Story on Aluminum

Which is why so much of it is produced in Washington with all of the cheap hydro power.

<quote>nothing more than “congealed electricity.”</quote>

GM Volt: "Made from Electricity, powered by gasoline" ;-)

Nearly 16 kWh per kg in fact, but recycled aluminium needs only 5% as much energy to make, so they'd be sensible to source that.

dpeilow said:

Nearly 16 kWh per kg in fact, but recycled aluminium needs only 5% as much energy to make, so they'd be sensible to source that.

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So not a problem. If the Model S contains 1000kg of aluminium, that is 16.000kWh. If the car lasts 20 years (average for all cars in Norway), that is only 800kWh per year, around the energy contained in 20 gallons of gasoline.

After 20 years you spend another 800kWh to recycle all the 1000kg of aluminium.

jkirkebo said:

So not a problem. If the Model S contains 1000kg of aluminium, that is 16.000kWh. If the car lasts 20 years (average for all cars in Norway), that is only 800kWh per year, around the energy contained in 20 gallons of gasoline.

After 20 years you spend another 800kWh to recycle all the 1000kg of aluminium.

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Great breakdown...... I think pepople are wasting too much time on the energy used to produce the TM product line and are not focusing on the enery savings of the line. There is always going to be energy expendiutre in the manufacturing process may it be solar, wind, hydro-electric, LPG, coal or others. Please think of the end result.

I'm not sure the energy content of gasoline is directly relevant.

If it takes 16000 kWh to make a tonne of aluminium then that's 8320kg of CO2 (on our grid) so the equivalent emissions of 70000km in a modern diesel sedan.

The emissions from a steel plant are about 2.3kg CO2 per kg steel, so a tonne produces the equivalent of 19300km in the diesel.

Looked at another way, if the car lasts 250000 km (156250 miles), then you need to save 24g/km by using aluminium. That translates to 46 Wh/km, so roughly 25% in normal driving.


All this is pretty rough (particularly without knowing the metal content in the car exactly). But I do think it is worth them sourcing aluminium from recycled sources or the smelting electricity from renewable sources.

I think pepople are wasting too much time on the energy used to produce the TM product line and are not focusing on the enery savings of the line.

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You need to look at all of it, or it may not be worth doing.