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It's a matter of efficiency also and electric cars are more efficient:Quote:
If the electricity that recharges the car is made from fossil fuels as it is on my area how is it any better than a gas powered car? I've never gotten the whole concept of why these cars are supposedly good for the environment.
In theory the centralized burning of fossil fuels at a power plant is more efficient than burning them in the car. I’ll leave it to someone else to google whether thus is actually the case or not.
https://www.theguardian.com/football...-electric-cars
As things stand right now, you can search up the answer as easy as me. However, I don't think the future of power plants is necessarily fossil fuels. It will probably be a mix of renewable and other sources. Even now, I select my public service energy source for billing as wind power and pay a little more. It's more a juggling of books rather than wind power actually coming to my house. When it comes to fossil fuels, coal is going out and natural gas is in, so it probably depends on the source, too.Quote:
Originally Posted by Yppej
As to the total environmental impact of the life cycle of an EV vs conventional, that too seemed like an easy answer to find. If you are only talking greenhouse emissions. Or at least so wiki claims. It gets muddled for me when you get into the mining of rare earths and other metals and also disposal costs. Maybe it depends on the greater or lesser of evils?
That's my concern. Batteries are terrible terrible things to make, much like semiconductors.Quote:
Originally Posted by Rogar
The electric production site can have better controls on pollution discharges into the air, as opposed to depending on thousands of cars to maintain their exhaust systems.
Many electricity plants are run off dams or wind out here in the west, so obviously that’s better than individual gas combustion car engines.
However there was a cost when flooding the valleys.
In my case we have solar on the roof so we run our car on sunshine.
There’s not a lot of perfect answers out there other than stop driving. Become like the Amish.
A recent report from Germany found that a Tesla Model 3 releases more CO2 into the air than a Mercedes C220 Diesel when battery production is taken into account.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/germany...rs-11556057770 (I know the article is behind a paywall, excerpts follow):
"Driving a Tesla Model 3 in Germany, for example, is responsible for 156 to 181 grams of CO2 per kilometer, compared to just 141 grams per kilometer for a diesel-powered Mercedes C220d — that includes emissions from producing diesel fuel."
Bother, that was my lurking engineer-brain fear.Quote:
Originally Posted by Alan
I'm also curious about the overall efficiency of hauling around the 1100 pound Tesla 3 battery pack. That's more than the 800hp hemi+transmission I have in my Hellcat.
Sometimes things are not straight forward.Quote:
Originally Posted by Alan
and very important in this study, the research was conducted in Germany. The conditions and means by which the batteries are produced must therefore be taken into account. In Germany, on average, more than a third of the electricity is produced from lignite and charcoal, which are by far the largest emitters of CO2 among electricity producers. If we look at Belgium, where the electricity is mainly derived from low-CO2 nuclear or renewable energy, we see that the emission of electric cars there is on average three to four times lower than that of an internal combustion engine. So the claim of the German researchers is not completely wrong as far as Germany is concerned, but it is not at all representative for the whole world.
https://eufactcheck.eu/factcheck/mos...n-diesel-cars/
EVs release no tail pipe air pollutants at the place where they are operated. They also typically generate less noise pollution than an internal combustion engine vehicle, whether at rest or in motion.[106] The energy that electric and hybrid cars consume is usually generated by means that have environmental impacts. Nevertheless, adaptation of EVs would have a significant net environmental benefit, except in a few countries that continue to rely on older coal fired power plants for the bulk of their electricity generation throughout the life of the car.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electr...#Environmental
That's true. Germany mostly uses coal to power their electricity generation plants while the US coal use is somewhere in the 25% range. Although China seems to be the largest producer of batteries in the world and their electric plants are 65% coal powered. I'm not sure what the current likelihood of more Nuclear Power to match the Belgium comparison might be.Quote:
Originally Posted by Rogar
On the flip side, having owned two clean diesel vehicles recently I can attest that technology has greatly improved as well.
If we go Amish we have all the methane emissions from cows and horses.