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

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tikal

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What justifies the preference for "more polluting" per GREET data EV use vs. "less polluting" modern diesel? I don't see it, especially the inconvenience of expensive EV tech, centralized control of EV private transportation, and unknown cost of electricity once the supposed EV universal usage comes to be. I must be wrong, as its not the "common" futuristic view, no?

TM
The way I look at it for urban driving environment the EV is in general better because as you drive through stop and go traffic, through schools to drop of the kids, etc the pedestrians and passengers do not have do deal with emissions coming out of your tailpipe. They have been taken care of somewhere else in a more centralized, efficient way. I completely agree that an EV powered mostly with coal electricity is not better than a modern diesel passenger vehicle even in city driving. There is a map somewhere there showing the percentage of electric coal production by regions/states. As examples, and if I recall correctly, Texas is gradually phasing out coal. Next door Oklahoma is not so good and probably places like Kentucky and West Virginia are probably the most coal based electricity production in the country. My own outlook is that coal produced electricity in the US will be gradually replaced by natural gas plants and other less polluting methods.

Again my approach is tailored for the second car option for city driving, not road trips. If you currently are in the situation to need only one car then a modern compliant diesel passenger vehicle will be the best option regarding the environment for city and highway driving based on my own research of GREET model (and now other models too).
 

wxman

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For my analysis using GREET (e.g., graphic in post #4679), I used the "Ireland Rural" damages for non-urban damages, and "Urban Large (Dublin)" for urban damages from the following graphic (link provided previously). Note that urban damages for both PM2.5 and NOx are over 10 times more damaging in urban locations that rural locations:





Here are the output files from GREET for manufacturing (note that this is for a passenger car, not SUV):





and for WTW emissions from GREET for default diesel vehicle:





WTW emissions of default electric vehicle are dependent on electricity grid mix.
 

turbobrick240

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I've noticed that in many of the LCA study graphics that include error bars, there can be tremendous spread. Especially in the health impact and human toxicity categories. It illustrates just how much uncertainty there is around the figures.
 

Tin Man

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^^^ interesting ^^^

I'm not so sure giving natural gas a "pass" as far as certain environmental factors is the best idea, even if the electric grid somehow has a better way to generate such as some fantastic 50 year longevity solar panel that has not been produced yet.

I like the brake regeneration aspects of city driving a lot, but dread the need to replace the battery every 10-15 years for some reason (the most I keep a car seems to be for about 6 years and 200,000 miles - but my children like my cars and we pass them on, so 15 years is more like it). Have prices gone down for recycling and replacement of hybrids and EV's? Dunno.
 

Lightflyer1

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The future viability doesn't bode well. I just went and looked at this car, a Nissan Leaf.

https://austin.craigslist.org/cto/d/cedar-park-2011-nissan-leaf-13k-miles/6830282138.html

Very nice car but the battery is shot at 13k miles. $8500 for a new battery. The car is now really worthless. Only shows 5 bars now and can't really drive anywhere. That car although pretty much new is headed for the crusher. It will be some time before I ever consider an electric car with that kind of outcome in store for the owner. You can't give that car away, much less sell it.
 

rotarykid

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California's in-state and imported generation, and what sources are used for it, are documented: https://www.energy.ca.gov/almanac/electricity_data/total_system_power.html

Note that this doesn't list what they export (and as I understand they do export a fair amount of renewables), either, but coal is a fairly small percentage of the generation that they import, and is almost a rounding error for in-state generation.

Also, regarding hydroelectric power, the destruction behind dams is why most advocates for renewables don't typically advocate for new hydroelectric capacity any more. Using existing hydroelectric capacity is good, adding pumped hydro to an existing installation is good, but building new dams purely for hydroelectric causes a massive die-off behind the dam from the flooding. (As I understand, dams that are primarily for providing irrigation water to crops aren't anywhere near as bad, as the flooding is controlled by diverting it.)

Your points are valid, but the claims of these use numbers are only during optimal wind & solar conditions, these optimal conditions that do not exist more than 1/3rd to 1/2 of the time. When the sun does not shine and when the wind exceeds low & "high-speed" limits coal is required to be burned to fill in those gaps in what is needed to keep the grid in a functional state....

Something many do not seem to know about wind generation is that it's only able to produce power currently in a very narrow range of wind speeds high & low.

From the outside what most do not seem to know is above a range on the high wind speed side, a speed that most do not realize that high-speed limit is so low that these things are only able to produce useable power only around 30 % of the time. the rest of the time they set at full deflection to allow these things to not over spin destroying themselves during every wind storm....

Until we come up with some real storage system to store wind & solar power for use when the wind blows too high( the majority of the time the wind is too high where most of these things are installed across US). So that picture that is being put out there on kalifornia power use vers what is produced locally under optimal conditions, conditions that only exist on average 1/3rd of the time is misleading at best, a down right dishonest lie at worst that is a complete lie most of the time. No one could live in s cal in such numbers without all of that coal generating power that is used to pump water across mountain ranges so the people of s cal can turn on the tap and water come out in that desert that they all live in....

And every effort that has been made in programming to allow wind generation during higher wind speeds has shown to be a folly, destruction of safety brakes, when the brakes go out this leads directly to overspin events that lead directly to the early destruction of these multi-million $ wind turbines...

The data from the times when these wind turbines are locked down due to winds that exceed safe levels, that time when gusts or steady wind speeds exceed safe operation levels,....

Since the time when the winds are too high for safe operation is the majority of the time in ca where these wind turbines exist, this is what must be considered in this argument, to be honest, and show where that power required to make s cal inhabital that power during this time due to the taking out of operation so much of what not so long ago was used to produce the needed power today comes from coal burned in states like colorado.....

Show some real numbers that show where the required today power comes from when the sun does not shine and the 2/3rd of the time when wind farms produce no power....
 

turbobrick240

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Storage capacity and grid interconnections will be critical for the transition to renewables. A lot of very bright people are working on that. Also, not all wind power is coming from a single wind farm/locale. When the wind is insufficient or excessive at wind farms A & B, it is often producing well at wind farms C,D,E, etc.
 

turbocharged798

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Storage capacity and grid interconnections will be critical for the transition to renewables. A lot of very bright people are working on that. Also, not all wind power is coming from a single wind farm/locale. When the wind is insufficient or excessive at wind farms A & B, it is often producing well at wind farms C,D,E, etc.
Grid storage is a fundamental problem, I do not see any sort of solutions in the near future. Nat gas plants help this because they can ramp up and down very quickly to meet grid demands.

Cracks me up when people protest nat gas plants for solar and wind. The gas plants are 100% necessary to support renewable energy or the grid would not work.
 

turbobrick240

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Yeah, the faster we can get away from coal, the better. Nat. gas has been extremely helpful in doing that.

This recent Brazilian LCA caught my interest. Unfortunately, I'm too cheap to shell out $40 for the entire study. They did a cradle to grave assessment for ethanol, ethanol blend, gasoline, battery electric, and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles. One thing they found was that the vehicle use phase had the most impact in every category, including human toxicity. I believe Brazil uses the highest proportion of biofuels in the world today.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S095965261832585X

Edit: Maybe Wxman could take a look at this LCA. I'm wondering how the EV use phase has more impact on human toxicity than manufacturing when the Brazilian grid is mostly hydroelectric.
 
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Tin Man

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Moore's Law has true believers in the EV context. May be a form of modern alchemy if you ask me. The Laws of Thermodynamics still rule....

How much less does natural gas pollute than coal? 50%?
 
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bhtooefr

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Your points are valid, but the claims of these use numbers are only during optimal wind & solar conditions, these optimal conditions that do not exist more than 1/3rd to 1/2 of the time. When the sun does not shine and when the wind exceeds low & "high-speed" limits coal is required to be burned to fill in those gaps in what is needed to keep the grid in a functional state....
The numbers are for the entire year of 2017, so you're saying that the entire year of 2017 was optimal conditions for wind and solar in California?

And that's not even considering behind-the-meter solar generation that was consumed without being exported to the grid.

As far as your claims about wind turbine speeds, frankly, I need you to cite your sources. Yes, they have a range of allowable wind speeds, but I need you to cite reputable sources (by reputable, I mean, actual current experts in the field that actually work with the California grid, and sources to the left of Fox News) claiming that wind turbines in California spend the majority of the time shut down due to excessive wind speed.

Frankly, that would be a sign of incompetence on the part of the designers of the systems if that were the case at any significant scale, because if wind speeds were excessive the majority of the time, you could merely design a turbine system that was optimized for the higher wind speeds. Even if it didn't function at lower wind speeds as a result, you would collect more energy overall.
 

compu_85

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The future viability doesn't bode well. I just went and looked at this car, a Nissan Leaf....
The Leaf, with its complete lack of thermal management, and battery chemistry that's particularly sensitive to high temperatures, is an outlier.

Cars with proper thermal management (Tesla, GM, FCA) don't have this kind of rapid capacity loss.

Take a look at the owner's manuals to confirm this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WlxBOJrEKAo

My '14 ELR, which has the same type of batteries as a Leaf, has all of its original range 5 year later - because GM carefully manages the temprature of the battery pack.

-J
 

wxman

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...Edit: Maybe Wxman could take a look at this LCA. I'm wondering how the EV use phase has more impact on human toxicity than manufacturing when the Brazilian grid is mostly hydroelectric.
Thank you for the link.

That's a good question, because according to GREET, Beltran and EEA, the greatest impact on human toxicity from EV comes from the manufacturing phase.
 

El Dobro

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The Leaf, with its complete lack of thermal management, and battery chemistry that's particularly sensitive to high temperatures, is an outlier.
Cars with proper thermal management (Tesla, GM, FCA) don't have this kind of rapid capacity loss.
Take a look at the owner's manuals to confirm this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WlxBOJrEKAo
My '14 ELR, which has the same type of batteries as a Leaf, has all of its original range 5 year later - because GM carefully manages the temprature of the battery pack.
-J
There's a 2012 Volt out there that has over 467,000 miles on the original battery.
 

tikal

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The Leaf, with its complete lack of thermal management, and battery chemistry that's particularly sensitive to high temperatures, is an outlier.

Cars with proper thermal management (Tesla, GM, FCA) don't have this kind of rapid capacity loss.

Take a look at the owner's manuals to confirm this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WlxBOJrEKAo

My '14 ELR, which has the same type of batteries as a Leaf, has all of its original range 5 year later - because GM carefully manages the temprature of the battery pack.

-J
The issue for all of us to discuss the topic of the viability of EV is that it is a moving target. I would venture to say that EV models technology is changing at a higher pace than equivalent internal combustion engine vehicles so how we see our predictions right now might be much different in less than five years or so.

In terms of of a better representative of a potential bargain used EV vehicle that would have a acceptable battery durability (meaning something like after 10 years old is still manages to give you a range of 75 miles per day), how is the Kia Soul EV that comes out of a three year lease? Something around $13K maybe?
 
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Tin Man

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I could see getting an EV. Its the interior and driverless tech that turns me off. I like cars that are driver oriented and prefer some semblance of analog control.
 

turbobrick240

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There should be some good EV options with more conventional interiors on the market soon. The self driving doesn't do much for me either. Some of the safety features, sure, but I just don't see myself trusting my life to a computer to that extent.
 

kjclow

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Grid storage is a fundamental problem, I do not see any sort of solutions in the near future. Nat gas plants help this because they can ramp up and down very quickly to meet grid demands.

Cracks me up when people protest nat gas plants for solar and wind. The gas plants are 100% necessary to support renewable energy or the grid would not work.
In the Charlotte area, we have three nukes, four or five coal fired plants, and three hydros. The hydros are used mainly for the power demand spikes or when the lakes are either too hot or too low to adequately service the cooling needs of the nukes. I don’t think any of our coal plants are equipped with the ability to switch between coal and ng.
 

Owain@malonetuning

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I could see getting an EV. Its the interior and driverless tech that turns me off. I like cars that are driver oriented and prefer some semblance of analog control.
Honda is doing a rear engine hatchback that's about 50mm wider, 80mm taller, and 100mm shorter than a mk2 golf with a higher end interior. 200km range as standard, mostly designed for super urban environments. They kept normal air con knobs which was a smart touch and the camera mirrors aren't in a stupid location like in the etron (if you had your arm on the window sill you would be blocking your rear view screen, these ones are massive instead).

https://youtu.be/MfD67KCFxqI?t=821


Allegedly to be on the market by the end of the year and sold globally. If it's around 2700lbs and 200hp that would be a blast.
 

Tin Man

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Honda is doing a rear engine hatchback that's about 50mm wider, 80mm taller, and 100mm shorter than a mk2 golf with a higher end interior. 200km range as standard, mostly designed for super urban environments. They kept normal air con knobs which was a smart touch and the camera mirrors aren't in a stupid location like in the etron (if you had your arm on the window sill you would be blocking your rear view screen, these ones are massive instead).

https://youtu.be/MfD67KCFxqI?t=821


Allegedly to be on the market by the end of the year and sold globally. If it's around 2700lbs and 200hp that would be a blast.
Interesting. Thanks for the link.
 

nwdiver

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tikal

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Honda is doing a rear engine hatchback that's about 50mm wider, 80mm taller, and 100mm shorter than a mk2 golf with a higher end interior. 200km range as standard, mostly designed for super urban environments. They kept normal air con knobs which was a smart touch and the camera mirrors aren't in a stupid location like in the etron (if you had your arm on the window sill you would be blocking your rear view screen, these ones are massive instead).

https://youtu.be/MfD67KCFxqI?t=821


Allegedly to be on the market by the end of the year and sold globally. If it's around 2700lbs and 200hp that would be a blast.

Thanks for sharing. Do you know anything about the battery warranty and the battery thermal conditioning system for this Honda EV?
 

GoFaster

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No one outside of Honda knows ANYthing about that vehicle beyond what you've seen there; it was JUST announced as a "concept vehicle" ... which is Honda-speak for "almost ready for production". I'm led to believe that it is tailored to be sold in Asia and Europe but not North America ("too small"). Cameras for outside rearview mirrors are not allowed in Canada/USA yet, although that sort of thing can be changed. It's waaaayyyy too early to talk pricing, warranty, or obscure technical details.

Having said that ... I like it.
 

Owain@malonetuning

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I'm going to wildly guess 32-38 with an R line extended range awd in the 45-55 range, really hope it's in the mid 20s though.

The smart EV was 28.5K in 2009 with 14kwhr of 2700mahr panasonics through tesla, don't see why we couldn't get double the car at that price now. The pack in this honda is probably 22-25kwhr based on the range, I'm going to guess lgchem with proper cooling. Nissan ditched their batteries for lgchem recently too.

They say it's the only one in existence (yeah right...), but it was also built before the concept 2 dr so it's at least a couple years old and a few revisions deep. I bet they're already in production and testing in remote areas if they expect a launch date late this year and a decent unveil at geneva next week. The taycan and etron are already on assembly lines as well, porsche is aiming for 10-20k units/yr and audi is aiming for 80-120.
 

rotarykid

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Maybe like a way to store surplus electrical energy in our cars?
EMotorWerks provides CAISO with 30 MW of DR through smart EV charging
what I am aware that this is one of the talked about options for storage, it does have some real issues....

In talking to people I know who work in the wind production industry in my region of the west this has not shown itself to be a practical option when these things are used outside of an area where the temps are not part of a constantly changing temps from low to high on a daily basis climate area.

Many of these things used in colorado at least due to ambient temp ranges from below "0" * F to highs of close to 60 * F and back to around 0 * F in a 24 hr period use that extra charge which is being spoken of is being used for battery temp maintaining. And in the driver's hands, I know in this region of the west their battery packs must maintain proper temp range to protect the batteries from cold temp damage for days while most of these owners only use these things a couple of times a week.....

these prolonged periods with most of the charge on hand needed to be used to prevent cold temp damage shortening the battery life, Honda found out first hand that electric cars can lose charge life by years in some cases when they must exist in the extreme low to high & back temp ranges they must function in here on a daily basis....

Also wind producers are currently trying to come up with programming to expand wind speed operation ranges to allow for high wind speed gust operation to allow for undamaging to the wind turbines...but everything I have read says they have not had enough success to risk $$$$$$ damage from allowing these things to operate above current set limits in clocked gusts & measured constant wind speeds....


All I have read is that these tests in programming the limits to a wider range have done is collect data that was actually used to narrow the observed wind speed operation ranges low & high to protect these multi-million dollar wind turbines to protect what the data showed was leading directly to brake failures that can lead to catastrophic failure if these brakes are overused to allow higher wind speed operation ranges....most places in the US where these wind farms have been installed over the last ~15 years have had their high wind speed operation limits lowered, not increased....

.In many places, especially in those regions where 60-70 % of the time average observed wind speeds exceed safe production limits....

In many of these places, it has been stated by officials that if we had known how little the amount of time these wind turbines could safely operate was known before they were built many of those who chose to install these wind farms would actually be many of these places would not have had these wind farms installed....
 

turbobrick240

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