
What's the real environmental cost of electric cars? - petenixey
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-22001356
======
petenixey
It's always seemed crazy to me that just because electric cars are non-
polluting, people forget that dangling on the other end of that charging cable
is probably a coal-fired power station.

I've never seen figures on this before but it's nice to finally see something
quantifying that. This study found: "For a European average power generation
mix, and if you use your car for 150,000km, you could hope for a 25%
improvement [in global warming impact] relative to a gasoline car"

and also points out that: "some cars make almost double the impact on global
warming as conventional cars. This is mostly because of the raw materials and
energy needed to build the lithium-ion batteries."

I'd love to see more data around this. I'm not anti-electric but it does seem
we could apply our efforts, natural resources and budgets more effectively to
other places, like loft insulation.

~~~
jd
> It's always seemed crazy to me that just because electric cars are non-
> polluting, people forget that dangling on the other end of that charging
> cable is probably a coal-fired power station.

I don't think that's crazy at all. Think of it as "refactoring" the
environmental burden. First you move the energy generation from individual
cars to a central energy source. If the energy source (coal in this case) is
terrible you won't immediately get a big benefit. However, you have separated
the environmental impact of energy generation from combustion motors to a
central power plant. So now when you build an infrastructure of clean sources
of power: nuclear, geothermal, wind, solar all your cars get the benefit
automatically. This is good design. Separation of concerns!

The fact that we're burning coal in this day and age is crazy, of course.
Especially given that nuclear power plants are being shut down in favor of
coal. Environmental policy isn't exactly rational, but highly politicized
issues never are.

~~~
gurkendoktor
> This is good design. Separation of concerns!

I'm not convinced that this is necessarily true for environmental policy.
Imagine, for example, how much people would care about their waste footprint
if they had to _keep_ all the trash that would otherwise go into an ocean.

Once we have no idea anymore where the power in our cars comes from, and no
visible pollution in the street that we know is caused by cars, won't the
search for a better power source slow down a lot?

"Not in my neighbourhood" etc... :)

------
IgorPartola
Aside from the fact that EV are plugged into dirty power sources, lithium in
their batteries is a huge problem as well: [1] [2].

The reality is that we know how to build efficient charging systems, and we
can even build some efficient power sources, such as wind turbines, nuclear
reactors, and even solar panels. The problem is that we don't have a good way
to store all this energy so that we can make a vehicle go. A compressed air
vehicle [3] might be a better design than a lithium battery one, but it's
certainly more dangerous. Other batteries just don't seem to measure up to
lithium in terms of charge/discharge cycles and/or energy density [4].

The best we can hope for is a better energy storage system than what we've had
up to now. Ideally, something that's clean to manufacture, recyclable,
efficient, and long-lasting, but that's been the battery pipe dream. After
all, our current cars still use the lead/acid batteries which have not changed
much since they entered production in 1881, aside from the invention of a
sealed version in the 1970s.

[1] [http://www.reuters.com/article/2009/05/25/us-lithium-
analysi...](http://www.reuters.com/article/2009/05/25/us-lithium-analysis-
idUSTRE54O2CP20090525)

[2] [http://junkscience.com/2012/08/09/rare-earth-mining-in-
china...](http://junkscience.com/2012/08/09/rare-earth-mining-in-china-comes-
at-a-heavy-cost-for-local-villages/)

[3] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compressed_air_car>

[4]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rechargeable_battery#Table_of_r...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rechargeable_battery#Table_of_rechargeable_battery_types)

------
buddym
I think there's no doubt in anyone's mind that electric cars themselves are
reliant on the grid, and if its a coal burning station then obviously you're
burning coal to drive. I hope that as greener energy forms such as solar and
wind catch on we'll be able to really reduce our carbon footprints. While we
as consumers can make a personal change on our end and go electric/hybrid it's
really up to govs to help make the grid cleaner with legislation and
regulation. It's kind of sad that individuals can't go all the way but I want
to be optimistic about this. Maybe combining your own solar panels + electric
car can some day in the near future get us where we'd want to be?

~~~
revelation
Gasoline cars are reliant on the grid (of petrol stations), unless you can
refine and pump oil yourself.

Eletric cars are only reliant on electricity. Availablity of eletricity from
the grid is much better than gasoline from petrol stations, and even if power
goes out you can charge your car from your solar panels or any other means you
can find to generate electricity, of which there are plenty. Gyms could
probably generate plenty of miles just from obese people on crosstrainers.

All in all, a move to electric cars and renewable power sources will
_decentralize_ energy supply and make us less reliant on the grid (and all the
failed states that supply oil).

~~~
notdonspaulding
Indeed, I think it's neat to consider that the electric grid could eventually
end up being _more distributed_ than the petrol grid.

Petrol has to be drilled from wherever the fossils happened to be compressed,
transported to wherever the closest port is, pipelined to wherever it's
convenient to have a refinery, trucked to gas stations, pumped into your car.
It's a very top-down hierarchy.

Electricity can be obtained from wherever the solar, wind, gas-powered-
generator, nuclear-generator, geothermal sources are (hint: just about
anywhere), put onto a fault-tolerant grid, and "pumped into cars" anywhere
we've run copper.

Gas wins on storage capacity/convenience, but that's about it.

------
neya
I am no fan of conspiracy theories, but I truly believe that some oil
corporation or related investors _might_ have had their influence on this
article. Media is an easy source to manipulate people and BBC does it really
well (They have a very good history of writing up biased articles in favor
of/against certain companies/industries). I wait for the day when some
anonymous source like Wikileaks publishes a link on how corrupt these fucking
media organizations are from top to bottom. Really.

~~~
notdonspaulding
IMO, the article doesn't appear well-written enough to have been a
commissioned piece.

------
relix
I think the promise is in the future. Right now electric cars might not be as
eco-friendly as you'd expect, but once they've become popular, recycling
techniques for the batteries will improve, and we can easily switch the
generator of the electricity from coal to something like nuclear power to cut
back on emissions, the car won't care. When you're driving a gasoline car
though, you're basically stuck with gas.

~~~
randomdata
It seems like the electric car will be important in normalizing the grid as
solar and wind projects expand. The hard part will be convincing people that
their batteries do not need to be full all of the time, and making cars
intelligent enough to ensure that the batteries are full when they need to be.

~~~
notdonspaulding
> The hard part will be convincing people that their batteries do not need to
> be full all of the time...

This is the hard part not because people are stupid, but because their needs
and wants, in aggregate, are complex.

My wife is an extremely efficient commuter. She grew up on a farm where they
had a "bi-weekly trip-into-town". As a consequence, she doesn't go anywhere
without having her route figured out and optimized, traveling salesman style.
But she's the exception. The rule is people who spontaneously change their
minds about where they want to go in their cars in the next 6 hours.

The reason gasoline wins is not because it's more efficient, but because it
_augments_ people's behaviors instead of trying to _alter_ them.

That being said, electric vehicles are certainly able, today, to positively
augment the driving habits of people who are near charging infrastructure or
who regularly drive less than 50 miles/day.

~~~
randomdata
I wasn't suggesting stupidity, just that people tend to think about the worst
possible situations when presented with new technologies.

It is handy that the aforementioned sources of power start to diminish as
people are also settling in for the day and are less apt to use their car. You
are certainly not going to be driving while you are sleeping, for instance,
which is a great time for the car to give back to the grid for a while, as
needed, before charging back up for the morning. However, the idea that your
car isn't juiced up for that late night emergency that happens, maybe, once in
your life is a concern many, including myself, will have.

I don't think a car with appropriate learning systems would need to get in the
way of your normal life here, but knowing you have a car available for those
rare emergencies is a comfort blanket many will realize they have.

------
Egregore
I'd prefer to drive my bicycle on a street with electric cars, rather than on
a street with gasoline cars.

------
ohwp
I think since 2010 fuel consumption has declined a lot even though weight has
increased. So when manufacturers decrease weight, combustion cars will become
even more environment friendly.

For example: a big Audi nowadays can do 20-30 km/l. When losing a lot of
weight it could even do more. Losing a lot of engine power maybe even more
(there is hardly any need to go faster than 160 km/h).

Edit: wow, reading a little into it: in 1899 a electric car was the first to
break the 100 km/h barier.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_car>

------
jinushaun
And the alternative is to keep using ICE automobiles? Our very existence
impacts the "environment". We're either using up a finite amount of oil, or a
finite amount of materials to make electronics. This argument against electric
cars makes no sense.

[http://greenmonk.net/2010/01/07/what-if-we-create-a-
better-w...](http://greenmonk.net/2010/01/07/what-if-we-create-a-better-world-
for-nothing/)

------
InclinedPlane
Yes and no.

No technology is going to be a cut and dried solution to all our environmental
problems. None. Period. Not even Mr. Fusion.

Ultimately the question is whether or not electric cars are an important
stepping stone along the line to a future where more environmental problems
are solved or significantly ameliorated compared to today. I think the answer
to that question is probably yes, even with the extremely flawed electric
vehicles of today (although with enough evidence I might be convinced
otherwise). However, we very much do need to keep in mind that this is at best
a baby step, and the work remaining outweighs the work that's been done by a
huge amount.

------
kumarski
Elon musk claims that even if you take the same source fuel and burn it into
stationary power plants, you're still better off. If you burn natural gas in a
modern general electric gas turbine, you'll get about 60% efficiency. If you
put that same fuel in an internal combustion engine, you get about 20%
efficiency. So electric cars 'make sense' if this logic is valid.

<http://youtu.be/IgKWPdJWuBQ?t=59s> I summarized at 59 seconds of this youtube
clip you can see his exact claim. Is his claim logically/mathematically
sound?^

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snowwrestler
The key number to look at in these "well to wheel" type holistic studies in
the assumed lifetime of the car. In this study they used 150,000km, which is
about 94,000 miles. That seems low to me. Most cars manufactured in the 1990s
could last a lot longer than that, and cars are made even more reliably now.

This matters because the payoff for an EV improves with every mile driven.
They are very energy-intensive to manufacture, but more efficient to operate.
In addition, the EV's efficiency can be "upgraded" over time as the mix of
electricity sources improves.

------
obilgic
I have a mind-bending question (at least it makes me wonder)

I think it does not matter which energy storage unit we consume right now.
Eventually all of them will be consumed. Renewable energy? nope it is not
really renewable, it is just another energy storage unit, just renews faster
than oil, because it stores less energy. Ultimately the only energy source we
have is the sun. What will happen when our daily consumption rate becomes
larger than the amount sun can suppl?

~~~
ed209
You might find this interesting
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orders_of_magnitude_(energy)>

Total worldwide energy consumption (2008) 10^19

Total energy from the sun that strikes earth each year 10^24

Total energy output from the sun each year 10^34

~~~
m_mueller
How much of that 10^24 is required to power earth's ecosystem though? Not that
this is relevant now, but I could see it becoming relevant when/if we move
towards leeching 10^21 of that energy for human needs in a hundred years -
which isn't really much in global terms. Mankind might need to move towards a
level 2 civilization earlier than some people imagine. That or we figure out
large scale fusion energy.

~~~
legitsource
I doubt we get to the point where we start taking too much light for plants to
survive any time soon, and the heat will end up here anyway.

------
ilitirit
I think the most environmentally friendly option is to just avoid buying a new
car.

------
shadowrunner
Electric cars are a form of self-denial. We think we're doing the environment
a favor when in reality we're terrified of a future without cars.

~~~
panacea
Not true. We can still have electric cars almost in perpetuity if the source
of energy is the Sun... the current untapped carbon-neutral energy producing
byproducts (hydro, wind, waves); we can also use the Moon (tidal hydro); the
Earth's molten core (geothermal). et al.

Progress (as someone said upthread) is refactoring away from internal
combustion engines that only operate by burning stored fossil fuels, to
engines that operate by storing electrical energy... then we can start to
spend the next couple of decades innovating on the electrical production
problem and find a way to bend physics and the abundant energy in the system
to our advantage.

(and I say all this as a bit of a doom and gloom cynic) OK, admittedly, we
make batteries from finite, rare-earth batteries. That's ultimately a problem.

~~~
gnaffle
You forget that batteries can be recycled.

