Featured Calculating the positive impact of electric car adoption

great news, and should only get better as the grid gets cleaner

 

Number of deaths from CO2 is highly suspect.

The report does debunk those that pretend that bevs don't reduce ghg. The interesting link goes to a tesla analysis though and independent would be better, but extra manufacturing for a tesla model 3 ghg contribution would be made up during driving the first 6000 miles of a 25 mpg sports sedan, if its numbers are correct. The tesla factories use a lot less ghg then the generic models account for.

 

Since they are only considering death due to CO2 causing climate change they are missing lots of deaths from plain old air pollution.
Even if the air pollution from power plants (or factories that make solar panels and wind turbines) was the same as that emitted from tailpipes it would still be a win because now the pollution is concentrated in cities where people live and drive the most. And in reality the emissions, on average, are lower AND further away from most people.

Mike

 

The GREET model seems to calculate GHG emissions relatively close to those calculated by Tesla in the linked "Impact Report."

From GREET, the GHG emissions from the "Manufacturing Phase" is 75 g CO2e/mile and 13 g CO2e/mile from the "Use Phase" using solar charging, after adjusting the default BEV in GREET to the Model 3 specs.

That appears to be quite close to the graphs in the Tesla report if I'm reading those correctly.

 

The problem that I have with articles like this is that they act as if all BEVs are as good as whatever model they chose as an example. Then act like the power delivered by the grid is uniform by region, thus magnifying the impact of clean or renewable power.

If you use a very efficient EV in an area that uses clean fuels for it's power generation, that's a good thing.

But if you have a car like the 2022 Audi e-tron that uses twice the energy per mile, the benefits fall off somewhat.
( watts per mile from Electric Car EPA Efficiency Mega Comparison (US): Feb 13, 2022 )

The only true way to cut carbon production by cars is to stop driving when you don't have to. I commuted more than 600,000 miles during my career. That's a lot of CO that did not need to be released into the environment.

 

But that is true with ICE cars as well...the Prius gets over 50 mpg and the average car gets about half of that. Some only get 10-15 mpg.

You really mean CO2...but CO is released as well.

Mike

 

The Union of Concerned Scientists map showing CO2 emissions for plug ins in equivalent MPG used an average fuel economy from all the EVs available at the time. They noted the mix wasn't the same as for ICEs, as the EVs had less trucks at the time.

On carbon heavy grids, that average EV still bests all cars but efficient hybrids like the Prius.

 

Sure, but is this really a problem. Most BEVs and PHEVs are sold where the grid is around the same or better than the national grid. Most BEVs sold in the US are efficient teslas which skews the average to be more efficient than the mean, but ... How bad is really bad.

According to the EPA the e-tron on the national grid has upstream and talpipe carbon dioxide emissions of 180 g/mile, the prius 205 g/mile, but this is a high powered full size luxury suv - in toyota corporate the equivalent is not the prius but the lexus RX hybrid which has emissions of 356 g/mile. I'm sure some places that e-tron will be higher than the prius but only tiny places on the US grid would it come close to the equivalent Lexus. Lexus sells a lot more RX's than toyota sells prii in the US and most of them are higher emissions than the hybrid.

Or we can install solar and get an efficient long range phev or bev and still drive with lower impact ;-) One of the rubs against me when I had the prius was someone with an old luxury car is that he only drove 3000 miles a year, while I was driving around 14,000. Yep the prius would not work for him, but ...