Ieee Article: Electric Cars Unclean at any Speed?

Now works for an oil company, perhaps...

 

Thanks,

The key assertion is:

Source: Unclean at Any Speed - IEEE Spectrum

It is not so complicated if one has to pay for the fuel or charge . . . the "green back dollar" that has to pay to operate them. This report caters to the belief electric car owner are just environmentalists.

His final conclusion is we need better cities and urban planning:

His cure ignores the reality of existing homes, businesses, and work places.

Bob Wilson

 

I had to read this twice...

"For instance, if policymakers wish to reduce urban smog, they might note that vehicle pollution follows the Pareto principle, or 80-20 rule. Some 80 percent of tailpipe pollutants flow from just 20 percent of vehicles on the road—those with incomplete combustion. Using engineering and remote monitoring stations, communities could identify those cars and force them into the shop. That would be far less expensive and more effective than subsidizing a fleet of electric cars"
My view:

Pareto principle = nice assumption, although Gauss may not be applicable to pollutant emition assessments...

20% of all cars - 20% of 125 million = 25 million cars

How Many Cars are on the Road? - Ask.com Answers


If any of those cars cost an average of 100 dollars to fix, the total cost would be...

2.5 billion dollars just to those 20% get to the average tailpipe pollution?


How about simply swap those vehicles by plug-ins?
Also because those vehicles are becoming really old and safety obsolescent...

 

Every single study I've found that tries to pretend that electric cars are "just a longer tailpipe" never really hold water. Even if they portray themselves as "scientific" they leave out key factors in the equation.

For example, when burning oil the massive amounts of energy required to pump (or mine the resource if its in oil sands), refine, transport, and even the electric energy it takes to pump it from the tank at the station into your car are not taken into account.

Then you have the anti-electric types that way overhype how much carbon it takes to manufacture batteries (its far less intensive than oil production by far, and its a single manufacturing event instead of a constant process).

Better yet, you can recycle the heavy metals they so commonly love to bash as anti-green. Since the battery itself is recyclable, the entire anti-battery argument is silly as it gets. You cannot recycle used and spent gasoline and the carbon that is burned.

Lets just say I've heard enough flat earth society type arguments against electric, none of them hold any water. There is always going to be environmental impact with any mass produced product, and electric generation is far cleaner than oil. Even when taking the dirtiest electric supply around - coal - into account, you can add scrubbers into the generation unit and clean it up at the point of production. And I'm not a big coal supporter, but just saying even coal is more efficient than oil. It is also abundant domestically as opposed to having to ship it from Africa or the Middle East all the way across oceans to the USA.

This fact on coal completely side steps how much cleaner it is with other generation forms. Hydroelectric is clean, wind energy is clean, solar is clean. Nuclear isn't clean, but it doesn't emit carbon. And then there are other methods like natural gas, which as dirty as it can be is still better than oil!

 

I would have found the IEEE article interesting if it said anything new. Ah well, at least it is well written.

And obviously spot on.

 

If you do not like $100 a an old car, I'll guess you will *really* not like $30 - 40,000 a new *EV.

Just set the exhaust allowances to a more restrictive level. The rest will take care of itself.

 

Carpool baby, carpool ..... a car holds 2 to 5 to 8 people .... fill it up!

 

The paper once again misses the main point, IMO.
The EVs have zero vehicle emmissions, but they do have some, to as much as a gasoline cars upstream emissions.
However, this indicates we need to clean up the grid. By doing so, you instantly clean up the emmissions attributed in similar pieces to all EVs on the road.
EVs have been and hopefully will continue to get cleaner every year. Gas cars get dirtier every year.

 

The counter-point to your argument is that until clean energy is in excess on the grid, you are just playing a game of musical chairs.

Money spent subsidizing EVs today is money not spent on cleaning up the grid.

 

While I agree with most of what you say, I'll point out that they do generally included the mine/well to wheel energy (i.e. refine transport are included). These Wells-to-Wheels studies, however, don't include is the "discovery and drilling", which for oil is an increasing amount of the total energy. The energy return on energy invested for gas used to be over 1000:1.. its now under 10:1
(coal is 80:1). So ignoring the discovery/drilling (and environmental cleanup after spills) is where they are missing the mark.

In my view it also misses the mark that if one cares about CO2, they can add solar or purchase renewable in addition to investing in an EV. I could do bio-disel for an old TDI, but for a gasser ore more modern disel, there is no easy way to approach carbon neutral.

 

GM is failing miserable at competing against Toyota in the hybrid market. They are at least 10 years behind.

It doesn't surprise me that their next move will be to blast hybrids and electric vehicles.

I'm not trying to save the environment. It's just capitalism with me. I like saving almost $2K a year on fuel cost over what it would cost with a 25 mpg car.

 

GM is a leader in EVs, with the Chevy Volt outselling all other Plug in vehicles in the US and number 2 worldwide (behind leaf which sells well in Japan which is a rather closed market).

The article is not from GM or anyone that works for GM.. its from a largely unknown person who worked for GM back in the 90's. This guys is not really a scientist just a minor policy person pimping his book by selectively using data and hyping the headline.

Check out his his google scholar page.. and its clear most of his "publications" have no citations. There is nothing original in the article, just a rehash of partial arguments others have already made -- ignoring major parts of the underlying issues.

I'm enjoying greater savings in fuel.. I'm under .03 per mile on fuel costs..

 

Well, not quite. Some of the money spent subsidizing EV is money not spent cleaning the grid. The rest is money spent cleaning the air and not importing petroleum. Well, and much of it isn't actually spent because it's in the form of tax credits which is just moving it around.

You're right that we could improve tailpipe toxin limits, but that's not happening, so the next best thing is to encourage alternative technology that shifts the problem to somewhere it becomes a smaller problem more easily solved.

 

Poor folks in countries with less wealth than the U.S. have world class rail/subway systems they can rely on. Seems like it'd be a good time for the U.S. to start playing catch up ... rather than continuing to blame "the other party" for our ongoing failures.

Really? I though Tesla outsells Volts ... and that Volt sales despite big rebats & incentives are slowing down.
Alternative fuels and technologies, and green cars -- Automotive News

Chevrolet Volt sales lag Nissan Leaf, maybe even Tesla

Apart from that - I wonder how 'efficient' the author's home is. Does his home's efficiency pencil out? ... no? Should he live in a tent? ... and what kind of car does he drive. Or does he ride a bicycle? Maybe he should walk in stead of bike, if the bicycle's life cycle (manufacture to scrap cost) doesn't pencil out. He walks? What's the life cycle of his shoes ... maybe he oughta go bare foot. Where does the obvious dumbness end.

And while the author is bagging on electricity - does he factor in the "electricity value" of manufacturing toxic, carcinogenic explosive fuel? Roughly speaking, the energy to research potential drill sites ... energy to drill lots of dry holes to get a good one ... energy to manufacture drilling machinery ... energy to drill ... energy to pump ... energy to deliver ... energy to refine (and lets not EVEN start on the energy to run the military to be in hostile land, and defend against blow-back for being over there) ... energy to truck the product around the nation. Out of the 30+ kWh's of equivalent electrical energy in gas - approximately 7kWh's of electrical energy gets used - just to get it into your tank. The energy amount to deliver gas is approximate, because of all the variables which are their selves always in a state of flux. BUT ... as it gets harder & harder to get the product to your tank, that number gets larger & larger ... and more & more costly.
.

 

YES! I go to buy a car:

• save over $1,000/year in fuel cost
• continue to pay $1,000/year in fuel cost

What is so hard about this? My Yankee greenback dollars saved and in my pocket is a win-win times however longer these hybrid cars keep running.

Bob Wilson

 

Total unit sales to date I think the Volt is still the leader. I think the Volt sold 2600+ this past month and Tesla is pretty much at a fixed production rate of 400/wk until they bring on some new models.

 

That was "news" because it was the first month they took the lead in YTD
and GM has taken it back see the insideev articles



And total since launch is even more dramatic lead for the volt (never swapped)

 

Carbon fuel will ALWAYS have emissions. EV's have the potential to run carbon free, ALL the time, via wind/PV. You can't EVER do that with carbon based fuel. That OUGHT to be one of the main points ... and the author conveniently blows that off.
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