UoCS Study: How Green are Electric Cars?

[drees]

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

It's here:

Global Warming Emissions and Fuel-Cost Savings of Electric Cars (2012) | Union of Concerned Scientists

Full report at the bottom of the page.

[Doug_G]

It's here:

Global Warming Emissions and Fuel-Cost Savings of Electric Cars (2012) | Union of Concerned Scientists

Full report at the bottom of the page.

There was no attempt whatsoever that I can see, with a quick perusal, to address well-to-wheels for ICE cars.

[drees]

There was no attempt whatsoever that I can see, with a quick perusal, to address well-to-wheels for ICE cars.

Haven't found the calculation, yet, but see page 8 of the full report where they say that they do. The Technical Appendix goes into great detail on how they calculated it for electric vehicles.

Edit: They use 11,200 grams CO2 / gallon of gasoline which they took from GREET. The actual burning of a gallon of gas will result in 8,170 grams CO2.

[hjr]

Why do the critics always use the Leaf or Volt as examples. The Leaf they say takes 0.34 kwh/mile. Today onthe highway in my Roadster 2.5 Sport I used 0.24 kwh/mile. In Connecticut they said the Leaf gets equivalent of 67 mpg, but if you use the actual numbers i get on my roadster it is more like the equivalent of a 95 mpg car.

[zack]

It's pretty easy to do a thought-experiment comparison of electric to ICE. Make the assumption that coal, the dirtiest source of energy for electricity, causes as much CO2 creation in the mining and shipping process to get it to the power plant as oil causes from the drilling and pumping at the well to shipping/pumping it to the refinery. Then, take the energy alone used to refine it into gasoline at 5-7kWH and stick that energy directly into my Roadster. I've just saved 19 lbs of CO2 from being created by not burning that gasoline, and I can now drive 20 miles using the 5kWH, the same distance a performance-comparable Porsche 911 Turbo could have driven on that gallon of gas (on average... they're 16 city, 24 highway). If they argue that the transmission line losses make up the difference, remind them that we didn't have to truck that gasoline from the refinery to the gas station, and it didn't have to evaporate as it was being pumped into the ICE car.

It's a simple explanation, and it proves our point definitively.

[JRP3]

Why do the critics always use the Leaf or Volt as examples. The Leaf they say takes 0.34 kwh/mile. Today onthe highway in my Roadster 2.5 Sport I used 0.24 kwh/mile. In Connecticut they said the Leaf gets equivalent of 67 mpg, but if you use the actual numbers i get on my roadster it is more like the equivalent of a 95 mpg car.

I think it's reasonable to use currently available vehicles that most people might actually buy. The Roadster doesn't really count.

[DuncanWatson]

There was no attempt whatsoever that I can see, with a quick perusal, to address well-to-wheels for ICE cars.

I went through the Prepublication paper as well and though found references to well to wheel, I couldn't see anywhere were the cost was calculated for an ICE vehicle. It calculated the cost of EV to a miles per gallon of green house gas equivelant. No reference to what one gallon of ghg is equal to or what assumptions upstream it makes on the production of a gallon of gasoline.

This means that the work is unverifiable.

[JRP3]

Haven't found the calculation, yet, but see page 8 of the full report where they say that they do. The Technical Appendix goes into great detail on how they calculated it for electric vehicles.

Edit: They use 11,200 grams CO2 / gallon of gasoline which they took from GREET. The actual burning of a gallon of gas will result in 8,170 grams CO2.

I went through the Prepublication paper as well and though found references to well to wheel, I couldn't see anywhere were the cost was calculated for an ICE vehicle. It calculated the cost of EV to a miles per gallon of green house gas equivelant. No reference to what one gallon of ghg is equal to or what assumptions upstream it makes on the production of a gallon of gasoline.

This means that the work is unverifiable.

According to Drees they used the GREET model, which includes upstream emissions for gasoline.

[vfx]

I think it's reasonable to use currently available vehicles that most people might actually buy. The Roadster doesn't really count.

Not without mentioning the capabilities of the Roadster and how that it is entirely reasonable to assume that all EVs will get better with each year and the Roadster is proof.

This kind of report if widely accepted will stop time.

Just like people are stuck on old info and data like "you have to drain the battery" and " the heater and headlight kill range" and memes from the 90's.

At least it kills the "electric cars are dirtier because they run on coal" line that was probably more true 20 years ago.

[JRP3]

Unless most EV's are going to be small sports cars their efficiency is probably not going to be similar to the Roadster. There is also the issue of charging efficiency, the Roadster seems to use a lot more energy managing the pack than other EV's, which lowers it's actual wall to wheels efficiency.