When an electric car advertises zero emissions, How does it tell how the electricity is generated?
chorle asked:
If you don’t get you power form a nuclear, wind, hyro, or solar plant doesn’t it make the car useless. If coal, diesel, and natural gas might have more emissions than gasoline, it couldn’t be used with them and still have zero emissions.
http://www.cargearusa.com/blog/
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If you don’t get you power form a nuclear, wind, hyro, or solar plant doesn’t it make the car useless. If coal, diesel, and natural gas might have more emissions than gasoline, it couldn’t be used with them and still have zero emissions.
http://www.cargearusa.com/blog/
May 10th, 2009 at 2:45 pm
Any where
.
And that pollution will always be there
.
As long as there is a light bulb to light up
.
May 11th, 2009 at 3:40 am
Because it’s all a clever play on words.
It makes no difference where you get the power from including the sources you mentioned, there is still a net carbon price to be paid.
Nuclear, wind, wave…whatever…they all have to be built and use up raw materials and resources.
And even the car has to be built and that does exactly the same thing…it uses energy and materials.
It may produce zero emissions at source once operational….but that’s all, there is no such thing as zero emissions in the true sense of the term.
May 13th, 2009 at 9:54 pm
It is zero emmision in use
compared to fossil fuel infernal combustion electric is much cleaner well to wheel even if the powerstation is fossil fueled.
so the levels of smog, particulates and noise on the street are lower,
plus they are much more pleasent to drive, quiet, smooth, smell free; and you can refuel at home or work from whatever source you desire
May 15th, 2009 at 11:59 pm
You’re making a zero sum argument that it takes the same amount of electricity to propel the car as it does to move it by gas or even diesel. I have not done the math, but the EV crowd who actually owns these cars claim that they can charge their cars for a few dollars a day. That gets them 40-70 miles for that trip. With a gas car, it’s more like 2-5 gallons of gas at $2.80 a gallon, so it would cost twice as much in fuel the car, then to charge it going the same distance. The only drawback is that EV’s have to re-charge after that time. Cars you can simply fuel up and go another 200-400 miles.
The other thing that most do not factor in is even with coal fired generation, the plant has to operate close to 100% 24/7 per generator. They can sometimes pull a unit offline, but that is good as it gets. To boil the water to get the superheated steam, to maintain 60 hertz of generation, the fire storm has to remain pretty constant. It’s the regulators that maintain the equal pull of electricity across the transmission lines is all that really changes. Most of the excess electricity gets wasted during the off peak periods for this reason, and why it’s waste it’s not going into our transportation system for light commuting. Pollution would stay about the same, gas use would go down, so the net result would be less carbon emissions.
Of course the goal is to get to renewables generating most of our power one day, but all being variable power, we will still have to convert it into storage which takes away the full amount generated.
May 16th, 2009 at 5:30 am
It will cost 40% more than to use a gasoline motor.
May 17th, 2009 at 2:19 am
It’s true electric cars have associated emissions from the power generation.
However, studies have shown that even if all of their energy came from coal power plants, they would still produce lower emissions than gas cars. This is primarily because electric motors are far more efficient than internal combustion engines.
On top of that, obviously all of our energy doesn’t come from coal. In the US currently it’s about 50%, and we’re working to make the power grid greener.
See the link below for details and evidence.