Electric vehicles (EVs), their emissions, and future viability

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Mark_J

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It's interesting how some complain how much maintenance a TDI takes. I am 63 and bought the very first VW Rabbit diesel and have been driving VW diesels and several TDI's and in all those years, had one DMF come apart. And other than regular maintenance, IE: timing belt, water pump, and yes a glow plug or two etc. I have not had any major repairs. By reading some of the horror stories here, I must have been very lucky. I don't care who it is, all manufacturers produce a lemon once in a while. Have nothing against EV, but my son had a Prius and when it finally came time to replace the batteries, they wanted almost double to replace the batteries as the car was worth. So he is back to driving a Honda. So the EV's still have a ways to go but they will get there. The Tesla today is the only EV that would fit my needs, but I would have a hard time spending more on one that I just spent on a 2017 Ford 6.7 diesel crew cab, 4X4, pu.
 

nozel

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My wife and I just completed a 24hour+24hour sleep on it evaluation of the merits of e-vehicle ownership. We drove a Fiat 500e loaned to us to seal a deal so to speak. $10000 difference taxes in, would buy us a 2015 model which has an e range of ~140km/charge. The good: more than adequate for her daily commute. The good: allows HOV OK label for her commuting convenience as a single occupant in the HOV lane. The bad: spending $10000 trading away something (500 Sport) fully paid for, returning 7.5l/100km to spend zero for gas. The bad: she forgetting to plug in, no juice for the next day...The bad: No level three charging capability for on the fly fast charging. The bad: thinking spending $10000 is good investment to cheat the HOV lane occupant rule (it was only about beating traffic)...

E vehicle not for us yet.

The Fiat is a grey market car in Canada with limited, read non support from Fiat Canada.
 

Jetta_Pilot

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Tune the 500T and pick up a blow up doll on amazon for the HOV lane, problems solved ;)
We have many HOV lanes highways here in the Toronto area. Also many people have been caught doing just that.

Having said that they do have a lottery where you get to bid on single occupant permits. I think they are time limited, not permanent.
 

VeeDubTDI

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My wife and I just completed a 24hour+24hour sleep on it evaluation of the merits of e-vehicle ownership. We drove a Fiat 500e loaned to us to seal a deal so to speak. $10000 difference taxes in, would buy us a 2015 model which has an e range of ~140km/charge. The good: more than adequate for her daily commute. The good: allows HOV OK label for her commuting convenience as a single occupant in the HOV lane. The bad: spending $10000 trading away something (500 Sport) fully paid for, returning 7.5l/100km to spend zero for gas. The bad: she forgetting to plug in, no juice for the next day...The bad: No level three charging capability for on the fly fast charging. The bad: thinking spending $10000 is good investment to cheat the HOV lane occupant rule (it was only about beating traffic)...

E vehicle not for us yet.

The Fiat is a grey market car in Canada with limited, read non support from Fiat Canada.
At $10,000 with no ability to service and no warranty, I'd probably pass, too.

We're still really enjoying ours.
 

Owain@malonetuning

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We have many HOV lanes highways here in the Toronto area. Also many people have been caught doing just that.

Having said that they do have a lottery where you get to bid on single occupant permits. I think they are time limited, not permanent.
Same thing over here in Vancouver. The HOV lanes don't seem that useful though and are just a waste of what could otherwise be an additional lane. In a lot of places it will go from 2 to 3 to 2 lanes where the HOV is just temporary, so other than functioning as a bottle neck they normally don't do too much. Different story on a bike since you can move around a lot. Driving in Vancouver is kind of a hope and pray situation on a daily basis, I'd be looking at crash ratings and adaptive low speed cruise before HOV usage.
 

CraziFuzzy

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If you are looking for more 'space', the quite often the PHEVs on the market are going to have better selections than the pure BEV's. Mainly, because the BEV's are mostly (aside from the model s and x) targeting mid-range commuters, who quite often are not dealing with a lot of cargo or passenger requirements.

PHEV's based on full-size sedans, while not ideal platforms for fuel savings and some have some pretty harsh trade-offs (like much less trunk space than gas versions), do offer the rear seat space, and a lot of efficiency gains for getting the family around town (small shopping trips, nights out, to shuttling to school and back, etc). Some models that come to mind are the Sonata/Optima Plug-in (27 mile electric), the Fusion Energi (20 mile electric). There are of course more expensive options out there, some with more electric range (BMW 530e, Cadillac CT6, etc), but the cost savings wouldn't be there if you're going to dump luxury pricing into the purchase price. Just as a Tesla Model S or Model X are never going to be a wise financial decision.
 

john.jackson9213

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If you are looking for more 'space', the quite often the PHEVs on the market are going to have better selections than the pure BEV's. Mainly, because the BEV's are mostly (aside from the model s and x) targeting mid-range commuters, who quite often are not dealing with a lot of cargo or passenger requirements.

PHEV's based on full-size sedans, while not ideal platforms for fuel savings and some have some pretty harsh trade-offs (like much less trunk space than gas versions), do offer the rear seat space, and a lot of efficiency gains for getting the family around town (small shopping trips, nights out, to shuttling to school and back, etc). Some models that come to mind are the Sonata/Optima Plug-in (27 mile electric), the Fusion Energi (20 mile electric). There are of course more expensive options out there, some with more electric range (BMW 530e, Cadillac CT6, etc), but the cost savings wouldn't be there if you're going to dump luxury pricing into the purchase price. Just as a Tesla Model S or Model X are never going to be a wise financial decision.
Yes. Just read up on 2018 Camry Hybrid. Nice 50+ mpg EPA ratings. Battery capacity 1.6KW - Like 10 mile range??? Maybe less. Volt has 18KW battery for 53 mile range, so maybe only 5 miles for Camry?
 

bhtooefr

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The Camry Hybrid's battery isn't intended to give it any all-electric range, really. Maybe a mile or two if you're extremely gentle, and there's no plug. (And, that 1.6 kWh is the NiMH version, and it only uses about 40% of that capacity - the rule is that it will not discharge below 40%, or charge above 80%. The Li-ion version in the base model is smaller rated capacity, but similar actually-used capacity.)
 

kjclow

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My wife and I just completed a 24hour+24hour sleep on it evaluation of the merits of e-vehicle ownership. We drove a Fiat 500e loaned to us to seal a deal so to speak. $10000 difference taxes in, would buy us a 2015 model which has an e range of ~140km/charge. The good: more than adequate for her daily commute. The good: allows HOV OK label for her commuting convenience as a single occupant in the HOV lane. The bad: spending $10000 trading away something (500 Sport) fully paid for, returning 7.5l/100km to spend zero for gas. The bad: she forgetting to plug in, no juice for the next day...The bad: No level three charging capability for on the fly fast charging. The bad: thinking spending $10000 is good investment to cheat the HOV lane occupant rule (it was only about beating traffic)...

E vehicle not for us yet.

The Fiat is a grey market car in Canada with limited, read non support from Fiat Canada.
That is my single biggest concern for getting my wife an ecar to commute in. It would happen when I'm out of town with no way to "rescue" her. I can't tell you how many times she's come home and said that I need to go fill her car up and find out that she's already below zero miles to go. Putting over 18 gallons into the JSW is a little unnerving.
 

bhtooefr

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Mind you, wouldn't take many times having to wait for a tow to get charged up before someone would learn to plug in every day.

And, plugging in every day can help set a routine, making it less likely that it would be forgotten.
 

El Dobro

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And, plugging in every day can help set a routine, making it less likely that it would be forgotten.
As soon as I pull into the driveway, I automatically plug in. I don't even think about it. Also, as I walk into the house, I listen for the horn that signals everything is ok.
 

tadawson

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Mind you, wouldn't take many times having to wait for a tow to get charged up before someone would learn to plug in every day.

And, plugging in every day can help set a routine, making it less likely that it would be forgotten.
Or before you got so mad at the thing that you ditch it . . .
 

VeeDubTDI

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Depending on how far the commute is, if you forgot to plug in a completely empty EV, you could probably charge up enough to get to work in an hour or two. Most EVs charge at 25 miles per hour at 30 amps on 240 volts. If you only charge at 120 volts, it's going to take a lot longer (5 miles per hour).
 

kjclow

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Her commute is about 20 miles on mostly city streets in fairly heavy traffic. Since she works at a public school, I know there are no charging stations there and am not sure there is anywhere close to the lot for running an extension cord.
 

turbobrick240

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A reminder note left on the house front door might be useful until plugging in becomes routine.
 

nicklockard

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I follow this thread with interest.

I wonder how differently it would read if it were 1914 and this were a forum board discussing the newfangled motorized, horseless carriages.
 

nwdiver

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I follow this thread with interest.

I wonder how differently it would read if it were 1914 and this were a forum board discussing the newfangled motorized, horseless carriages.
I'll buy one of them fancy horseless carriages when I can feed 'em from my field and breed 'em in my Barn! 'Till then they don't work for me!
 

kjclow

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Don't forget about the free fertilizer that you're giving up with that horseless carriage.
 

turbobrick240

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Wow, somebody actually got me to read a Rush piece- well, part of it. I got as far as the electric car forcing meth labs to convert to petroleum refineries. Heavy stuff. I take Limbaugh about as seriously as that Infowars clown. I don't expect anything coherent from either.
 

turbocharged798

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Does Rush Limbaugh ever do satire? 'Cause this is the dumbest OR funniest thing I've read in a long time.

Love how the energy canard keeps coming up again and again. You need ~10 solar panels to generate enough energy annually to power an EV 15k miles... 10. I have a 1000' sq ft home with 42 on my roof. The typical water heater uses more energy than the typical EV.
You are assuming perfect conditions, AGAIN solar is not consistant, we can go two weeks without any sun. Better have some BIG batteries.
 

GoFaster

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Does Rush Limbaugh ever do satire? 'Cause this is the dumbest OR funniest thing I've read in a long time.
Love how the energy canard keeps coming up again and again. You need ~10 solar panels to generate enough energy annually to power an EV 15k miles... 10. I have a 1000' sq ft home with 42 on my roof. The typical water heater uses more energy than the typical EV.
10 solar panels of what size???

Back-of-envelope rough-calculation plausibility check follows.

You are implying that a little under 250 sq ft is enough to propel an EV 15,000 miles per year.

I have to do these calculations in metric. 25 square metres to propel an EV 25,000 km per year i.e. about 70 km per day.

A typical EV goes about 6, maybe 7 km per kWh. For simplistic numbers that means 10 kWh per day.

Full sunlight is about 1 kW per square metre. At best, a solar array that is fixed in position will have about 6 useful hours per sunny day. Obviously there is sun for longer than that on average, but near the beginning and end of the day the panel is getting sunlight at an oblique angle and the light is getting through the atmosphere at an angle so its intensity is reduced. So that's 6 kWh per day per square metre ... of incoming sunlight. Good panels can be 15% - 20% efficient, let's assume not state-of-the-art but not terrible. So that's about 1 kWh per day per square metre ... but we haven't allowed for bad weather. That's going to vary but let's say half the days are sunny. So it's 0.5 kWh per day per square metre. 25 square metres is about the right number ... on an annual average.

The difficulty, of course, is that northern folks aren't going to be able to store the summer excess for use in the winter when days are short and weather is often bad (and surfaces are often snow-covered). And with the push to concentrate urban areas, in places like Toronto a large part of the population lives in apartment buildings.

Still ... if Canada were a country having 10 million EVs, the total area of solar collection to power ALL of them would be 250 million square metres ... i.e. 250 square km. That's a lot, but it's a tiny part of the area of the country, and it's much less than the total amount of urbanized area.
 

nwdiver

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10 solar panels of what size???
300w is pretty standard these days. 3 miles/kWh is about average for an EV. 10 panels would be 3kW. The US average solar insolation is ~4.5 full hours of sun per day. 3kW x 4.5hours/day = 13.5kWh/day. That's 4927.5kWh/yr or enough energy to drive ~14800 miles per year ON AVERAGE.

You are assuming perfect conditions, AGAIN solar is not consistant, we can go two weeks without any sun. Better have some BIG batteries.
Yeah... some natural gas or coal based generation would sadly have to be used on cloudy and windless days... that's not the point. The point is that adding ~3kW of Solar OR ~1kW of wind per EV would keep emissions from electricity generation from rising due to increased consumption from EVs. Less fossil fuels on sunny/windy days more on cloudy/still days. That's not a lot. The US added 14.7GW of Solar and 8.2GW of wind in 2016 alone. Assuming ~15k miles per year that's enough energy for ~12M EVs. EV sales in 2016 were <160k.
 
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VeeDubTDI

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Wow, somebody actually got me to read a Rush piece- well, part of it. I got as far as the electric car forcing meth labs to convert to petroleum refineries. Heavy stuff. I take Limbaugh about as seriously as that Infowars clown. I don't expect anything coherent from either.
It's a very difficult read. He focuses on some pretty vague math that tries to equate the required energy to power electric vehicles with the amount of energy currently dispensed at filling stations. He neglects to mention that an electric vehicle uses at least 50% less (a very conservative figure) than a gasoline vehicle to go the same distance. He also neglects to mention that a significant portion of charging happens at home.

He raises some valid points about peak and off-peak power production, talking about how a lot of "gas station" charging sessions will happen during the day during peak times. He neglects to mention that solar is rapidly increasing, generating more energy (sometimes a surplus) during the conventional daytime peak period.

So as usual, he uses a couple of seeds of truth to start his argument, but then leaves out a whole lot of information while making his case. He's right that the current grid and current vehicle manufacturing and recharging infrastructures won't support mass-market electric cars. Fortunately, as we all know, these things are improving rapidly. Despite what Rush would have you believe, we can accomplish a lot in 10 - 20 years.
 

VeeDubTDI

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300w is pretty standard these days. 3 miles/kWh is about average for an EV. 10 panels would be 3kW. The US average solar insolation is ~4.5 full hours of sun per day. 3kW x 4.5hours/day = 13.5kWh/day. That's 4927.5kWh/yr or enough energy to drive ~14800 miles per year ON AVERAGE.



Yeah... some natural gas or coal based generation would sadly have to be used on cloudy and windless days... that's not the point. The point is that adding ~3kW of Solar OR ~1kW of wind per EV would keep emissions from electricity generation from rising due to increased consumption from EVs. Less fossil fuels on sunny/windy days more on cloudy/still days. That's not a lot. The US added 14.7GW of Solar and 8.2GW of wind in 2016 alone. Assuming ~15k miles per year that's enough energy for ~12M EVs. EV sales in 2016 were <160k.
I ended up using 6 hours per day and 4.0 miles per kWh. Your numbers represent a more realistic average than mine do.

You're also right about the backup power generation on cloudy days. Sure we'll still have to burn fossil fuels if there is no sun and other renewables can't meet demand. The realistic goal is to reduce fossil fuel consumption as much as possible. If you have to fire up a gas plant on a cloudy day to meet demand, you do it until you can figure out another way to power through the lulls.
 

rotarykid

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I ended up using 6 hours per day and 4.0 miles per kWh. Your numbers represent a more realistic average than mine do.
You're also right about the backup power generation on cloudy days. Sure we'll still have to burn fossil fuels if there is no sun and other renewables can't meet demand. The realistic goal is to reduce fossil fuel consumption as much as possible. If you have to fire up a gas plant on a cloudy day to meet demand, you do it until you can figure out another way to power through the lulls.
Fossil fuel generation does not work like that you cannot just turn it on when you need it, it has to be on standby all the time burning fossil fuels, ready to spin up when the load goes up until that changes, there is no way to do away with fossil fuel generation.

The best we can expect from solar and wind for now is fill in generation when that is available. It can be used as available when needed. This is Not how the power plants we have today work. Coal & natural gass steam generation plants Have to be ready to take load at all times.

Steam generation takes hours to build up enough heat and steam to kick a standard generation unit and to action. And as has been said earlier, jet engine generation, which is pretty instant, is not for long term use and cannot be used as such without enormous cost in maintenance being required.
 
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