
Diesel is not better for the environment than electric - mhandley
https://innovationorigins.com/no-diesel-is-not-better-for-the-environment-than-electric/
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smoovb
Chase that with this article - "Enough with the 'Actually, Electric Cars
Pollute More' Bullshit Already" [https://jalopnik.com/enough-with-the-
actually-electric-cars-...](https://jalopnik.com/enough-with-the-actually-
electric-cars-pollute-more-bu-1834338565)

~~~
jimjimjim
The jalopnik article was great.

It's one thing for a tech or green website to dispel that narrative but
japonik is a fairly hardcore car enthusiast/moterhead site.

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rebuilder
A bit of a sideline, but I'm inclined to agree that simply counting renewable
energy produced as carbon neutral isn't right. I'm not even thinking of the
emissions incurred in constructing e.g. solar plants. Energy is a liquid
market, any consumption takes up a part of the total production of the
relevant area, and it's the average emissions in that area we should be
concerned with, IMO.

It's probably not quite so cut-and dried. A gigafactory building solar to
produce it's own energy certainly seems like it should get a steep discount in
emissions. But where do we draw the line? I buy wind power. Does that mean it
no longer matters how much power I use? That doesn't seem reasonable, either.

~~~
benj111
Its a choice how people decide to account for it yes, the correct answer
probably depends on the situation.

If electricity supplied to the grid is 50% wind, and 50% coal. You could sell
50% of your customers 100% green electricity, or sell 50% green electricity to
all of your customers.

The former allows customer to put their money where their mouth is, and
directly support the green energy build out. The latter may be more suitable
for govt mandated targets.

The only thing that's unreasonable is counting green electricity twice.

~~~
ZeroGravitas
Note the former doesn't fully allow customers to put their money where their
mouth is, since a great deal of their electricity/power will be used
indirectly. So voting for government mandates will ensure that the companies
they buy from are using clean power even if they are suppliers to suppliers to
suppliers and so not directly influenceable via consumer action.

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JulianMorrison
The idea that you can say "oh, electric is based on fuel power plants" is just
disingenuous. Electricity is fungible. Having electric cars lets you replace
the fuel with renewables and the car doesn't have to care.

~~~
staffanj
Same could be said about the fossil cars.

Most diesel cars can be used with HVO100 - 100% renewable

~~~
_ph_
Fuel produced from anything farmed might be carbon neutral, but the process of
farming itself has a huge impact on the environment. Also, we just have by far
not enough farmland to come even close in supplying the traffic sector with
fuels - while in many regions there still is a shortage of food. So with the
exception of processing waste from food production, it is environmental-
negative to use grown fuels. Solar cells are more than 10x more efficient per
area used and can be mounted on top of roofs etc.

~~~
JulianMorrison
Farmed fuel is probably sensible for aircraft. I'd say that was its longer
term niche.

~~~
_ph_
That is a very good point. We have quite a few applications, where we will
need fuel for quite some time to come, let us reserve all the "reneweable"
fuels for those applications. Electric cars are a thing, electric airplanes
are unfortunately only at their very beginning.

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simion314
I do not understand the point "EVs are extremely useful for daily grid
management." and the image [https://innovationorigins.com/wp-
content/uploads/2019/04/Sch...](https://innovationorigins.com/wp-
content/uploads/2019/04/Schermafbeelding-2019-04-30-om-22.51.12.jpg)

I am imagining most cars will be plugged in at night when there is no solar
energy produced,do they imply you can buffer energy in the cars battery and
you can extract some if is needed or that you can charge it in smart ways,
like charge slower if the grid is not at full capacity.

Are there disadvantages for the battery life or charging time?

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legooolas
Disadvantage to the end user of the car: Cycling the batteries more to do this
will shorten their useful life.

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sliken
Yes, this is true. It's not a huge factor. Keep in mind that the worst 1% of
the days of the year are a serious strain on the electrical grid. They often
require very inefficient and expensive peak plants to spin up to help ensure
the grid doesn't fail. Not only are those peaker plants inefficient when
running, they are quite expensive even when not running.

Additionally even on those top 1% days (3.5 days a year) there's likely only a
few hours where the load is near max.

So if say 1M (2% or so of all cars) cars in a country like Germany would
contribute say 25% of their capacity just 3-4 days a year it could make a
significant difference and make the power grid more reliable and allow the
least efficient peaker plants to be decommissioned.

Even over a decade of use, electric car owners aren't going to notice 25% of
their battery being used 3-4 times a year.

~~~
legooolas
If it's those sort of numbers then that would be fine - in everything I've
read about this (which isn't a great deal) it's been very unclear as to how
often such pulling back of power would be used. :)

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NiekvdMaas
TLDR: the study referenced is inherently flawed. Among others:

* It used outdated NEDC tests instead of WLTP numbers. (Diesel) car makers are known to have cheated NEDC tests for decades, using corrected WLTP numbers changes the whole story.

* It exaggerated the CO2 emissions for production of batteries, Tesla's Gigafactory emits 2.6x less CO2 per kWh than assumed.

* It assumed a battery lifespan of just 150k km. Tesla's rated battery lifespan is over 2M km, so taking 300k as very conservative number changes the calculation significantly.

* It assumed an energy mix of today, instead of an increasing share of renewable energy in the future.

Using corrected data, the Tesla emits actually 63% less CO2 instead of 11-28%
more.

~~~
pdpi
> It assumed an energy mix of today, instead of an increasing share of
> renewable energy in the future.

This is probably worth top billing. Even if electric vehicles were to produce
more pollution _today_, they would still be a positive in that it would move a
large part of the pollution problem upstream, where we have many more
strategies available to solve it. Not entirely unlike an abstraction layer
that produces worse performance today but enables performance-optimising
refactoring tomorrow.

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foxyv
In the meantime electric cycling and public transportation beat both of these
2 ton couches on wheels. Anyone who has ever tried an E-Bike knows that they
are freaking amazing. We can do so much better than electric cars.

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jacquesm
The whole diesel/electric/petrol discussion is pointless, the only thing that
is actually _better_ for the environment is to drive less. The other three are
all about a degree of being less bad, not better.

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Ygg2
That advise just fails miseably in practice. We can't go back to non-
mechanical sources of power unless we want to economically regress to those
times.

Can you imagine ships taking months to cross Atlantic? Can you imagine horse
being used for delivery?

~~~
franky47
The fact that delivery requires moving a couple of tons of vehicle to deliver
at most 50kg of packages is where the problem lies. Larger delivery vehicles
will obviously be required for remote locations and logistics, but for edge
delivery (to re-use Cloud terminology) in urban spaces, there are many cases
where soft mobility solutions would make much more sense, like electric-
assisted cycling. DPD has started investing in those solutions [1].

As Dr Elliot Fishman said when Dominos announced pizza delivery by self-
driving cars: "If the answer is a 1500kg ton car to deliver a 0.9kg pizza,
you're not giving the problem your full attention". -
[https://twitter.com/ElliotFishman/status/907698051589869568](https://twitter.com/ElliotFishman/status/907698051589869568)

[1] [https://electrek.co/2019/04/10/p1-quadricycle-e-cargo-
bike/](https://electrek.co/2019/04/10/p1-quadricycle-e-cargo-bike/)

~~~
Ygg2
Isn't Amazon trying something like that with their drone program?

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whenchamenia
Flying drones are unlikely to be more efficient at scale than trucks.

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mothsonasloth
Is it just me or does anyone else not think in absolutes for cars, nuclear,
renewables etc.

Yes, fossil fuels should be phased out, however we should still continue
research to make Diesel and Petrol more efficient and clean. A large
proportion of the world still can't afford a car let alone an electric one,
those that do buy secondhand imports from the Western world (5-10 years old).

Equally logistics will be reliant on ICE for many years to come, so focusing
on efficiency and reducing those emissions.

Stop bashing either technology and focus on improving them together!

~~~
sddfd
I think it is clear that electric is the future, mostly because of better
energy efficiency, simpler manufacturing, and falling battery prices.

What I don't know is how quickly this future will come, and whether CNG/LNG
(to which engines of cars already in use can easily be converted) is the right
thing for the next 10 years until electric vehicles are cheap, and charging
and range aren't a problem anymore.

LNG/CNG burns much cleaner than diesel/gas and it is easier to refill than to
recharge. As bonus, refitted engines retain the ability to run on gas if
needed.

~~~
Theodores
We have had LNG/CNG for forty years. There have been huge fleets of public
sector vehicles converted to it in the past but those vehicles were not
replaced with more LNG/CNG vehicles. There was also a considerable tax
incentive.

It was a failed experiment. It never took off. Already electric cars have
better infrastructure and higher uptake and it isn't as if governments are
fleet buying electric vehicles for councils/utilities to use. They had been
doing that with the LNG/CNG things several decades ago, and building some
refilling infrastructure in depots.

When you compare the success of diesel in the European market for small cars
you can see a change of fuel is possible. Diesel isn't as cheap as it once was
but it still commands a large part of the European market.

I think we need to look to China and what they are doing. It is full steam
ahead for electric. The diesel and petrol cars will simply get replaced with
new vehicles, there won't be any conversion to LNG/CNG.

We get the full Musk vision of robot taxi cars that do their fleet thing
removing the need for car parks and making roads safe to even the lamest
squirrel, but the real danger to the automotive status quo is affordable
Chinese electric cars that pass the safety tests and are nice to be in just
because they are electric. We have had the market changed before with
Volkswagen and the Japanese cars coming along and actually being what people
wanted, despite being alien to the established industry.

Most cars you see reviewed are refreshes of the existing conventional ICE
models, they have updated styling and updated infotainment systems with a
revised version of the same platform. Despite the failings, Tesla are 7 years
ahead in redefining the automobile product. The incumbents are not really
trying, they are just running these ICE refresh vehicles. The market isn't
going to be disrupted by them.

Meanwhile, in China they have 5 and 10 year plans to dominate the automotive
trade with fully electric cars. Plus the incentives in their domestic market
make things possible at scale. Much like how the VW came along with a better
value proposition the same can happen with Chinese electric cars. If the
payments are easy and the warranty lasts forever with the running costs much
lower than ICE then the market for second hand ICE cars will be reduced to
scrap value. As soon as it comes to replacing a part such as a bolt buried
deep in the transmission somewhere it becomes more sensible to scrap the
thing.

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bdibs
I don’t know if that many people today actually think their electric car is
far better than traditional ICE vehicles, but that doesn’t matter.

These intermediate steps are required to setup the logistics and economies of
scale for a future when our primary energy source is a cleaner alternative.

~~~
close04
> economies of scale

This economy isn't new. Public transport, much of it electrified already, is
the very definition of economy of scale. It will trade some comfort and
convenience for increased efficiency and lower cost (not to mention some hefty
side benefits like less congestion and reclaiming some land in cities). It
could also free up city traffic and allow reclaiming some of the land. It's
also not very popular with people who can afford an EV today which leads me to
believe this is only about comfort and convenience at the budget you can
afford. For some people this leads to an EV, for others to an ICE.

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_ph_
The critisized article uses 550g/kWh for the German grid mix, but in 2018 it
already was down to about 480g/kWh and is on track to be lower in 2019 as
reneweables are expanded. So that number is quite off already.

H.W. Sinn has made a range of presentations (you can find them on youtube if
you understand German) where he tries to show how reneweables are infeasible.
Also there, he has the pattern to use slightly out of date numbers as basis of
his calculations. I actually have met C. Buchal at university, but that is
quite some time ago. He is a really nice guy and as a physicist he should have
spotted the shortcomings of this publication. But from what I have read, he is
working on synthetic fuels, so that might explain the angle.

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a13n
How is this news?

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Galaxeblaffer
Perfect example of how a comma can make all the difference in a sentence

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StreamBright
Depends on how do you produce electricity. In France where electricity is
produced by nuclear power, it is certainly true. In countries like Germany for
example where electricity is produced by burning coal, it might not be true.

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T-1000
Since the electricity produced in the EU is a part of the Emissions Trading
System (EU ETS), one could argue that any electricity used will have no impact
at all on the CO2 emissions. The reason is that in the ETS, there are a fixed
amount of emission allowances. So if a coal power plant produces extra
electricity, someone else will decide to emit less CO2.

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mathfailure
And one would lose their argument because having quotas on emissions doesn't
eliminate the impact (because otherwise they won't be quotas, they'd be a
prohibition).

~~~
T-1000
BKS argues that you cannot take solar panels on the roof of the battery
factory into your calculations since "otherwise you just take away green
electricity elsewhere". My point is that if you allow that reasoning (which I
think is correct) then it also follows that using dirty electricity in the EU
takes away dirty electricity elsewhere. Therefore, the calculated emission
impact of electricity use should probably be much closer to zero.

And since diesel use in transportation is not included in ETS, there is an
even bigger impact of switching from diesel to EV: you stop burning fossil
fuel in your car and the electricity you use will crowd out emissions
elsewhere.

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perfunctory
Also in the news: "The European Commission has formally accused BMW, VW, and
Daimler of colluding to impede the rollout of emissions limiting technology"
[0]

I really hope all these German carmakers become the next Kodak.

[0] [https://www.theverge.com/2019/4/5/18296540/european-
commissi...](https://www.theverge.com/2019/4/5/18296540/european-commission-
emissions-scandal-collusion-bmw-daimler-vw-diesel-petrol)

