Dirty EVS

daheff

interesting article on Bloomberg today.

I would have thought Germany was much better on renewable energy myself. EV takes 10 years to breakeven with an ICE for emissions!

The Dirt on Clean Electric Cars

KCross

Did they share the study and have it peer reviewed. I dont see it referenced in the article?

There have been "studies" like this done before and they have been widely debunked as they put in assumptions about EV's and leave out the CO2 that it takes to explore, drill, refine and transport the oil to then give you petrol/diesel to burn in the car.

Unless they are open with their data its just more FUD sponsored by the diesel industry.


And the title is an eye opener in itself.... "... some drivers might spew.."
There is enough FUD in that title to ignore the rest of the article.

bk

Well first of all I'd be asking whose Diesel emissions figures they are using? Independently tested, on the road tailpipe emissions figures or figures from the manufacturers who have already been found to be lying and massively cheating on emissions tests?

Then there is bull**** like this:

Just to build each car battery—weighing upwards of 500 kilograms (1,100 pounds) in size for sport-utility vehicles—would emit up to 74 percent more C02 than producing an efficient conventional car if it’s made in a factory powered by fossil fuels in a place like Germany, according to Berylls’ findings.

Why are they comparing an EV SUV to an "efficient conventional car"? Would the comparison not between a Diesel SUV and a EV SUV. I see Diesel SUV's all around me every day and there is nothing efficient about them.

And even in their worst case scenario of EV's needing 10 years to break even, well on average cars remain on the road for 15 years, so either way an EV will be cleaner over it's life time.

And all of this ignores that fact that the biggest problem with Diesel is that it produces high levels of PM and NOX, cancer causing emissions that cause lung cancer and that kill tens of thousands of people in European cities every year. EV's completely eliminate this problem.

Not having big dirty diesels pump their toxic fumes in my childs face every morning as I walk her to school is a good enough reason for me to want to see EV's take off.

As an aside, the only thing that this report highlights is how relatively poor the German power generation is and how much work they still have to do on it and perhaps it would be better to build battery plants in Norway or France, rather then Germany or Poland.

0lddog

Nothing new here, making cars causes more damage than operating them. Like that as long as I can remember. Good reason to promote repair rather than scrap.

( Bloomberg media never miss a chance to dis EVs. A lot of Yanks would like to see the EV genie put back in the bottle )

daheff

KCross wrote: »

D

There have been "studies" like this done before and they have been widely debunked as they put in assumptions about EV's and leave out the CO2 that it takes to explore, drill, refine and transport the oil to then give you petrol/diesel to burn in the car.

Thats a fair point too. The full life cycle from extraction to tailpipe should be taken into account.


To be fair to the article, I'm not sure if its making the point that electricity production is a dirty business or that people assume because they use an EV that its 'clean'.


Either way, its a reasonably fair point to make. But might be better said to compare with transparent figures.

As long as I remember there have been these articles and every time one of the main points have been that the battery is dirty blah blah and after it's short life it will be thrown in the bin.

In reality the battery will be fully recycled and turned to more advanced new generation batteries. There scrap value of an end of life EV battery is thousands of Euro unlike the scrap value of an EOL fuel tank. Also if your 5 l/100 km vehicle is driven for 200 k some 10000 liters of fuel has gone through the car costing about 15k and weighing at over 8 tons. And none of that can be recovered and recycled.

stesaurus

I thought this was going to be about washing your EV to help efficiency. I'm disappointed now

TonyEVW

At the end of the day for every 10l itres of diesel put in the tank 6.5 may as well have been poured on the ground and 7 for a petrol vehicle due to the effective energy conversion of the internal combustion engine.

If the fuel instead is used in a CCGT generator tied into the grid then the effective energy conversion rises to 68%. this results in 3.2l being wasted as useless heat and noise. Therefor without even accounting for renewable in the energy mix the EV makes more effective use of the energy in oil.

TonyEVW

TonyEVW wrote: »

At the end of the day for every 10l itres of diesel put in the tank 6.5 may as well have been poured on the ground and 7 for a petrol vehicle due to the effective energy conversion of the internal combustion engine.

If the fuel instead is used in a CCGT generator tied into the grid then the effective energy conversion rises to 68%. this results in 3.2l being wasted as useless heat and noise. Therefor without even accounting for renewable in the energy mix the EV makes more effective use of the energy in oil.

It's even worse than that. I have seen a typical car as a whole efficiency figure of 15 percent mentioned. In ideal situation an ICE (just the engine) is 30 percent efficent but that's at the full load. During a cold start ICE efficiency can be way below 10 percent.

KCross

KCross wrote: »

Did they share the study and have it peer reviewed. I dont see it referenced in the article?

There have been "studies" like this done before and they have been widely debunked as they put in assumptions about EV's and leave out the CO2 that it takes to explore, drill, refine and transport the oil to then give you petrol/diesel to burn in the car.

Unless they are open with their data its just more FUD sponsored by the diesel industry.


And the title is an eye opener in itself.... "... some drivers might spew.."
There is enough FUD in that title to ignore the rest of the article.

They presumably also ignore the costs to create and deliver energy to an ev.

ELM327

samih wrote: »

It's even worse than that. I have seen a typical car as a whole efficiency figure of 15 percent mentioned. In ideal situation an ICE (just the engine) is 30 percent efficent but that's at the full load. During a cold start ICE efficiency can be way below 10 percent.

And that doesnt include fuel lost when mining, extracting, refining, transporting, delivering, storing, and retailing the fuel. Probably well below 10%

KCross

Deleted User wrote: »

They presumably also ignore the costs to create and deliver energy to an ev.

Have you read the article? They dont.

KCross

KCross wrote: »

Have you read the article? They dont.

Yes I read it. They don't account for anything prior to the power station, but here is wanted deisel accounting from the well. I get that I'm posting in a church, but all I want to see is the balance.

KCross

Deleted User wrote: »

Yes I read it. They don't account for anything prior to the power station, but here is wanted deisel accounting from the well. I get that I'm posting in a church, but all I want to see is the balance.

What figures specifically?
The article talks about the CO2 from a coal fired power station.

Are you talking about the energy required to get the fuel to the power station?

Whatever that figure is, its still not going to flip the argument in favour of running a diesel... or do you think it does?

Bear in mind that our grid is 30% renewable to begin with and EV's dont use as much energy as an ICE car. So, I'm not quite getting your point.

Can you elaborate on where you are at and what your opinion is? Have you figures to share?

KCross

KCross wrote: »

What figures specifically?
The article talks about the CO2 from a coal fired power station.

Are you talking about the energy required to get the fuel to the power station?

Whatever that figure is, its still not going to flip the argument in favour of running a diesel... or do you think it does?

Bear in mind that our grid is 30% renewable to begin with and EV's dont use as much energy as an ICE car. So, I'm not quite getting your point.

Can you elaborate on where you are at and what your opinion is? Have you figures to share?

We want to talk about oil from the point of extracing. Can we not consider the cost to harvest energy for wind and sun? I read some where it takes solar cells so long to collect enough energy to justify, that they reach end of life at the same time.

KCross

Deleted User wrote: »

We want to talk about oil from the point of extracing. Can we not consider the cost to harvest energy for wind and sun? I read some where it takes solar cells so long to collect enough energy to justify, that they reach end of life at the same time.

I cant help you with that one. I havent read anything that suggests that SolarPV doesnt pay for itself in the long term. They come with 25yr warraties so I doubt what you are saying but unless you provide some references I cant argue it one way or the other.

The 30% renewable on our grid is nearly all wind anyway, not SolarPV.

cros13

This is pretty much settled. The most comprehensive study out there is the UCS study from 2015 ( https://www.ucsusa.org/clean-vehicles/electric-vehicles/life-cycle-ev-emissions ) which included full lifecycle for both vehicle and fuel down to the emissions of the mining vehicles digging the ore.
The situation has only tilted further in favor of EV since then with more efficient EVs, less wasteful supply chains and a greater proportion of renewables in grid.

There's now no real world scenario where a combustion vehicle beats an EV in lifecycle emissions on any grid, let alone Ireland's comparatively clean grid.

Also there is variability in in manufacturing emissions, so while the average EV's manufacturing emissions are 10-20% higher than comparable ICE (a difference they make up on Ireland's grid mix in the first 6-12 months of use) there are also outliers like the i3 which has 25% lower manufacturing emissions than a comparable ICE BMW (independent audit (TUV) including supply chain emissions).

Similarly many of the fairly poorly thought out articles which looked at EV battery recycling assumed that EV batteries had a short lifespan in the vehicle (where in reality we're probably looking at most EVs retaining the pack they came off the line with until the scrapyard 20-25 years down the line), did not account for a 2nd pack life in grid storage and assumed that recycling rates and material yields for a 400kg EV battery (containing over 100kg of aluminium alone) would mirror patterns currently seen with 50 gram smartphone batteries.

I'm going to restrict this debate in future to this thread only. This stuff is derailing too many threads.