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

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Lightflyer1

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Very cool but useless for the most part. A millionaire collectors car. In the US at least. It can go 258 mph but limited to a 70 or 80 mph speed limit, 99.9% of us can't afford it, not practical for anything but racing and looking cool, most of us will probably never see one in our lifetimes. I wish they would spend more time on cars more than 150 people in the world could own.
 

VeeDubTDI

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Very cool but useless for the most part. A millionaire collectors car. In the US at least. It can go 258 mph but limited to a 70 or 80 mph speed limit, 99.9% of us can't afford it, not practical for anything but racing and looking cool, most of us will probably never see one in our lifetimes. I wish they would spend more time on cars more than 150 people in the world could own.
Such is the hypercar business. I’m still impressed.
 

Owain@malonetuning

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The tech will trickle down over time, just like it has in all industries.

The MK7 golf R will run high 11s around 115mph with an aggressive tune and exhaust. The RS3s will run into the mid 10s @125 or so.

Those times are comparable to the diablo GT and F50.

Give it a decade ;)
 
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john.jackson9213

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Very cool but useless for the most part. A millionaire collectors car. In the US at least. It can go 258 mph but limited to a 70 or 80 mph speed limit, 99.9% of us can't afford it, not practical for anything but racing and looking cool, most of us will probably never see one in our lifetimes. I wish they would spend more time on cars more than 150 people in the world could own.
Go to jail. Go directly to jail. Do not pass Go. Do not collect $200.
Just like in Monopoly.
I can see a 2nd degree murder conviction with this car. If anyone survives.
 

bhtooefr

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turbobrick240

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I saw that first map the other day. The second one is even more revealing. It's quite dramatic when compared to the same maps from the previous five years. The grid is really cleaning up fast.
 

Tin Man

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Lets see if some other not-so-political organization publishes data and how it ends up cost-wise per mile when the electrical grid becomes taxed and needs to upgrade with future boatloads of EV's.

The cost per mile currently may favor EV's, but conveniently UCS (using EPA data) compares EV emissions (power plant, not production or mining of rare earth metals and their transport) to gasoline cars (diesel emissions for new clean diesels are generally better).

Glad to see the grid may be getting cleaner too. But information about other important factors in health such as non-automotive emissions, such as indoor (cooking), tire and road particulates (all also higher in cities), is often ignored or misinterpreted.

TM
 
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turbobrick240

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The UCS is not a political organization any more than Scott Pruitt or Rick Perry are scientists. And indoor cooking is probably not a major player in global carbon emissions. It surely is a health concern in third world countries. In our wealthy part of the globe, what is being cooked has got to have greater health consequences than the indoor air pollution from the cooking itself.

As far as rare earth metals, the new switched reluctance permanent magnet motors (in Tesla model 3 & semi) actually require very little rare earth metals as compared to the older pm motor technology. The model S/X have essentially none. And guess what- the catalysts in ICE vehicles contain rare earth metals too. Far better to embrace the future than fight it.
 

Tin Man

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bhtooefr

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The cost per mile currently may favor EV's, but conveniently UCS (using EPA data) compares EV emissions (power plant, not production or mining of rare earth metals and their transport) to gasoline cars (diesel emissions for new clean diesels are generally better).
It is worth noting that they're only worrying, in these reports, about emissions with global warming potential. It'd be interesting to see their take on the criteria pollutant issue, but in this series of publications, they've not considered them.

Manufacturing emissions are something that they considered in their 2015 report, and determined that within the lifetime of the EV, the higher efficiency more than paid for itself. Grid decarbonization is only helping matters.

Diesel has ~13% higher tailpipe CO2 per gallon, dulling the efficiency gain, but I'm not sure how the refining emissions of diesel compare to gasoline. (They used GREET 2017, though, so it should be trivial to compare the well-to-pump GHG emissions for gasoline vs. diesel, for someone familiar with GREET.)
 

kjclow

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With the hydrotreatment to remove sulfur, my assumption is that the refining effects of diesel and gasoline are probably close enough to call them equal. I've not heard how they are going to remove the excess sulfur from the gasoline, but that's just around the corner.
 

turbobrick240

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It's the well to pump (and wheel) VOC emissions where diesel is far better than gasoline.
 
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Tin Man

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Diesel has ~13% higher tailpipe CO2 per gallon, dulling the efficiency gain,
Does that reflect the "true" seriously better efficiency of diesels vs pure gasoline vehicles or are they comparing diesels to hybrids? I know diesel has about 10% more energy per gallon, so CO2 should be much better with diesels. Apples to apples. Recently I've read about diesel hybrids....

PL
 

bhtooefr

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The 13% higher CO2 per gallon figure ignores the higher thermal efficiency of diesels, because it's purely the fuel.

Burn a gallon of diesel, get 22.4 pounds of CO2, end of story. Burn a gallon of gasoline, get 19.6 pounds of CO2 (although it's worth noting that E10 is lower tailpipe CO2). Basically, there's no free lunch - the added energy in a gallon of diesel fuel comes from a higher density of hydrocarbons.

In any case, diesels aren't actually considered in this data at all - it's purely gasoline-fueled vehicles versus electric vehicles. You have to get 80 miles per gallon of gasoline to match the average EV on the roads, using 2016 grid data, and 2011-2017 sales data.

So, a diesel, emitting 13% more per gallon, needs to get 90.4 MPG to match the EV, assuming that the amount of CO2 from producing the energy in diesel fuel is the same as gasoline. That's independent of how the energy is handled by the car (whether it's a hybrid or not) - if you can get 90.4 MPG combined in your diesel, more power to you. (However, an EV that's that efficient could likely beat your 90.4 MPG diesel.)
 

Tin Man

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I'd prefer if they use "real world" data which would favor diesel, no matter the energy density of the fuel. CO2 is definitely better in diesels due to efficiency of burning.

How To Lie With Statistics: https://www.amazon.com/s/?ie=UTF8&k...qmt=e&hvbmt=be&hvdev=c&ref=pd_sl_8r0u192p7n_e

I'd rather stick with my current diesel, knowing things may change when there is more experience with EV's (I do favor them to some extent) and not rely on biased futurist proclamations and "data" from groups like the EPA and OCS who have their own agendas.

TM
 
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bhtooefr

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Keep in mind that they're not talking about diesels. I'm talking about diesels. They're only talking about gasoline cars, because in the grand scheme of things, diesels are utterly irrelevant to the US discussion.

And, it'd be nice if there was real-world data on every car, although reproducibility on real-world data is difficult. The EPA does collect real user data, though.
 

darrelld

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Doesn't seem like a very significaant difference, and certainly not enough for me to want to tolerate the range limitations and charging time wasted on the Tesla . . . . Time is worth something as well!
Misconception of charge times. Unless you travel 100s of miles each day your charge times are effectively 0 minutes. Example: Typical 30 mile commute results in pluggin in my garage Level 2 charger as soon as I arrive home and go about my business, 0 minutes waiting to charge.

When I owned my TDI I would have to plan a trip to refuel at a station known to have good B5 or less diesel fuel. This would take approximately 30 minutes of my time every 3 weeks. 52/3 = 17.33 refueling stops annually. 17.33 X 30 minutes = 519 minutes annually or 519/60 = 8 hours. So I would spend 8 hours of my time annually under ideal conditions to refuel my TDI. This is not even calculating the additional time required to search while traveling for a good source of B5 or less diesel fuel.

On my vacation road trips in my Tesla I spend nowhere near that amount of time charging.
 

Lightflyer1

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Misconception of diesel refueling times as well. Known good station by my house and maybe 5 minutes to fuel up. My refueling frequency is similar to yours. Also I have filled up at any stations that look well used, no research involved. B20 or less is okay from my experience. 1 1/2 hours a year refueling, nothing to even make note of over a year.

Who spends 30 minutes every time they need fuel researching where to go? Even when I use GasBuddy to find the least expensive fuel near me it takes nowhere near that much time.
 

turbobrick240

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The only times I go out of my way to get diesel is when I need it for my tractor. For the car I pick it up along the way. I do look forward to getting an EV in the future. I think most of the range anxiety issues will be solved soon.
 
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turbobrick240

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I'd say he's been pretty successful at overcoming gravity thus far. :)
 

VeeDubTDI

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GoFaster

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Tesla is suffering (again) because Elon Musk doesn't know as much about building cars as he thought he did before he started. A few photos have shown up in the last few days about some rather, er, "interesting" stamping / assembly / QC defects ... Everyone has tooling issues and assembly headaches, but other companies sort this out in pre-production ... the phase that Tesla arrogantly skipped.

But, I think it's too early to stick a fork in the company. I think they will get through most of the assembly headaches in the next few months. The car has some designed-in flaws that will remain, but so do all others. Once they get production up to speed and QC under control, it will help with cash flow, and then they should be through the worst of it.

As long as the same mistakes aren't repeated with the Model Y, and the semi ... and some overly-aggressive dates have been promised there, too, so here we go again ...

I don't own TSLA, never have, nor am I short it, nor have I ever done so ... too hot to handle. Too risky in either direction.
 

bhtooefr

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Honestly, my owning TSLA is as much an indictment of all of the other automakers, that I don't see taking things seriously, as it is thinking Tesla's on roughly the right path. (And I think Tesla Energy is a huge part of that.)

Elon time, especially for longer term predictions, is, well, Elon time, and betting based on that is rather poor, but Tesla's failure to meet a time table still beats the other automakers' successes.
 
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