UoCS Study: How Green are Electric Cars?

[Fredrik S]

It's my peeve too!

We should start a club.

Were do I register as a member?

[Norbert]

I thought this *is* the club.

[EV_de]

most of us payed at least 5-30k $US initiation fee ..

It must be 'the' club , otherwise we screwed ...

[JRP3]

I'd really be surprised if they did not apply the same criteria to ICE vehicles as EV's. This is not a report by Fox news or John Petersen after all.

The U.C.S. report, which takes into account the full cycle of energy production, often called a well-to-wheels analysis,...

[Teslawisher]

I don't recall where I read this, or how old this info is, but regards to using PV's to generate electricity to charge EV's, how much energy (coal or otherwise) is used to create the PV panels? I've read that it takes as much energy to create one than it can create over it's life. Is that right? If so, wind seems like a much better solution for a zero-emission system (even though enery is required to create the wind components).

[DuncanWatson]

I'd really be surprised if they did not apply the same criteria to ICE vehicles as EV's. This is not a report by Fox news or John Petersen after all.

They provided some of the heuristics they used for EVs but completely neglected to tell us any of the methodology for ICE. Without that data we can't evaluate it. I consider this a worthless report at this time. Show me the data and let me know that transportation, refining and other costs are included for gasoline. I also want to see the proportion of tar sands production included as well as oil spill costs.

[AndreN]

You can actually refute that doing some simple logic. The cost of a thing can't be less than the cost of the energy used to make it (or the manufacturer wouldn't make a profit). If a 100w panel cost $300, it must have taken less than $300 worth of energy to make it (probably a lot less given materials/labor/profit but let's be conservative). Let's say you get 600w of electricity per day from the panel. That's 6 cents of electricity per day, or $21 per year. The panel would pay for the energy used to make it in 15 years, less than the 25 year warranty for the panel.

[drees]

I don't recall where I read this, or how old this info is, but regards to using PV's to generate electricity to charge EV's, how much energy (coal or otherwise) is used to create the PV panels? I've read that it takes as much energy to create one than it can create over it's life. Is that right? If so, wind seems like a much better solution for a zero-emission system (even though enery is required to create the wind components).

The EROI for a PV system is generally around 10:1 or so - meaning that over it's useful life it will generate about 10x more energy than used to build it.

[JRP3]

They provided some of the heuristics they used for EVs but completely neglected to tell us any of the methodology for ICE. Without that data we can't evaluate it. I consider this a worthless report at this time. Show me the data and let me know that transportation, refining and other costs are included for gasoline. I also want to see the proportion of tar sands production included as well as oil spill costs.

The full report, which should include their methodolgy, is supposed to be out today I think.

[Robert.Boston]

Home installs of PV are fairly straightforward, as you're typically just putting panels on existing structures. Many people like living in bright sunny places, so they move to the resource.

Home wind turbines, however, are likely to require extensive zoning. Furthermore, people tend to shun living in locations with a truly high-quality wind resource, unless you're along a beach, in which case the zoning issues will be huge.

At grid scale, though, commercial wind is much further along than commercial solar. There are tremendous economies of scale in wind, while large-scale PV presents challenges.