Featured Forbes pits EV's against .... Everything?

I hadn't noticed the age of it- but then I don't think anyone here has a team of statisticians cranking out fresh figures for discussions like this. So it's better than nothing.

What grabbed me was how low all the numbers were- is that really all it takes to make any car "cleaner" than a battery-electric car? Admittedly, they've got a pretty narrow definition of clean. But there are simple hybrids and even a few ICE-only cars capable of beating some of the scores on that chart. I think that's a reflection of some regions using fairly dirty sources for generation- Hawaii burns a heck of a lot of oil to make their electricity, for example.

I should dig into the details on that. The PA market was deregulated and we all got a thousand robocalls begging a switch this way or that. I ignored them all at least so far. I have participated in similar schemes in the past, but got a bit disheartened. What happens when they sign up 500MW of customers for clean green power, but then can only find 250MW on the market? I didn't like the answers I got last time I looked into it. Different state, different regulators.... I'll give that one another shot.

 

Make sure you have moved the slider. The map on the page shows 2016 as well as the previous time the collected the data.
If you still aren’t impressed, scroll down the page to the map with orange coloring. It compares three of the most efficient EVs (including the Prime and Model 3). Every single entry is better than 50mpg except for a small island in Hawaii.

Of course, you then have all the owners running on partial, or full solar, or paying for renewable energy that make their plugins even cleaner.

 

I'm getting over 60 MPG, so still comparable in Ohio anyway.

 

The map has been updated at least once. It is part of this report, Life Cycle Electric Vehicle Emissions (2015) | Union of Concerned Scientists.
The data it uses, the EPA's eGRID, is a year or two out of sate also. Based on trends of reducing coal and increasing natural gas and renewables, EVs are actually better.

The fastest growing car segment is the small SUV. Rav4 sized ones get around 30mpg highway. My 2016 Camry gets 35mpg highway. The MPG values on the map are for combined. Most of the hybrids that best the coal states' grid are smaller cars. The ICE only ones are even smaller(the Mirage) or diesel.

My township is exempt from the deregulation since it is the power company; even had its own power plant in the past.

 

As far as I can tell at least, few if any EV drivers have expressed concerns about using public chargers. It’s ultimately just electricity either way, and the plugs are very well-protected against over-voltage and -current.

Meanwhile, Teslas at least navigate you between charger (especially SuperCharger) sites, with sufficient margin, and keeping track of availability and usability of them. I gather there are third-party apps that do that too.

However, people have been known to get confused about charger plug types available, so Chargeway (Chargeway – Electric Fuel Has Arrived) has devised a color-coding scheme to help sort it out. I get the impression that most quick chargers in the US have both CCS and CHAdeMO plug types.

 

If anyone hasn’t viewed the actual web page, I highly recommend it. Being able to see the changes between 2009 and 2016 is quite interesting.

While it is basically a tie, keep in mind that this comparison is based on the epa rating for the car, not your personal results.
If you drive one car more efficiently than the epa rating, I believe you would beat the epa rating in another.
It also doesn’t take into account people using a vehicle such as the Prime, that graph is further down the page, nor people using renewable energy.
Compared to a Prime, an ICE vehicle would have to get 68mpg to be as clean in Ohio. And if/when Ohio improves their grid, the Prime automatically gets cleaner.

 

Two of my closest friends have plug-in hybrids. They are the only people I know whose cars plug in at all. Both of them have told me that they got some kind of intro "first one free" deal from some public charger or other when they got the car, and both of them tried it once each to say they'd done it, then said they hoped they never needed to again. It's anectodal, just a couple of guys relating stories about their new cars. But when I think about it, I don't know too many people with the right job/lifestyle etc to accommodate driving charger to charger on a trip.

Of course when you get right down to it, both of them bought their plugins because it got them solo access to carpool lanes. Nothing else about the car mattered much, just the payment and the sticker. I swear, nothing has sold more hybrids and plugins than that California sticker.

Thanks, that is helpful. I gather this chart also doesn't address the manufacturing of the cars either, where I'd expect to see a substantial difference between a gas car and an EV, largely owing to the traction battery in the EV.

EDIT: thanks to your link I'm able to read the context supporting the graphic bwilson4web posted, it says it does account for at least some of the manufacturing pollution. I'd love to know what their underlying assumptions are for the vehicle lifecycle. That's the kind of stuff I'd love to see in one of these interactive calculators.

 

I'm certainly all for Ohio improving its grid and that will do considerably more for reducing overall emissions in the state than someone driving a 100% EV instead of a Prius hybrid! But as I've said before if I could have afforded it and one was available, I would have purchased a Prime.

 

There is a lot of data in there.
Full references are available at the website.
If it isn’t, you can email the study’s author. They are frequently quite happy to answer any questions.

Edit: At the top of the webpage linked above were links for the executive summary, full report, and FAQ.
The FAQ looks like it answers your question.
https://www.ucsusa.org/sites/default/files/attach/2015/11/Cleaner-Cars-from-Cradle-to-Grave-FAQ.pdf

Note, this was a 2015 report. Things have gotten better for EVs since then.

 

Me too.....I am downstream of Ohio and WV my whole life

 

Thanks! Yes at least some of what I wanted was in the FAQ. I might try getting in touch with them. I'm really curious how they arrived at a 135k "lifetime" for their small car example and 179k for a medium-size car. Why different, and why are both so low? I would feel fairly irresponsible retiring a car with so few miles.

 

So, I plug in my Prius Prime, typically, three times a day (tiny battery!), two of those three times per day at public chargers. I’ve rarely had any issues with those (level-2, 240V) chargers.

Not *never*, though; rarely-but-occasionally I experience some sort of failure to communicate between the P.Prime and the charger. I think the P.Prime’s computer “forgets” that I have it in “charge-now” mode, and sits around for 3 minutes before it realizes that it’s not supposed to wait for a scheduled charge to start.

However, none of my 15-20 EV-driving colleagues have reported any such problems, and one of them reported no issues with a long road trip on his Tesla Model 3, SuperCharging several times on the way. The only complication he reported was at the slightly-remote destination — only having slow charging available.

 

This map was about energy use by the car, and it shows that plug ins are better than what most cars people buy, even in coal powered states. It may account for the upstream emissions of the fuel.

Other studies have looked into lifecycle emissions. Yes, the plug in has higher for production, but using electricity for fuel more than makes up for it. BEVS come out ahead by the time they are retired.

When the manufacturers are talking about a car's lifetime in relation to the lifespan of components(belts, fluids, batteries, etc.), I use 10 years or 150k miles. Those figures for small and medium size cars are 9 to 12 years of driving for a typical American's 15k annual miles, and is probably the longest the majority of first owners keep the car. At that point, things that aren't listed in the routine maintenance guide likely will need attending to. Since those things may or may not need fixing, and what those things are vary, it would be hard to account for in a study that isn't focused on specific models.

 

That explains a lot of it. I've only been the first owner of a car once (out of ~10 cars) and I'm not exactly hooked on the experience. Near certainty that my next one will be secondhand.

 

Plus of course, the batteries, after they have a full life in an EV, get moved into stationary power systems for a second life. After that, recycling processes Li-Ion are being formulated.

 

I don't think anyone has been too worried about recycling them. They're currently listed as safe for disposal in landfills and I haven't seen much effort towards doing anything other than that.

 

Some may be working it with the view that the materials are worth it. Lithium may be cheap, but the cobalt in the electrodes comes from some places with distasteful mining practices.

 

wikipedia has this on the topic, and it looks fairly recent.

Here's another relevant link, no date on it though so it may be old.

It looks like li-ion recycling is in its infancy, and isn't being pushed that hard yet. I gather that each cell type (and possibly each lot within each type) will need slightly different actions to recycle its materials.

To be fair, I'd think most of the lithium ion cells ever made are still in service- personally I've only retired a handful from household electronics and hobby projects. The word going around the hobbyist circles is that if you can't find a recycler, soak them in salt water to render them inert and landfill them.

 

Used Volt battery power station.