Would you ever buy an electric car?

[mitt]

Electric propulsion is like night and day in efficiency versus gasoline IC engines, so that is not an issue.  And, electric generation, even by coal, is significantly cleaner than automobile engines.

The problem I see is with electrical energy storage.  Batteries use a lot of raw material that has to mined.  They are also toxic, and don't last.

If you can fix #2, I would buy an all electric car - a 250HP electric car would be a blast to drive.

The greenest thing to do though is limit driving - either by living close to work, or by working remotely.  I am always surprised the number of coworkers that drive more than 30 miles each way everyday and think nothing of it.

mitt


 

[lethe]

Not against the idea (hell, torque is a beautiful thing  ) but with the mileage I do, the range would have to be double or triple what it currently stands at and I absolutely would run into the cost of a battery replacement once if not twice during the course of my ownership. So for the foreseeable future, ain't gonna be one in the driveway.

[Randimus Maximus]

Only if I can have this one:

But that only has electric superchargers on a gas motor.

[Drjones]

Ya, my bigger concern is just running out of oil...or supply getting low enough that it becomes extremely expensive, and we start fighting over it more than we do already. Almost everything is touched by oil in some fashion. Any environmental concerns are secondary to this IMO.

The world isn't going to run out of oil any time soon.  The "easy" reserves are getting strained sure, but there are plenty of oil reserves around to sustain demand for another 100 years.  The issue is the oil produced from them is more expensive to refine and more expensive to extract.

I'm a design engineer in the Drilling and Evaluation segment of the "oil patch."  For years normal operating parameters have been 20,000 psi external pressure and 350F, but with the deeper reservoirs we're now hitting operational parameters of 30,000 psi external pressure and 500F.  Packaging electronics to send down a hole in the ground that have to withstand those conditions, provide good quality data about the reservoir and make it back to see another day isn't cheap; nor easy    Pressure not so much of a problem that some nice nickel alloys can't handle, but throw your computer's mother board in your oven set on broil for 5 hours and see what it looks like afterwards.

Better to go after plentiful natural gas reserves that can be piped directly to the power plant.

[lethe]

But that only has electric superchargers on a gas motor.

Hence the perfect electric car. 

[angler]

Depends on where you live. All of our power in Seattle comes from Hydroelectric, so no additional pollution (provided we don't run out of water).

Just a note - killing salmon and sturgeon is pollution (and all sorts of other critters that depend on free flowing rivers).  Not an attack on you, but there are trade-offs for ALL energy production.

The world isn't going to run out of oil any time soon. 

The world isn't going to run out of oil EVER. It will get more and more costly, either from an extraction standpoint or a pollution standpoint and we will switch to something cheaper.  There won't be any grand grinding to a halt of life as we know it when the transition occurs either.  Markets don't behave that way.

I would love to see an electric car (one with realistic range and not two tons of toxic, short lived batteries).  The performance and reliability that is possible out of electric motors is phenomenal.  Didn't anyone here have an electric RC car when they were a kid?

[NorDog]

Has anyone mentioned that the OTHER alternative propulsion system (the fuel cell) produces the number one greenhouse gas there is?  Water vapor.

[il d00d]

The coal power plant thing is a bit of a red herring in the argument against electric.  Comparing CO2 output, and stacking the deck against the electric car and assuming 100% of the power comes from a coal plant, this is how an electric and the average gas-powered car stack up
(About 50% of our grid is powered by coal.  About 25% is natural gas, and the rest is everything else.  The non-coal half produces at least 40% less CO2 than coal)

Electric:
The Chevy volt uses one KWh for every four miles it travels or about 3000Kwh a year (assuming 12k miles/year)
Coal plants produce about 2.117 pounds CO2 per kWh
= 6616 lbs CO2/year (I used 12.5k/yr for an even comparison)


Gas engine:
"The calculations for Total Annual Pollution Emitted and Fuel Consumed are based on an average annual passenger car mileage of 12,500 miles ... Fuel consumption is based on fleetwide average in-use fuel economy of 21.5 miles per gallon (mpg) for passenger cars"
Link here
= 11,450 lbs CO2/year

I don't know much about the lithium supply, but this guy seems to think we are in good shape:
http://www.ecogeek.org/automobiles/2918-lithium-supply-fears-are-total-bs

[NorDog]

The coal power plant thing is a bit of a red herring in the argument against electric.  Comparing CO2 output, and stacking the deck against the electric car and assuming 100% of the power comes from a coal plant, this is how an electric and the average gas-powered car stack up
(About 50% of our grid is powered by coal.  About 25% is natural gas, and the rest is everything else.  The non-coal half produces at least 40% less CO2 than coal)

Electric:
The Chevy volt uses one KWh for every four miles it travels or about 3000Kwh a year (assuming 12k miles/year)
Coal plants produce about 2.117 pounds CO2 per kWh
= 6616 lbs CO2/year (I used 12.5k/yr for an even comparison)


Gas engine:
"The calculations for Total Annual Pollution Emitted and Fuel Consumed are based on an average annual passenger car mileage of 12,500 miles ... Fuel consumption is based on fleetwide average in-use fuel economy of 21.5 miles per gallon (mpg) for passenger cars"
Link here
= 11,450 lbs CO2/year

I don't know much about the lithium supply, but this guy seems to think we are in good shape:
http://www.ecogeek.org/automobiles/2918-lithium-supply-fears-are-total-bs

That's a cool comparison.  But I have a couple of problems still:

One, these vehicles, despite marketing to the contrary, are NOT zero emissions.  They may be very low emissions in comparison to internal combustion engines, but they're not zero emissions.

Two, the concern of CO2 emissions is misplaced.  Anthropomorphic Global Warming is a hoax.  CO2 emissions are irrelevant.  It's all smoke and mirrors (no pun intended).

[il d00d]

I would be hard-pressed to disagree with you about the marketing.  Just like omitting the carbon footprint of the production of gasoline, only comparing what comes out of the tailpipes is not fair or complete.  But that is a marketing problem and not an engineering or environmental problem...

Anthropomorphic global warming is a much longer and much politicaler discussion

This sums it up for me better than I could

[rgramjet]

The gub'ment wants you to have one.  Check out www.dsireusa.org for state by state tax incentives.  Even slow moving vehicles (ie golf carts) get a credit.  




EDIT:  Forgot the "USA" on the link.

[herm]

This sums it up for me better than I could

love it!

[DucatiTorrey]

One, these vehicles, despite marketing to the contrary, are NOT zero emissions.  They may be very low emissions in comparison to internal combustion engines, but they're not zero emissions.

wait, what do they emmit? and how? I think your confused.

[ducpainter]

wait, what do they emmit? and how? I think your confused.

The batteries need to be charged.

[muskrat]

hell no!
has anyone looked at the recycling and cost of creating the batteries?  IMO it's not better than gas so I'll stick to hydrogen if and when it comes.