Gas or Electric Vehicles?

[SalixIncendium]

Inspired by another thread (as usual) and in the interest of not derailing that thread, I will ask here.

When you decide electric vehicles are the vehicle of choice, do you consider where electric comes from?

Over 60% of electricity come from fossil fuels, such as coal, petroleum, and natural gas.
What is U.S. electricity generation by energy source? - FAQ - U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA)

And yes, electric vehicles have reduced emissions, but many don't consider the emissions produced when extracting fossil fuels or the burning of coal.

Taking electric generation and the disposal of electric vehicle batteries (yes, I'm aware that Tesla recycles, but I'm not convinced other manufacturers do), are electric vehicles really the better option?

 

[Revoltingest]

Electrics are at their best doing short trips around town.
Regenerative braking is efficient in stop & go driving.
IC engines have their worst emissions & fuel economy
during warm up.

I don't know the answer to your question, but I'll wager
that it depends upon the source of one's electricity
(nuclear vs wind vs solar vs fossil fuel) & upon one's
driving needs. The answer won't be the same for
everyone everywhere.

 

[Vinayaka]

Where I live, our electricity still comes from coal, so no. But that will change if this area ever decides to diversify, which will be a very long time, since we're sitting on fossil fuels.

 

[Spirit of Light]

I think you will find both the pros and cons of Gas and Electric cars. The problem with electric cars is not when they are on the street it is actually when the battery is made because the product they use in the batteries are in themself toxic, and they are only found in a few areas in the world, so after they are extracted out of the earth, they get shipped to America, Asia, and Europe in ships that are not very environmental healthy. So yes even they do pollute less than petrol cars, there is still drawbacks.

I know too little about the gas-driven car so it is difficult to say if they pollute less then a petrol car.

 

[Polymath257]

It isn't as simple of a question as many seem to think. As you said, electricity needs to be generated and often it is produced by fossil fuels. But, then, larger systems are often more efficient and *relatively* have fewer emissions. So, instead of smaller car engines, you have more larger systems producing the energy.

And, at each stage of the transfer there will be losses that have to be taken into account. Electricity transmission is very efficient, but it is not perfect and inefficiencies there can have an impact.

But, for gas engines we also have to include all the processing that leads to the gas in the car. That is also a source of emissions and inefficiencies.

Ultimately, like @Revoltingest said, it may well depend on your source of electricity and/or gasoline.

 

[Revoltingest]

Gas vehicles suit me....
- My Camry is worth only a few hundred bucks. No way could I replace it with
an electric car without investing tens of thousands of dollars. I drive it perhaps
as much as 1000 miles per year. Why change, eh.
- Mr Van drives as much as 750 miles per day on machine moving expeditions.
Electric vans cannot do that. And their capital cost would be too spendy for me.

 

[Eddi]

I think the trend towards electric cars is the same trend as the trend towards green energy sources, I see them as parts of the same movement

 

[SalixIncendium]

I know too little about the gas-driven car so it is difficult to say if they pollute less then a petrol car.

Gas and petrol are the same thing. Americans call it gas; Europeans call it petrol.

 

[Spirit of Light]

Gas and petrol are the same thing. Americans call it gas; Europeans call it petrol.

Then my answer is Electric cars are a lot better than Gas driven cars when it comes to pollution

 

[SalixIncendium]

Then my answer is Electric cars are a lot better than Gas driven cars when it comes to pollution

I think you're missing the point of the thread. Yes, once manufactured, fueled, and on the road, electric cars hold an advantage. But the extraction and transport process of the fuel comes into play as well.

Where does your electricity come from?

 

[Revoltingest]

For your viewing pleasure....

 

[Spirit of Light]

I think you're missing the point of the thread. Yes, once manufactured, fueled, and on the road, electric cars hold an advantage. But the extraction and transport process of the fuel comes into play as well.

Where does your electricity come from?

I am well aware of the process of making batteries to cars, and yes the benefit of electric cars comes only from when they are finished, and ready for the road. Before that it is actually a lot of pollution still going on, from extracting the product out of the earth, then transporting it around the world for production (often with ships that pollute because they are not electric them self. So still there is a lot of improvements before electric cars become 0 emissions from begging to finish product

 

[Laika]

Inspired by another thread (as usual) and in the interest of not derailing that thread, I will ask here.

When you decide electric vehicles are the vehicle of choice, do you consider where electric comes from?

Over 60% of electricity come from fossil fuels, such as coal, petroleum, and natural gas.
What is U.S. electricity generation by energy source? - FAQ - U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA)

And yes, electric vehicles have reduced emissions, but many don't consider the emissions produced when extracting fossil fuels or the burning of coal.

Taking electric generation and the disposal of electric vehicle batteries (yes, I'm aware that Tesla recycles, but I'm not convinced other manufacturers do), are electric vehicles really the better option?

Reducing greenhouse gas emissions means basically ending all fossil fuel usage. Our economy has developed in the past 200-300 years based on coal, oil and natural gas. So, although in the short-term increasing electricity consumption by encouraging greater use of electric cars isn't great, it reduces the emissions of one sector (Transport) so that we can then work on the emissions of another sector (energy).

These are really big problems and there isn't a "silver bullet" for greenhouse gas emissions. You could well argue that mentality is what has stopped up making progress. We've looked for one catch-all solution that we could replace (primarily) oil with, but instead we are going to have to use a combination of solutions, such as solar, wind, hydroelectric, geothermal and tidal energy. I think the debate is still out on whether nuclear and bio-fuels will be part of that "energy mix" but its possible. hydrogen might be feasible as well but I'm unsure on the specifics.

I'd rather everyone have an electric car than do nothing at all basically. We are going to have to build a sustainable future one brick at a time. I don't like that and admit its not emotionally "satisfying", but it's looks like that is what we are going to have to do to get the job done.

 

[bobhikes]

Taking electric generation and the disposal of electric vehicle batteries (yes, I'm aware that Tesla recycles, but I'm not convinced other manufacturers do), are electric vehicles really the better option?

You nail the two major problems with electric vehicles on the head. Basically they will reduce emission but not eliminate them unless we find a new way of generating electricity. In the future if we have a natural resource for electricity maybe they will be better but the batteries. The batteries are extremely dangerous to the environment and today with the minimal amount of cars on the road and small batteries we still have problems recycling them and disposing of them. Once every car is electric it will be a massive problem and I doubt even Tesla will be able to recycle them at the rate necessary. You all so have accidents where the battery may break and leak the acid into the environment.

Best bet overall is to fix public transportation and give people the ability to not use cars period. This will only effect money and be significantly better for the environment. Of course its a hard sell because auto manufacturers will collapse and may people will have to find new jobs. I doubt the increase to public transportation will cover all the losses.

 

[exchemist]

Inspired by another thread (as usual) and in the interest of not derailing that thread, I will ask here.

When you decide electric vehicles are the vehicle of choice, do you consider where electric comes from?

Over 60% of electricity come from fossil fuels, such as coal, petroleum, and natural gas.
What is U.S. electricity generation by energy source? - FAQ - U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA)

And yes, electric vehicles have reduced emissions, but many don't consider the emissions produced when extracting fossil fuels or the burning of coal.

Taking electric generation and the disposal of electric vehicle batteries (yes, I'm aware that Tesla recycles, but I'm not convinced other manufacturers do), are electric vehicles really the better option?

My answer to this is that the overwhelming priority today is reducing CO2 emissions. The heavy metals etc in batteries are certainly an environmental issue, as is the managing and disposing of nuclear waste. But neither problem can compete for urgency with getting CO2 emissions down.

I'm sure we all realise that fossil fuel power stations still provide a lot of the electricity in the world today. But it is equally obvious that electricity can - and increasingly does - come from renewable or nuclear sources, whereas a fossil-fuelled vehicle contributes 100% to CO2 emissions. The non-fossil proportion of power generation will increase rapidly in the years to come. The UK is already within sight of closing its last coal power station and the pressure on government and utilities to go further increases by the day. There may be an ultimate limit, due to the intermittent nature of many renewable sources but that limit reduces as battery and other forms of electricity storage improve. Electricity in the easily foreseeable future will be largely non-fossil fuel based. In many countries running an electric vehicle clearly emits less CO2/km than a petrol or diesel powered one, and this can only get better.

(My next vehicle will be either electric or hybrid, depending on whether I can easily recharge an electric vehicle on my periodic journeys to Brittany. I'm going to hold off for a year or two to see how the charging network progresses in the UK and France. But there are already charging points springing up in the neighbouring streets around my house in London.)

The next big challenge, it seems to me, is home heating. Removing or reducing the domestic use of oil and gas is a harder problem and probably the next big area for governments and utilities to tackle. Solar and heat pumps seem to be the most obvious ways forward. The heat pump, of course, relies on electricity, making the priority for getting rid of fossil fuel generation even more important.

For sure, decarbonising electricity is key to our attempts to deal with climate change, however you look at it. (For one thing it is how public transport will run - I see other posters have raised this.)

 

[Wandering Monk]

I wonder how electrics perform in sub-zero Fahrenheit temperatures.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

Inspired by another thread (as usual) and in the interest of not derailing that thread, I will ask here.

When you decide electric vehicles are the vehicle of choice, do you consider where electric comes from?

Over 60% of electricity come from fossil fuels, such as coal, petroleum, and natural gas.
What is U.S. electricity generation by energy source? - FAQ - U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA)

For a gas-powered car, 100% of the energy it uses comes from petroleum, so even 60% is an improvement.

Edit: but electric vehicles are more efficient at converting energy into motion. This is why hybrids have better efficiency than conventional gas-powered cars: when you require the gas engine to run at a range of RPMs instead of its most efficient speed, efficiency suffers.

But many countries do much better than the US in terms of emissions from generation of electricity. Here in Ontario, we closed our last coal plant in 2013.

And yes, electric vehicles have reduced emissions, but many don't consider the emissions produced when extracting fossil fuels or the burning of coal.

Taking electric generation and the disposal of electric vehicle batteries (yes, I'm aware that Tesla recycles, but I'm not convinced other manufacturers do), are electric vehicles really the better option?

The best option is no car at all. Walking, cycling, taking transit, or telecommuting will all drastically cut your emissions to much less than an electric car and orders of magnitude less than a gas-powered car.

Failing that, the best thing to do - regardless of your car's power source - is to reduce your commuting distance and increase your vehicle occupancy.

Even if an electric car had no emissions of its own at all, the mere fact that it's on the road contributes to congestion, which causes all the gas-powered cars on the road with it to emit marginally more.

 

[Wandering Monk]

For a gas-powered car, 100% of the energy it uses comes from petroleum, so even 60% is an improvement.

But many countries do much better than the US in terms of emissions from generation of electricity. Here in Ontario, we closed our last coal plant in 2013.


The best option is no car at all. Walking, cycling, taking transit, or telecommuting will all drastically cut your emissions to much less than an electric car and orders of magnitude less than a gas-powered car.

Failing that, the best thing to do - regardless of your car's power source - is to reduce your commuting distance and increase your vehicle occupancy.

Even if an electric car had no emissions of its own at all, the mere fact that it's on the road contributes to congestion, which causes all the gas-powered cars on the road with it to emit marginally more.

I checked out commuting using mass transit to work. Normal drive time was 35 minutes.

Mass transit would take me two hours and I would have to change buses twice.

 

[exchemist]

Reducing greenhouse gas emissions means basically ending all fossil fuel usage. Our economy has developed in the past 200-300 years based on coal, oil and natural gas. So, although in the short-term increasing electricity consumption by encouraging greater use of electric cars isn't great, it reduces the emissions of one sector (Transport) so that we can then work on the emissions of another sector (energy).

These are really big problems and there isn't a "silver bullet" for greenhouse gas emissions. You could well argue that mentality is what has stopped up making progress. We've looked for one catch-all solution that we could replace (primarily) oil with, but instead we are going to have to use a combination of solutions, such as solar, wind, hydroelectric, geothermal and tidal energy. I think the debate is still out on whether nuclear and bio-fuels will be part of that "energy mix" but its possible. hydrogen might be feasible as well but I'm unsure on the specifics.

I'd rather everyone have an electric car than do nothing at all basically. We are going to have to build a sustainable future one brick at a time. I don't like that and admit its not emotionally "satisfying", but it's looks like that is what we are going to have to do to get the job done.

It may be worth pointing out that hydrogen is not a fuel source. It is, like electricity, a only means of storing and transmitting energy.

Hydrogen cannot be mined. It can only be made by chemical reduction, of water or organic compounds, which involves a net energy input. So it leaves the problem of where that energy input comes from unsolved. The answer is almost certainly electricity - though some direct solar conversion processes are being worked on, I believe.

Storing hydrogen does not need the heavy metals used in batteries, which is one possible advantage. And it can work in a fuel cell, i.e. driving an electric vehicle with fuel cells in place of the battery. So maybe it can be a complementary technology, in a world of electric vehicles.

 

[ChristineM]

Having recently (well almost 2 years ago) gone through this analysis in preparation for changing cars here are my findings

During the working life of the vehicle then it must be electric.

Electricity is far more efficient than petrol to manufacture, even when using fossil fuels.

On top of that, most electric cars now use various methods to capture lost energy and convert it back to electricity. That will give a 10 to 15% reduction in your electric bill.

Most supermarkets (in Europe anyway) have free charging points for customers. I have a friend with a Zoe who, earlier this year did a 1700km journey, mostly using these free charging points, total cost of fuel €3.40, spent when there were no supermarkets near his route?

However the manufacture of electric cars produces slightly more pollutants (from battery and motor manufacture) than the manufacture of petrol cars.

The sources of supply of rare earths (required for battery and motor manufacture) are concentrated in countries with unstable governments so may become impossible to source in the future.

The batteries are finite, lasting around 10 years with maybe 2 (or 3) replacements (see previous point) during the life of the car.

Disposal of the batteries requires special, long term measures to prevent pollution.

And finally if the pre and post problems don't hit your environmental problems in a cost of vehicle comparison, petrol wins out.

However if you chose to ignore the pollution the batteries will cause on the future, if you are only interested in the hear and now, are not concerned whether revolution on the other side of the world will limit the life of your car, if you buy from the showroom and sell on well before the batteries are done then electric is the way.

Basically its a swings and roundabouts decision so i didnt didnt vote (but we bought petrol)