Next Gen Prius Plug-in Battery Speculation

Electricity is generated mostly by non coal sources, although coal is the highest single source. Taken together, the other sources of electricity generate more KWh than coal. Coal is also decreasing as a production source of electricity.
most recent data
http://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/monthly/pdf/sec2_12.pdf
alternate representations
What is U.S. electricity generation by energy source? - FAQ - U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA)
https://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/monthly/pdf/flow/css_2014_energy.pdf

 

Aside from Plug-In America there is the Electrification Coalition consisting of utilities and battery makers who strongly favor, and lobby heavily, for electric vehicles. CO2 reduction is more or less thrown out there as a misleading sales point, because the public prefers to hear political spin, rather than special interest reasons.
I doubt Colorado was citing CO2 reduction, rather they strongly favor electrification. Although, the Clean Power Plan change their thinking.

 

We have plugin supporters that are against FCVs because hydrogen today are mostly produced from domestic fuel.

Although it is true, another source of fossil fuel (natural gas) has been increasing as a production source.

I have pointed out before, that aggregate was inflated by pretending Volt is an EV and ignoring it's 37 MPG gas miles.

EVs do make sense in some cases but promotion/incentive was not structured to be effective. I am criticizing the legislation, not the technology.

 

Incentives favoring wind, solar, and even fuel cell power generation and decentives against coal is where the law reduces emissions of plug in cars. The federal plug in tax credits wasn't a stand alone piece of legislation.

If every plug in sold would have been a Prius instead, you would have a point, but that would not have been the case. Toyota sells nearly three times as many Corollas as Prii in the US. Its best case highway rating is still more emissions than the worse case plug in on electric, and many of the vehicles the people that bought a plug in would have bought instead have even lower fuel economy numbers. I'm sure some of those available to Tesla buyers have gas guzzler penalties.

I'm against hydrogen for cars regardless of where it comes from, but I don't think others are against switching to a domestic fuel per se. They are speaking out against the green message put out by the H2FCEV lobby when the reality is the hydrogen is just going to come from another fossil fuel. It is the bait and switch that is rilying them up.

Even if we ignore that wind, solar, and other renewable sources have also been increasing, switching from coal to natural gas is still a net decrease in CO2 emissions. Then renewable methane, or even hydrogen, is far more likely than renewable coal for power, while also being a more efficient power plant.

I don't have the time to check this now, but the EPA upstream emissions for the Volt have it emitting less in coal states than the cars most likely to be purchased instead of it.

And I started a thread for discussing the legislation so that we wouldn't risk side discussions damning an entire thread.

The plain truth is that the tax credit wasn't written for your objectives, and it has been successful at the goal of lowering battery costs.

 

The Volt cars get ~70% of their miles via the plug, which would make it about 100 mpg if the electricity were free and totally clean. I'd say that is close enough at this early stage in the game to lump them in with EVs and ignore the gas tank. 2016 Volt should increase that 70% a little. I'm getting about 35% EV with the puny PiP battery.
Volt Stats! Tracking real world usage of Chevy Volts in the wild...

 

Table 3 places the efficiency (wh/mile) rating of the Volt above the sales-weighted average of all PEVs. If you were to remove the Volt from that comparison, the sales-weight average would decrease and the MPGe would increase.

 

So the Volt figures are pulling the CO2 equivalent mpg down on the map?

 

Yup. On page 10 of the report (20 of the pdf), the sales weighted average of all cars is .33kWh/mile, and the Volt is .35kWh/mile.

http://www.ucsusa.org/sites/default/files/attach/2015/11/Cleaner-Cars-from-Cradle-to-Grave-full-report.pdf

 

Yup, a lot of incentives to be as clean as Prius. Government incentives from NREL battery research lab, LG battery manufacturing factory, solar/wind energy incentive to feed the battery, to sales of plugin car incentive.

A comprehensive package is not enough to make it as clean as a Prius, using weighted average grid emission. Plugins have to be sold in certain states in order to beat Prius.

Where is the effective usage of tax payer money?

2015 Volt's emission in Colorado is rated as 330 g/mi. That's as clean as a 27 MPG gas car. 47 MPG Malibu hybrid is way cleaner.

If you look at UCS's map, you'll probably think Volt is cleaner than 34 MPG gas car in Colorado.

That's due to EV mile efficiency differences. It would be fine if Volt was an EV but it is not. It's gas miles were totally ignored.

If Volt's gas miles are added, the emission would sky rocket and MPGe will weight way down.

My point is, Volt (and PiP) should be excluded from the EV sales and EV efficiency in their report.

 

I'm assuming it is a weighted averaged based upon only the EV miles driven. PiP total miles driven shouldn't even register on any graph due to the limited number of vehicles on the road. Volt 1 was an intro car. Would like to see how the Volt 2 compares.

Remember all of the resistance/fear/doubt to the new fangled Prius Hybrid 10 yrs ago? I think the Volt is a great "bridge" vehicle getting people used to using a plug for some of their miles and realizing that they can drive electric to many more places than they thought - plus they get to see how much nicer it is to drive using an electric motor. So that is why I support letting the Volt have the tax break - it is for results down the road. I am not a Volt fan and do not ever see myself buying one, but I think having the Volt out there accelerates the mass adaptation of EVs.

 

I agree about the bridge to electrification.

However, I don't think it is productive to take away all incentives from hybrids and put all the eggs in battery electrics. Even FCV incentives got taken away so it was not about general electrification but specific battery incentive.

 

Considering that battery costs for plug ins and others have dropped faster than predicted, I'd say that it has been a quite effective use of tax payer funds. The cars are becoming affordable for the masses quicker than they would have with out the incentives.

The Malibu hybrid only had its pricing recently announced. Let's keep this apples to apples.
The 2016 Volt would emit 290g/mi in the same zip code, or the equivalent of 30.6mpg in CO2. Beyond Tailpipe Emissions: Results Which is higher than the average new vehicle rating of 27 to 29 mpg rating, and comparable to the Eco trims of the Cruze and Corolla. Then the 30% tax credit for home PV could be put to use to lower the Volt's carbon emissions, while the increasing use of non-traditional petroleums means that ICE cars, including non-plug in hybrids, emissions are going up.

If this is the map and report you had posted earlier; "The two BEVs we modeled, midsize and full-size, are not specific to any particular manufacturer but are based on the two most popular BEV models sold in the United States today: the Nissan LEAF and the Tesla Model S." - http://www.ucsusa.org/sites/default/files/attach/2015/11/Cleaner-Cars-from-Cradle-to-Grave-full-report.pdf
I do not see how reasonable people would conclude a PHV's overall carbon cleanliness from a map and study on EV emissions. I think you are the first person to connect the Volt to this UCS report.

Which further demonstrates how much cleaner using electricity for transportation is than gasoline. The Volt has an EV efficiency near that of the Model S, which is one of the templates for the BEV models in the UCS report. So it is the use of the gasoline ICE that is dragging down the Volt's mpgCO2e below that of the local grid powered electric miles.

They were never included for the mpgCO2e regions of the map. Those are based on the mid-size and full size BEV models the UCS came up with.

The sales data of real car models was only used for the US average mpgCO2e number in the lower right corner. The weighting is based on the numbers of cars sold, and what region they were sold in. So all the plug in cars that were sold at the time of this report emit less CO2, cradle to grave, than a gasoline car that gets less than 68mpg when using grid power.

The average Prius PHV is going to emit more carbon than the average BEV because of it's gasoline ICE. Whether it emits more than the other PHVs depends upon the EV ratio used for the comparison.

 

I am thinking this EIA link is wrong about the up to $19000 tax credit for EV in Wash DC...however, it shows up in multiple places on-line

 

Apparently they're right, but they didn't provide enough context, eg it doesn't apply to new EVs. It's for a conversion from a diesel or gas engine to one of the AFs listed. I'm guessing it's a kickback to taxis/limos/etc... But still nice.

http://otr.cfo.dc.gov/sites/default/files/dc/sites/otr/publication/attachments/AlternativeFuelVehicleInfrastructureandConversionCreditsFAQs.pdf

 

OK thanks it's important to me for the Virginia legislative session in progress...

Still DC gives sales tax exemption to any car over 40 MPG city so that's generous already