Electric cars - what impact will they have?

P

Paulr

Senior Member
Joined
Apr 24, 2006
Messages
988
Reaction score
1
Location
Kempton Park
Based loosly on this thread I was thinking of a few other things and would like to have some more input and discussion on it.

Based on our current situation with regards to generating the majority of electricity (coal, oil and nuclear), how much impact will switching to electric cars actually have on the amount of pollution generated? Won't it simply be moving the source of pollution from the individual cars to the power stations? (Nevermind the fact that Eskom can barely cope with the current demand, that is not what this discussion is for.)

Unless more efficient, less polluting and more sustainable ways of generating electricity becomes the norm, I don't know if having an electric car will reduce emissions to below levels of a modern, well maintained engine.. What is your thoughts on that?

Also, for the long term aspect... Current batteries have a limited lifetime. After they start deteriorating, they have to be scrapped and rebuilt. Most of the materials gets re-used, but there is still quite a bit of waste products (most of them heavy and/or toxic metals and compounds). What will the effect of that be on the enviroment after, say, 10 years?

Feel free to add any thoughts you have! This is not to promote or bash anything, it's just to discuss ideas and things.
 
Well Hydrogen cars are electric cars -> minimal pollution during fuel cell production afaik. Burning of Hydrogen forms water so less pollution from cars.
Electric motors are silent -> less noise pollution
Less mechanical bits, no oil required for electric motor, no oil consumption when aged -> less air pollution
Batteries are developing really fast so and I don't think Lithium batteries are harmful to the environment. Lithium polymer batteries last really long too. If you charge the batteries via wall outlet it'll contribute to pollution due to coal/oil/nuclear powerplants.
Cold Fusion isn't that far into the future I hope...
I'm sure SOME pollution might be formed in the process of making electric cars but it'll most likely be way less than normal IC engines and the technologies used for the processes probably have a lot of areas for improvement which will decrease the pollution in the future.

I'm just guessing most of the above, feel free to prove me wrong :)
 
Paulr said:
Based loosly on this thread I was thinking of a few other things and would like to have some more input and discussion on it.

Based on our current situation with regards to generating the majority of electricity (coal, oil and nuclear), how much impact will switching to electric cars actually have on the amount of pollution generated? Won't it simply be moving the source of pollution from the individual cars to the power stations? (Nevermind the fact that Eskom can barely cope with the current demand, that is not what this discussion is for.)

Unless more efficient, less polluting and more sustainable ways of generating electricity becomes the norm, I don't know if having an electric car will reduce emissions to below levels of a modern, well maintained engine.. What is your thoughts on that?

Also, for the long term aspect... Current batteries have a limited lifetime. After they start deteriorating, they have to be scrapped and rebuilt. Most of the materials gets re-used, but there is still quite a bit of waste products (most of them heavy and/or toxic metals and compounds). What will the effect of that be on the enviroment after, say, 10 years?

Feel free to add any thoughts you have! This is not to promote or bash anything, it's just to discuss ideas and things.
Click to expand...

Actually, coal-fired power stations operate at around 80% efficiency compared to the 20-30% efficiency of typical internal combustion engines (ICE), so coal-powered electric cars are still significantly cleaner. You can find some interesting facts and figures of the well-to-wheel efficiency of the Tesla roadster (a Li-ion powered sportscar) at their site, here. If you want even more info, you can read their white papers.

Also NiMH and Li-Ion batteries contain far fewer harmful materials than traditional lead acid batteries as found in cars today, so in short an EV will always be cleaner than an ICE car. Reliability of EVs is also much much better due to them having much fewer moving parts.

The question of how our electricity grid would cope with the load is another story altogether, but methinks it should cope, provided people charged their cars in off-peak periods.
 
If Electric cars are issued with municipality-controlled charging devices, then they will charge during "quiet" times and actually help smooth out our electricity consumption, which power companies will LURVE.

Of course, not everybody will charge their cars overnight, or overday, and will instead be charging them during lunchtime and suppertime.

If they introduce a variable electricity charging meter, that charges more for the charging at "peak" times than at non-peak times, then we have a winner.

What i'm looking forward to is the eradication of stinky diesel and petrol. I want to be able to enjoy a convertable. But, the biggest culprits are the trucks, and i don't see any of them going electric soon.
 
There's actually a lot of work being done on vehicle-to-grid technology where parked EVs will transfer their power back to the grid during high peak times.

*edit* w1z4rd. check out the sequel called "Who Saved the Electric Car?" http://www.whokilledtheelectriccar.com/ *edit*
 
BlueCollar said:
Actually, coal-fired power stations operate at around 80% efficiency compared to the 20-30% efficiency of typical internal combustion engines (ICE), so coal-powered electric cars are still significantly cleaner.
Click to expand...

Efficiency and clean power are not the same thing. Also, while the power station may be more efficient, that's not including the losses in the distribution network.
 
Claymore said:
Efficiency and clean power are not the same thing. Also, while the power station may be more efficient, that's not including the losses in the distribution network.
Click to expand...

If a coal-fired plant is more efficient than an ICE, then it needs to burn less carbon-based fuel to generate the same amount of power. Coal-fired plants may emit more particulates or NOx or whatever (I'm not too clued up on power station emissions), but certainly less CO2 per MJ.

I was too lazy to convert mpg to l/100km and pounds to kg, but you'll get the point:

For starters, in terms of carbon dioxide emissions, they generate a fraction that expelled by a normal gasoline engine car. For every gallon of gasoline burned, approximately 22 pounds of CO2, an important global warming gas, are created. If a car gets 25 miles a gallon it will emit 22 pounds of carbon dioxide over that distance, as well as other pollutants. By comparison, an electric car may travel the same distance consuming 5 kilowatt hours (kWh) of electric power at a rate of 200 watt hours/mile. Assuming the local grid is 100% coal-fired, roughly 5 lbs of coal would be consumed to create that 5kWh. Depending on the grade and carbon content of the coal, one kilowatt hour creates approximately 1.4 pounds of CO2. That's 7 pounds of CO2 vs. 22 pounds to travel the same 25 miles. But recall that the power grid isn't entirely coal-fired; it includes hydroelectric, natural gas, nuclear and a small, but growing segment of renewables
Click to expand...

Link
 
Right, but the big pollution culprits are the busses and trucks, correct? Will battery or hydrogen driven motors produce enough torque to drive these heavy vehicles?
 
the price of electriciy will rise.
by a lot

if we all switched to EV tomorrow, we will have helped kill the environment...dumping all our ICE cars, and the manufacture of so many ev's.

I'm not going to hunt for the link, but a recent study showed if you carry on driving your (well maintained) ICE for the next 20 years you will have done less cumulative harm to the environment than if you had scrapped the car today and bought an EV. It only cancels out after around 20 years.
 
Renamed20070410 said:
the price of electriciy will rise.
by a lot

if we all switched to EV tomorrow, we will have helped kill the environment...dumping all our ICE cars, and the manufacture of so many ev's.

I'm not going to hunt for the link, but a recent study showed if you carry on driving your (well maintained) ICE for the next 20 years you will have done less cumulative harm to the environment than if you had scrapped the car today and bought an EV. It only cancels out after around 20 years.
Click to expand...

Nope. The energy consumed in running a ICE vehicle (especially ones with high fuel cosnumption, obviously) is far far more than the energy consumed in manufacturing the vehicle.

http://www.triplepundit.com/pages/askpablo-time-to-get-a-new-car-002538.php
 
dotVIBE said:
Right, but the big pollution culprits are the busses and trucks, correct? Will battery or hydrogen driven motors produce enough torque to drive these heavy vehicles?
Click to expand...

Hydrogen, yes - it's still internal combustion, even though there's less energy per gram than in diesel. Electric too - some electic vehicles deliver huge torque, and at zero rpm too.

Personally, I'd like to see more research into steam-driven vehicles. There were care like the Doble in the 1920s that could do 0-120kph in under 8 or 9 seconds, pretty damn quick for the time, with very few moving parts.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top
Sign up to the MyBroadband newsletter
X