coal is equivalent to a gas car getting 35mpg. Not near a Prius, but on par with most equivalent cars. Start cutting out the coal, and they get much, much better.

We can make methane and a light, sulfur free crude with electricity, water, and CO2. Audi actually has a couple pilot plants doing this already. So carbon neutral fuels for ICE, and maybe FCEV, cars are technically possible. The issue is cost. Shift the fleet to mostly grid power, and these fuels can become acceptable to the public at the higher price.

Those saying I would get an EV if it only could do everything my current car can always seem to forget about PHEVs and their possibility.

 

So the UCS says, but they are calculating off EPA numbers that do not do a good job of calculating the cold winter penalty for people in four season climates.

In the winter all ICE vehicles are CHP power plants. Compared to EVs that run off centralized fossil fuel combustion, the ICE has quite an untallied advantage.

 

One guy I know pays $99 a week to drive a rental car every weekend and he owns a gas car, another guy I know doesn’t own a car because it would triple his living expenses.

I think there are folks that an EV is fine as a single car, even one with very little range because living circumstances drive different decisions than my own. The one guy could live with just an ebike the other travels so many miles on the weekend an EV is fine for his 5 mile drive because he always rents for long trips anyway.

Half the guys I work with have never left the county and many of those that have, have flown.

So I think “it depends “ a lot of folks could own an EV and have it save money but aren’t realistic about their real needs, owning a truck (for example) that drives under 5000 miles a year may be cheaper to replace with a once a year rental
But a lot of folks (myself included) aren’t there, freedom is worth the cost for some, others it wouldn’t matter

 

EPA numbers do have an adjustment for cold weather. Yes, some will have even worse efficiency, and others will have better. Averaged over a full year, I tend to beat epa numbers by a small amount, and I live in MN.
The epa numbers are not designed to be a hard number that every single person will get. But they do give a good everage rating of what can be expected as an average. Still not exact, but I have yet to see better.

And yes, a portion of the waste heat ICE cars give off is useful at some times during the year. Of course, that heat, and more, is being produced year round. Some of it all year, and all of it during the warm months just goes to waste.

 

I know, but it is no where near realistic for a 4 season climate.

An ICE is a CHP some of the time -- up to six months per year in some climates.
An EV in the US powered by centralized power production from fossil fuel combustion is a CHP ~ 0% of the time.

Remember please ... I am answering your question why I am an EV advocate when they are powered by PV and/or wind but not when they are powered by centralized oil/coal combustion.

 

With that logic, the EPA numbers don't do a good job of showing the mild weather bonus of spring and fall.

Yes, a BEV with be hurt more by winter cold in efficiency because they don't generate enough waste heat, but the ICE cars are also taking a penalty in those conditions.

Here is the map from the 2015 report, which is likely using even older grid data.


Here are the MPGs of ICE cars equivalent to available BEVs. Fuel Economy
And hybrids(had to add 'family sedans' to get the Prius) Fuel Economy

The area of the country where an EV only matches a 35mpg car is a small percentage. The rest of the country bests that, and matches or exceeds currently available hybrids.

 

That is not the way the EPA testing works.

3 cycles are at moderate temperatures;
1 cycle has a cooling (A/C) component
1 cycle is cold soaked

The final fuel consumption is a weighted average that under represents heating because the cabin heating is presumed to come from waste heat ... which is correct, except for EVs.

 

I just leave the heat off in the volt when it’s cold and can still beat EPA in all but the most frigid temps.

An EV offers the choice to be efficient in the cold or not,
Ice you get the heat either way.

 

That makes one of you. It is the other 99.999% of the population that skews the numbers.

 

I wonder if many people are looking at the battery recharging problem all wrong? Like many I used to think that electric cars could not become mainstream until batteries could be fully charged in 10 or 15 minutes. This after all was what we accept with gasoline powered cars and most of us probably see the time spent for refueling as a necessary evil. Why would we want to waste any more time doing such a mundane task? We may be looking at the problem incorrectly. The recharging of an electric car is a fundamentally different operation than the refueling of a gasoline car. First, as many people have noticed, for most daily use the electric car can be easily recharged at home. No wasted time here except the few seconds it actually takes to plug it in. Subject to the needs of mostly discharging the battery to maintain it’s health, one can always have a fully charged battery each morning. Assuming you have a battery that can power the car for all of your normal daily driving needs, this solves the problem for everything but long trips. No need to ever go to a charging station for general commuting and daily errands. The problem then is for those longer trips. Set aside for now the issue with always being able to find a convenient charger and look at what actually happens on a long trip when you want to refuel.

With a gasoline car you go to the gas station and wait with the car while it is being refueled. Thanks to modern communications you can pay at the pump so you do not have to spend several minutes waiting in line to pay inside. But then if you have just driven 4 hours and 250 miles you need to go to the restroom and also want some food. All together it is a 30 to 60 minute pause in your trip. Contrast this with the same scenario with an electric car.

You pull into a charging station near a restaurant. You plug in your car. You then enter the restaurant, order and consume your food. Take a bathroom break. Return to your car, unplug it, and drive off. Again this is a 30-60 minute stop.

The primary differentiator here is the need to stay with the gasoline car while it is being refueled. While pumping gas is safer with modern pumps and cars, accidents can still happen and you do not want to leave your car unattended. (It may even be illegal, I don’t know). As we have already noticed you can charge your electric car overnight with no human monitoring. There is no reason you need to monitor it at a charging station either. In both scenarios you end up refueled, relieved and fed within the same window of time and are back on the road in 30 to 60 minutes able to drive another 250 miles.

To get 250 miles on a quick charge (80% charge) you need a battery that can get up to 320 miles on a full charge. That requires an 80 to 100 kWh battery depending on your car. Existing fast chargers can to the job in 45 to 60 minutes.

So technically we are already there. The only real issue it the cost of the battery and that is falling fast.

There is still the problem today of limited charging stations in many areas, but solving that problem is merely a matter of time. We did not have gas stations on every corner at the start of the 20th century either but that problem quickly solved itself too.