Electric Vehicles In Germany Emit More CO2 Than Diesel Ones, Study Shows (brusselstimes.com) 432
Driving an electric vehicle in Germany produces more CO2 emissions than driving a diesel vehicle, a new study claims. schwit1 quotes the Brussels Times:
When CO2 emissions linked to the production of batteries and the German energy mix -- in which coal still plays an important role -- are taken into consideration, electric vehicles emit 11% to 28% more than their diesel counterparts, according to the study, presented at the Ifo Institute in Munich.
Mining and processing the lithium, cobalt and manganese used for batteries consume a great deal of energy... The CO2 given off to produce the electricity that powers such vehicles also needs to be factored in, they say. When all these factors are considered, each Tesla emits 156 to 180 grams of CO2 per kilometre, which is more than a comparable diesel vehicle produced by the German company Mercedes, for example.
Instead the study suggests "Natural gas combustion engines are the ideal technology for transitioning to vehicles powered by hydrogen or 'green' methane in the long term."
Mining and processing the lithium, cobalt and manganese used for batteries consume a great deal of energy... The CO2 given off to produce the electricity that powers such vehicles also needs to be factored in, they say. When all these factors are considered, each Tesla emits 156 to 180 grams of CO2 per kilometre, which is more than a comparable diesel vehicle produced by the German company Mercedes, for example.
Instead the study suggests "Natural gas combustion engines are the ideal technology for transitioning to vehicles powered by hydrogen or 'green' methane in the long term."
Of course... (Score:5, Insightful)
As time goes on and the world gets away from dirty power sources like coal, back to renewable common sense, all EV fleets get cleaner to operate as a direct result.
Re:Of course... (Score:4, Insightful)
The article's way too brief. It doesn't specify what kind of energy sources are used for making the batteries.
Also, it'd be easier to control emissions at a few plants than a bunch of cars running around and CO2 isn't the only thing being spewed out by car exhaust. There's also the logistics of hauling liquid fuel to the gas stations. What are the chances liquid hydrocarbons are as clean as they claim it to be?
Re:Of course... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Of course... (Score:5, Insightful)
I have my doubts that it's actually the oil industry. My suspicion is that it's the German car industry, why? It's stated in the article, where the assumption that EV's are zero emissions is creating a rather large competitive advantage. They want to level the field when comparing with their own cars. I believe it's because EV's will be a major disruption to a lot of their automotive manufacture, not necessarily the car assemblers (that's the brands) but rather the parts suppliers and manufacturers.
Replacing an internal combustion engine with an electric motor, you just eliminate a whole bunch of systems and parts with out requiring them to be replaced with much at all, this will effect a lot of companies and manufacturers who design and manufacture said parts and systems, probably eliminating the need for the majority of those jobs.
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They didn't ignore it as much as used conservative numbers for manufacturing fuel, conservative (in the other direction) numbers for manufacturing lithium batteries, and then rightfully pointed out something which has been known for a long time: Production of the vehicle itself is a pittance of CO2 emissions.
Re:Of course... Germany needs cleaner power (Score:4, Informative)
"Burning fossil fuels for electrical power creates greenhouse emissions comparable to burning fossil fuels" - Alternative study title.
Of course the solution here OUGHT TO BE VERY, VERY OBVIOUS - clean, renewable electrical power in the grid makes everything emit less, including EV transpo.
Instead it's being repackaged by "schwit" the denialist as if it's some kind of anti-environmentalism epiphany, because the moron literally attempts this every single day with every single possible article he can use for FUD purposes.
Bottom line ACTUAL CONCLUSION : Germany needs cleaner power and less coal. Anything else is a derivative artifact from leaving that consideration out.
Re:Of course... Germany needs cleaner power (Score:5, Informative)
The study is bullshit.
They do not take into account the emissions incurred producing the diesel motor, and the accompanying system that a EV won't have. They do not, at all, consider distribution costs for the diesel. They take the worst available estimates for electricity generation, in one of the three countries in Europe who have the worst emissions per unit generated. Their estimates for the battery life are the point at which the manufacturer guarantees that no deterioration can be observed, about 250-300 cycles. That's about 1/4 of the period the average Tesla battery endures before having been replaced so far. They use, for diesel, the discredited numbers before the cheating scandals.
And this is what I got from a superficial reading. Listen, I drive a 30 year old Supra, and I hate the idea that my kids probably won't be allowed to drive it. (or drive anything else themselves) I am not fan of plastic dashboards with a stupid tablet display..
But studies like this make non-partisan readers doubt all studies. And as a geek, I already fear that people trust their guts more than data.
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Although your average electric car has about 25% fewer parts of course.
Plus in order to get a carbon comparison, you'd have to factor in all the infrastructure required to get gas into a car maybe every week. This would including ships, trucks, refining stations, gas stations, journeys to gas stations etc etc. The majority of electric cars rarely if ever make a trip to a charging station. Most charge at home where the infrastructure to deliver the "fuel" is a one time carbon hit that is used anyway to po
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I am not fan of plastic dashboards with a stupid tablet display..
They stopped making metal dashboards in the sixties, or maybe the very early seventies. My first car was a 1960 Dodge Dart which had a body-color painted metal dash... Everything else I've ever owned has had a plastic-wrapped foam dash. The next-oldest vehicle I've owned was from 1971, and it had a foamy dash.
I like my old school dials too, though. You can never have enough of those.
Re:Of course... (Score:5, Informative)
The article clearly states they use the existing German energy mix as the source.
Left unsaid is that Germany's dirty coal power stations put them high on the list of Europe's largest CO2 emitters - that's one of the reasons Germany plans on phasing out coal by 2038.
The article cites a study from the Ifo Institute in Munich - a neoliberal, free-market capitalist think-tank that's somewhat to the left of Milton Friedman and his Chicago school. They believe that only the market can find a suitable accommodation to climate change, and that the state should act more like marketplace referees rather than forcing the coal industry out of business.
To this end, the think tank has devised a strategy designed to raise doubts about what the government is doing. Saying an electric vehicle is, on the whole, producing more CO2 than it's diesel counterpart references, without mentioning it, the diesel 'emissiongate scandal' a few years back. And if electric vehicles are dirtier than diesel, well, then why bother? The government should just leave well enough alone and let the market sort it out.
This article is being presented on this side of the pond for reasons similar to the Ifo's - to keep the government out of the way of the marketplace's coming to an accommodation with climate change.
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The article's way too brief. It doesn't specify what kind of energy sources are used for making the batteries.
[...]
The article clearly states they use the existing German energy mix as the source.
Which is wrong - Germany isn't making the batteries, even if they are charging them. Mining, melting & chemical processing can all be done with clean energy.
Also note that car uses 30% of the fuel energy, and waste the rest. A powerplant typically utilize 60% or so - it is not weight constrained like a car is. So electric cars makes sense - even when the electricity comes from fuel. Using fuel directly in a car is too wasteful.
Factoring in energy used for making the batteries is unfair - unless you also
Re: Of course... (Score:3, Interesting)
35% is on the low side for new plants, which is closer to 40% or a little above . 10% emissions loss is on the high side (half that would be more usual) and your figure for losses in the car is also high.
https://www.worldcoal.org/reducing-co2-emissions/high-efficiency-low-emission-coal
https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/ofgem-publications/43519/sohn-overview-losses-final-internet-version.pdf
https://cleantechnica.com/2018/03/10/electric-car-myth-buster-efficiency
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The article clearly states they use the existing German energy mix as the source.
Since lithium is not mined in Germany, that doesn't seem legitimate.
Most copper and cobalt used in Germany is also imported.
It isn't clear if they include the energy used to drill, pump, ship, and refine the diesel fuel.
Not much information is provided.
Re:Don't whitewash German CO2 numbers (Score:4, Informative)
German demand caused the mining.
But those mines are not powered by burning filthy German lignite.
Using Germany's power profile to estimate emissions in other countries is not going to be accurate.
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German study sponsored by diesel car companies (Score:2, Interesting)
I bet.
Re:German study sponsored by diesel car companies (Score:5, Informative)
It's an independent study. But that just goes to show that partisans will do propaganda-hack-work for free to justify their beliefs.
Copy pasta of one of dozens of takedowns of this "sudty". TL;DR: All of the scientific studies that actually evaluate this like the "Cradle to Grave" EV study have found EVs to be at worst about average to an efficient small diesel in the worst energy grids. But on average far cleaner and getting better .
Yet another set of cranky retired professors makes waves 'proving' diesel is better than electric vehicles for the climate. Unfortunately many journalists copy their opinion.
Let's use an Easter sunday afternoon to debunk this myth, again. Probably not for the last time :-(
Summary of the major errors:
Honorary mention: energy needed for diesel motor, exhaust system etc. is ignored.
Some have presented this as an academic study. It is not. It is the opinion of three people, two of which happen to be retired professors (one a well known economist) and none of whom have any background in the (electric) car industry or batteries.
Error 1: "car battery lasts 150 000 km".
That's just 300 cycles.
In reality: even Tesla's from the olden days can drive 600 000 km before the battery reaches 80% capacity. https://steinbuch.wordpress.co... [wordpress.com] And laboratories peg it closer to 3000 cycles and on the way to 10 000.
Error 2: "650 grams of CO2 per kWh"
In reality it is certainly possible to conjure this up for parts of current Germany. But the EU average is much lower (450 grams) and more importantly: an EV drives 20 years and electricity gets cleaner over this period.
Error 3: "Mercedes C220d emits 141 grams per kWh"
They take the lowest possible estimate for refining diesel. More importantly: they use the widely discredited NEDC values that are on average 40% too low because carmakers cheat.
Error 4: "battery production emits 177 kg CO2/kWh"
The best studies that I used in my last debunk put it at 100 kg CO2/kWh but that's an old number too. My industry source (who wants to remain anonymous but has been very trustworthy pegs it at 65 kg CO2/kWh and falling.
To summarize: EVs only emit more CO2 if you make unrealistically negative assumptions for battery production, battery life and electricity mix while making unrealistically positive assumption about diesel consumption.
Correct ANY of these and the tables are turned. Bigly.
https://twitter.com/AukeHoekst... [twitter.com]
Re:German study sponsored by diesel car companies (Score:5, Insightful)
Yep. This is yet another of those "my magic bullet is better than your magic bullet, so we may as well do nothing until my magic bullet is ready" pieces.
Remember how G. W. Bush used to talk about hydrogen fuel cells as the next big thing. Except that they weren't. And in the meantime, gasoline continued and continues to rule - just as the cynic in me assumes was the plan all along.
Global Warming: just wait for carbon capture (or artificial clouds, or some magically safe nuclear design with no waste problem...) to magically fix everything - and in the meantime, COAL!!!
Manufacturing jobs: the robots are coming!! The robots are coming!!! And in the meantime, lets let all those Chinese humans do the robots' work. Oh, but you want a job? Well, you're not going to have one in 20 years, so why ask for one now...
Re:German study sponsored by diesel car companies (Score:4, Interesting)
Well written. Though the conclusions fall apart of the study with even this one sentence:
"Given a lifetime of 10 years and an annual travel distance of 15,000 kilometres, this translates into 73 to 98 grams of CO2 per kilometre, scientists Christoph Buchal, Hans-Dieter Karl and Hans-Werner Sinn noted in their study."
15K annual travel? 10 year life? Horseshit. Most people who commute that I know pack at least 20K per year on their vehicle, if not more. So that alone invalidates the conclusion as a more realistic number drops the per km CO2 debt by 33%. And a 10 year life? Maybe for one owner, but that electric car will go on to another owner and get another 10-15 years of life out of it if the used market for ICE cars is any indication, let alone used diesels that go on for decades in some cases. And as others have pointed out, Teslas and other electric cars seem to be bucking the trend - owners are keeping them around longer than they normally would keep a gas sedan.
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Error 4: "battery production emits 177 kg CO2/kWh"
This study [sciencedirect.com] puts Li-ion battery cost CO2 intensity at 0.26 kWh and 74 g of CO2 per 1 kWh of lifetime storage (amortized over all charging cycles). Since the average cycles come out as something like 1300, it comes out as around 100 kg per nominal 1 kWh of capacity. That's the *today's average*, though. It's going to get much better.
Re:German study sponsored by diesel car companies (Score:4, Insightful)
More importantly: they use the widely discredited NEDC values that are on average 40% too low because carmakers cheat.
It gets better. Not only do they take the (manufacturer self reported) NEDC values. They also take it from potentially the cleanest running diesel car money can buy. Hell the C220d could almost be classed as a "hybrid" since it has a massively oversized alternator that uses regenerative breaking and boosting to help improve vehicle efficiency.
Re:Of course... (Score:4, Informative)
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No, Germany has not moved from nuclear to coal. [cleanenergywire.org] Germany is moving from nuclear to renewables and from coal to renewables, absolutely and relatively. And before the holier-than-thou American nuclear shills point out that Germany has hardly reduced its burning of lignite: Germany produces less than half its electricity from fossil fuels. The USA produces almost two thirds from fossil fuels (63.5% [eia.gov]). Nuclear and renewables (CO2 neutral) account for 46.7% in Germany, only 36.4% in the USA. But AC, isn't electric
Re:Of course... (Score:5, Informative)
Actually they didn't. Neither Germany's coal / lignite total use consumption, nor their percentage of generation capacity, nor even their actual generation has gone up. In 2010 when the nuclear program started nuclear power went from 20.4GW to 12.1GW in a single year.
In that year coal went from 28.4GW to 25.7GW, and lignite went from 21.3GW to 19.9GW. Since 2010 those shares have remained incredibly even with current figures for hard coal at 24.2GW and lignite up slightly at 21GW and nuclear down slightly at 9.5GW with the last few remaining plants to go offline soon.
Now what *has* changed is a tripling in the installed capacity for wind and solar in 2010 and a 50% increase in nat-gas usage. Ultimately though the loss of nuclear which was only a pittance of Germany's generation in the first place hasn't had a visible effect in the consumption of coal or lignite.
As for "moving to coal" nothing could be further from the truth, a grand total of 2 brown coal and 0 lignite power stations have been opened since Fukushima. Both of those power stations were opened to facilitate the decommissioning of neighboring power stations, and while Germany is planning to close its remaining 9GW of nuclear reactors by end 2022, they also plan to close 13GW of the coal capacity in that time too.
Now I agree shutting nuclear is a stupid option, but they hardly "moved the opposite direction".
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How much do power storage solutions need to improve in order to transition to solar and wind? In other words, (1) how much of total electrical demand is perfectly inelastic, and (2) what is the optimum price point for it? The answer to this will reveal how much storage needs to cost before we can transition to solar and wind.
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Germany recently moved the opposite direction, away from nuclear and to coal.
Germany recently moved in a different direction still, away from nuclear and to renewables. [cleanenergywire.org] Coal is slightly decreasing in their mix, NOT increasing.
Their end-goal (of course) is to transition to solar and wind, but that's not achievable until power storage solutions improve.
Surely you've noticed that BEVs *are* a power storage solution, too. So there's not really a problem with powering them almost purely from renewables, assuming you have enough plugs (and most European countries *do* have enough plugs - in fact, some of them have silly numbers of car plugs already [insideevs.com])
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Isn't Germany abandoning nuclear as a clean energy source?
Re:Of course... (Score:5, Informative)
The American Enterprise Institute is not an "institute". It is a PR firm for the fossil fuel industry. It is funded by the Koch brothers.
Unsurprisingly, The American Enterprise Institute has published false scientific claims in the past. That is, after all, its purpose for existing.
"dailycaller"
Seriously? You quote the Daily Caller? Why not just link directly to the Nazi Party web site? WTF?!?
Re:Of course... (Score:4, Insightful)
This is only considering the effect of electric generation, and not where I live (as do a lot of Tesla owners), California, where the balance is more toward renewable energy.
We can also consider that petroleum is a conflict material, and making the Saudis richer isn't really in anyone's interest but MBS. And that we'll need petroleum for chemical feedstock rather than fuel.
Re:Of course... (Score:4, Insightful)
While you're working on EVs, your other electrical use benefits from the cleaner power generation.
While you're working on cleaner power sources, your EVs continue to be powered by electricity generated from fossil fuels, resulting in little to no benefit.
The two problems with this logic are that:
1) The electrical use that can benefit from currently installed clean sources mostly has to involve storage due to intermittency of their availability, which electric vehicles are an example of (and since privately-owned vehicles aren't driving most of the time, they *can* be connected most of the time).
2) Even EVs powered partly by fossil fuels are as clean or cleaner than ICE vehicles already (not to mention cheaper in the long run), and if you charge them from those new clean power sources, they're *way* cleaner.
Pretending that new clean power sources and BEVs don't each maximize the advantages of the other is silly, as is suggesting that you should work first on one and then on the other. Why the hell would anyone want do that?
Or Germany could start its nukes again (Score:5, Informative)
It's not like there's anything wrong with Germany's nuclear power plants. They're just mothballed because the Germans freaked out over Fukushima.
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It's not like there's anything wrong with Germany's nuclear power plants. They're just mothballed because the Germans freaked out over Fukushima.
They didn't want to get Mothra [wikipedia.org] -balled if something went wrong ...
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No, it isn't. There are almost no "market forces" in the energy sector, it is all subsidies, incentives and policies. Nuclear was heavily subsidized when the US produced a huge number of nuclear warheads in the 60s and the 70s. Today, nuclear is under so much pointless regulation that it has stagnated to the point where changing a PC in a department that does accounting requires approval from the nuclear regulator.
Here's an example: a nuclear plant I consult from time to time had to install four additional
That all depends... (Score:5, Interesting)
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Nitrous Oxide (NO) is in fact a greenhouse gas. You need to update your spiel.
Re:That all depends... (Score:4, Interesting)
As a rule of thumb: Molecules with two atoms aren't Greenhouse gases, with three or more are. Thus N2 and O2 aren't, but CO2, H2O or CH4 (Methane) are.
Re:That all depends... (Score:4, Informative)
Study sponsored by Shell and BP? (Score:4, Insightful)
Didn't read the article, but did they factor in carbon costs for diesel exploring, extracting, transporting, refining, delivery and VW lying about their emissions?
BMW (Score:2, Interesting)
Ifo Institute is one of these 'economic' research groups in Munich.... think BMW lobbyist.
My guess is BMW is behind in their electric car research and needs to catch up.
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Nope. Read the article. You can find it if you look for it.
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Well, at least they say they don't have connections to commercial parties. But I don't know the people who wrote it and how big the influence of the car industry is on them.
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The VW diesel emissions scandal was for excessive NOx emissions. The cheating diesels actually emitted less CO2 than the fixed ones, since the fix reduced MPG slightly (more fuel burned to travel same distance = more CO2 emitted). That was the tradeoff that VW was leveraging - tuning their TDI engines for better performance and mileage (less CO2 emitted), at the cost of more NOx emissions.
And technically, diesel vehicles emit less CO2 per mile than gasoline vehicles [sierraclub.org].
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Yes, but they chose a conservative 21% number which is delusional at best. What they are doing in their calculation is throwing away perfectly good cars and assuming they don't drive them very much to inflate the battery emissions.
Also VW lying about emissions is a net positive for CO2. VW lied about NOx emissions, and the problem there is when you lie about NOx you can run the engine more efficiently in terms of consumption and therefore CO2 production.
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Considering that the researches called 42 mpg a "technically unrealistic" goal despite the fact that we already have cars that meet that goal, I think it's safe to assume that the research paper is just corporate PR meant to undermine electric vehicle sales.
You're right about 42mpg. We had cars made in the 90's that used gasoline that could easily get 45-52mpg, the standard transmission Saturn(SW/SC) were famous for their high gas mileage. The problem of course was that the cars lasted far too long, they looked good for a very long time. Seeing a '94 still running in '19 is rare - the most common failure point is the front sub-frame(engine cradle) on them. But even a decade back, you'd run into people with 500k, 600k, 1m miles on those cars. And then there
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If a car can do 40mpg in the US, it can do 50mpg in Europe.
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If a car can do 40mpg in the US, it can do 50mpg in Europe.
Considering the state of automakers in Europe, and the fudging on fuel efficiency standards(different then the emissions cases that are still on-going) that happened a few years ago, you could be wrong or right.
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You're right about 42mpg.
No, he isn't. From TFA: They note further that the EU target of 59 grams of CO2 per km by 2030 corresponds to a “technically unrealistic” consumption of 2.2 litres of diesel or 2.6 litres of gas per 100 kms.
This is Europe we're talking about, where they use liters and kilometers, not gallons and miles. 2.2 liters per 100 km is over 106 mpg. How's that for "technically unrealistic"?
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Oh, not this asshole again.
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Considering you can't even spell Sulphur lol, and you whine about scientists as "nuts" - you are uneducated and trying to use FUD, and failing, like Schwit.
Aw. Looks like you didn't realize that sulpher is spelt differently in many english speaking countries. It's also likely the reason if I said hydro, you wouldn't understand that's what electricity is called in Ontario and Quebec. You shouldn't be so hard on yourself, worldly experience and all that will get you much further in life.
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And nobody calls electricity 'hydro' and nobody calls cigarettes 'fags' and there's absolutely no areas of the world where mayo is used as a primary condiment for food. Just look at all those things you just learned.
Re:Study sponsored by Shell and BP? (Score:4, Informative)
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Yes, there's this obvious implicit assumption that every EV needs charging from 0 to 100% every day. Obviously, the average daily charge for an EV will end up being the kWH required to drive the average daily distance. In the US, the average daily distance driven is about 37 miles. See: https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/ohim/... [dot.gov]
An EV will typically get at least 3 miles per kWH, often quite a bit more. But let's use 3 as a reasonable number.
https://cleantechnica.com/2018... [cleantechnica.com]
So that's about 12kWH per day required. Abou
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You don't know how to spell Sulfur. You should not be trying to browbeat anyone here, lol. You didn't even get to #16 on the periodic table before you gave up.
It's almost like you're fundamentally ignorant of the world beyond your chair. Let me know when you figure out where you went wrong, I can't wait for you to discover what a 'regional dialect' is. So much learning you can engage in, it might even be beneficial.
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Uh-huh. It's almost like your trailing off into incoherence now. Don't worry, I'm sure you and Jr., would get along fine.
This makes half sense, but think it through.. (Score:5, Insightful)
"it would have been preferable to opt for methane engines, “whose emissions are one-third less than those of diesel motors.” - In a laboratory that's true. What would the infrastructure for methane energy transportation look like in terms of emissions, given that methane releases are some 50x ++ times more potent as greenhouse gasses than C02 in the atmosphere? If we switched to methane how much more prevalent would these leaks be?
There's a failure to account on all sides of this study.
Careful (Score:5, Informative)
That study has been carefully doctored by our car industry (which is very, very powerful here) lobbyists. They had to make some unrealistic assumptions to get to that result.
Even if they didn't so what (Score:5, Insightful)
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It seems to ignore the carbon footprint of manufacturing of combustion engines, and also the recycling of electric vehicle components.
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Nope, they included the recycling components. ... On the same car in the same 10 year period. That's right, they calculated the cost of making the battery, owning it for 150000km and then the cost of recycling that battery and amortized those costs over the single 10 year period.
On the up side from year 10-20 when you own your car the battery becomes 100% CO2 free.
Re:Careful (Score:5, Interesting)
So the battery might well outlast the useful life of the vehicle; it's rare to see cars with over 400k km on the clock. Or perhaps EVs will last longer... another win for the environment. In any case, I seriously doubt that the battery will just be thrown out with the dirty diapers and potato peels after 75k km, as the study suggests.
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What about Musk's claim that a Model 3 will last 1 million miles?
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What about Musk's claim that a Model 3 will last 1 million miles?
Considering a maintained Saturn from the 90's could easily hit 1 million miles, it's doable. The biggest points of failure on a vehicle relate to it's chassis. The weakest points on Tesla's are the same as all modern A-Frame style cars, engine/transmission mount, which are usually made from folded or stamped steel. Second point of failure is the in-vehicle floor-pan which rusts from the inside out. The sound dampening materials used hold water amazingly well. Your average transport truck can see 5m mil
Re:Careful (Score:4, Informative)
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That one is actually easy to explain too. Because the generator used in cars don't produce electricity at a uniform level, you get plenty of noise along with spikes and brownouts in what's supplied to the electronics. The big thing that you should be worried about, are how many cars tie heating controls, radio/cell connections, and audio for the turn signal into a single point of failure. It's kinda like why on some cars you'll always see the headlights and parking lights fail on one side of the car firs
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Another weak point in many modern cars seems to be the electronics.
That's true. They have very complicated electrical systems, with lots and lots of connections.
EVs will have additional different failure points,
EVs have jack diddly shit for wiring compared to ICEs. Let's take your average modern ICE, with four cylinders and a variable-geometry turbocharger. That's going to have at least one knock sensor, it's got four injectors and four coil packs too if it's a gasser, it's got at least one coolant temp sensor, probably an oil temp sensor, and an oil pressure sensor or switch, and possibly an oil level sensor. There's a c
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This was only one of many parameters they tinkered with...
Extraction and processing of crude oil (Score:5, Insightful)
Does this also take into account the extraction and refining of crude oil and then transporting that to service stations? Just to give a more balanced picture.
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I doubt it: the study appears to believe that the engine and emissions systems appear fully formed in new vehicles with no expenditure in energy.
Similar bullshit claims were made and quickly debunked about solar panels and wind turbines
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It's not reasonable. The emissions systems of ICE vehicles contain precious metals. The engine and transmission of an ICE vehicle requires significantly more materials than the motors and transmission (a single-speed gear-reduction) of an EV.
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Yes but they used a conservative 21% figure. They cheated in many other ways though.
Green methane? (Score:4, Interesting)
Is there such a thing?
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I through problem with diesel is local pollution? (Score:5, Insightful)
On balance, globally, diesel is cleaner than standard non-leaded.
But it's worse locally. If you live in a city with a lot of diesel vehicles on the roads, the air you breath would be awful. Once those emissions dissipate, there is less pollution, but until they do the air locally is seriously toxic.
Diesel is great for ships and trains, not so much for cars on city streets.
Electric cars, and hybrid cars, may pollute just as much, or more, than standard non-leaded burners, or diesel, but the air around the city streets will be cleaner.
This is especially true in cities like Los Angeles. Because of the geography of such cities, smog is held in.
I hope I am making sense.
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Older diesels had two problems: Particulate and sulpher, the runner up being NOx. Modern diesels have particulate filters, and use piss to reduce sulpher and NOx emissions. Though a bunch of companies just finished getting slapped for cheating on those emission reports. Gasoline engines compared to a transport trucks, have higher particulate counts in many cases.
Ships and whatnot, mostly still burn bunker oil, and are a favorite way to get ride of older PCB laden oils. Which is such a small step away fr
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In terms of NOx, SOx and particulates you're very correct. However they are talking here exclusively in CO2 emissions and global warming doesn't give a damn where you're generating the emissions.
To be clear:
Electric cars good.
Emissions outside city center good.
Diesel cars bad.
Study that makes some wild assumptions and does some dodgy accounting is also bad.
Questionable assumptions made in this study (Score:5, Informative)
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You think these things aren't important to people, we will see. I don't commute every day, but I have several times since I have purchased my vehicle. More people do than you realize.
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You mean 75000km right? They did after all include the CO2 in manufacturing the battery, AND the CO2 in recycling that battery, and amortized them both in the same 10 year period.
Oh look another carefully curated "study" (Score:2)
Seriously, it's reaching the point where I just want to punch someone in the mouth when they start to say "..but such-and-such STUDY says.."
Shortsighted about the future (Score:3)
Cars didn't take over 100 years ago because we ran out of horses. And the first cars didn't compare too well against horses, either. Likewise, EVs are going to take over (hopefully) before we run out of fossil fuels.
The "mining argument" is stupid (Score:2)
It's a one-time problem, not an ongoing problem, for any given technology. More importantly, if carbon is being squeezed out of the economy as a whole, the carbon cost of mining steadily declines along with the carbon cost of everything else.
Debunked apparently (Score:2)
Maybe someone can rebut these rebuttals?
EVs are "Zero-Emissions Capable" or "Latent-ZE" (Score:2)
Even if electric vehicles are not "zero-emissions" today, they are all "zero-emissions capable." Unlike fossil-fueled vehicles, electric vehicles produce no direct emissions. This means that any secondary emissions attributed to electric vehicles will be reduced over time as methods of generating electricity or mining materials reduce their emissions. You can think of this as "Latent zero-emissions." While using an electric vehicle today produces emissions, using today's EV in the future will produce fewer
Amazing what you can do with statistics (Score:2)
Right, just amazing what you can do with statistics. Let's be clear about this: diesel motors are filthy. The cleanest diesel motor known to man is still filthy. No planted article about a commissioned study is going to change that.
Smells like Propaganda to me... (Score:2)
Isn't the whole point of Electric Vehicles to get away from fossil fuels?
Surely the infrastructure for producing electricity is already in place.
Manufacturing processes are also in place, and the study doesn't seem to include all the CO2 used to produce the Diesel counterparts, so I call B.S. here.
As systems improve, so will the CO2 emissions of production drop.
I really wish Big Oil would just give it up already. We need to have clean vehicles and clean energy to power them. That, and the actual spending mo
No, it does not (Score:2)
The so called "study" is the same nonsense that made it to the media 2 years ago as "Schwedenstudie" - because it's essentially the same.
There are so many flaws in this "study" that it's pretty much completely useless:
- old data
- wrong data
- wrong assumptions
- wrong comparisons
Stupid studies. (Score:2)
They don't say in the article but I would suspect they didn't go down either rabbit hole enough.
What are the CO2 costs for making a Diesel engine along with all its additional hardware that a EV has? What are the costs of mining, transporting, distributing, and storing all that oil? How about all the supply chains for the addition spare parts of a diesel?
All those factors lean against diesel. And this is before we get into distributed pollution vs concentrated pollution. We can mess up a small location a
Dubious at best (Score:2)
Possible, but is it a fair comparison? (Score:3)
Did they also count the footprint of the mining and manufacture of the internal combustion engine?
Did they count the footprint of extracting and refining the fuel in addition to what the fuel itself emits?
Even if fair, is the right answer 'therefore give up on EV' or is it 'therefore, we need to fix the grid'.
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I don't know how good the claims are, but:
https://batteryuniversity.com/... [batteryuniversity.com]
"Battery recycling is energy intensive. Reports reveal that it takes 6 to 10 times more energy to reclaim metals from some recycled batteries than from mining. The exception is the lead acid battery, from which lead can be extracted easily and reused without elaborate processes."
"Each country sets its own rules and adds tariffs to the purchase price of a new battery to make recycling feasible."
"Due to poor metal retrieval value, Li-i