Tesla vs ICE pollution

[morbot]

Glad to see that article actually compares both tank-to-wheel & well-to-wheel.

It bothers me when people argue that EVs have a high up front energy cost of production, then they just quote the ICE's MPG, as if it just organically grew in the showroom as if it had no energy cost to produce.

But even worse than the production energy cost argument in my opinion is the argument of "Where does the electricity come from? Burning COAL!"

It's a BS argument because the source of power that the grid uses can be changed. If people are willing to commit the money, time and effort, they can get off coal. There are plenty of places where coal is not the primary source... Washington uses hyrdo mostly (which does have it's environmental impacts as well)
ICE's are not adaptable. They need to burn fossil fuels. They cannot evolve, they can only be replaced.

 

[Jeff N]

It bothers me when people argue that EVs have a high up front energy cost of production, then they just quote the ICE's MPG, as if it just organically grew in the showroom as if it had no energy cost to produce.

Quite often I find that articles that discuss the upfront energy costs of electric vehicles (batteries) are grossly exaggerating. For example, there was an infamous Climate Central article a couple of years ago that based their estimates of energy/CO2 per kWh of battery storage on a study from a national university heavily subsidized by oil production (a university in Norway) while completely ignoring a newer GREET study that found CO2 intensity of battery production was 4x lower.

ICE's are not adaptable. They need to burn fossil fuels. They cannot evolve, they can only be replaced.

That's not strictly true. We can and probably will make synthetic liquid fuels from renewable sources but it's unlikely to scale as a complete gasoline replacement. In the medium term we might mandate use of E15 with cellulosic ethanol or biodiesel. We might also see E100 (pure ethanol) in some areas (it's already used in Brazil) or for some purposes (PHEV fuel?). However, the large majority of vehicle miles probably need to be shifted to electricity.

 

[Pollux]

@Patrick W,

Keep in mind that you and other Utah residents still have the option to purchase a Tesla over the web. Tesla will deliver it to you at your home or a nearby location with enough room for an 18-wheel truck, and will service and support it as well. You will have some additional paperwork to do on your end, but nothing that many other folks in this forum haven't already been through. You'll charge every night at your home, just like the rest of us, and wake up each morning with a full "tank".

Alan

 

[Jeff N]

Really? I found Prius mentioned in the document 22-times, starting with:

I don't have time to read the full 21 page document right now but will do so later today. The calculations you showed earlier were based on a conventional ICE. For example:

The Well-to-Wheel energy efficiency (from the primary energy source to the vehicle wheels) for the best performing conventional fossil fuel vehicles (excluding hybrids) is nominally around 15% for petrol and 18% for diesel (and lower in most real traffic conditions)

Look at your own quotation from that paper. They are comparing a mid-size 5-seat Prius often used in taxi service to microcars and a 2 seat low-profile sports car. Perhaps that was required because of the lack of available commercial passenger EVs when the paper was written but it's still not a realistic comparison.

I will have to see when I read the full report whether they were putting any other pinky fingers on their scale.

 

[AmpedRealtor]

A Model S is almost 2x cleaner to drive than an ICE in a state like West Virginia, where 96% of their electricity is generated by burning coal.

A Model S is 15x cleaner to drive than an ICE in a state like Washington, where 69% of their electricity is hydroelectric.

A Model S is 120x cleaner to drive than an ICE in a state like Vermont, where 69% of their electricity is nuclear.

Nuclear with a mix of renewables seems to be the best strategy to eliminating fossil fuels. We can't eliminate reliance on fossils without relying more heavily on nuclear, in my opinion. A viable fusion reactor can't come quickly enough.

 

[Jeff N]

A Model S is almost 2x cleaner to drive than an ICE in a state like West Virginia, where 96% of their electricity is generated by burning coal.

According to fueleconomy.gov, a Model S 85D (100 MPGe) in Charleston, WV would emit 260g per mile. A standard non-plugin Prius would emit 218g per mile.

In other words, an S85D would emit CO2 equivalent to a 42 mpg gasoline car. An S85 (89 MPGe) would be equivalent to about a 37 mpg gas car.

Pure coal with added transmission losses and the standard upstream overhead of 10% assumed by EPA would probably be around 2.5 or a little more pounds per kWh of CO2. These fueleconomy.gov calculations seem to be based on around 1.7 pounds per kWh because they average the grid emissions over a regional area that apparently includes much more than 4% non-coal sources.

A Model S is 15x cleaner to drive than an ICE in a state like Washington, where 69% of their electricity is hydroelectric.

According to fueleconomy.gov, an S85D driven in Olympia, Washington would emit 150g per mile or about 2/3 of what a Prius emits. Again, fueleconomy.gov is based on a wider region than just the hydroelectric intensive coastal areas of Washington state.

In order for the S85D to be 15x less the electricity would have to be around 0.1 pounds per kWh.

Considering only electricity generation inside Washington state, in 2012 the fuel sources were 70% hydro, 13% coal and another 11% natural gas. In total, almost 17 million tons of CO2 were emitted to generate almost 91 million MWh for an average of about 0.37 pounds per kWh.

See:
http://www.commerce.wa.gov/Documents/Utility-Fuel-Mix-Reports-Data-CY2012.pdf

Taking account of transmission losses, that makes it about 0.4 pounds per kWh or about 62g per mile in an S85D which is about 3.5x better than a Prius.

 

[Zapped]

Unlike an ICE, my EV will not kill me if I leave it running with the garage door closed. (CO pollution in < 5 minutes ). BTW, my plants love CO2

 

[Pollux]

@JeffN - I had trouble accepting your figures, so went to fueleconomy.gov to see for myself. I used one of the ZIP Codes for Charleston, WV, the state capital. To my surprise, the S60 had 0 grams CO2 emitted per mile at the tailpipe (no surprise there) but 260 g/mile for total emissions. While this data doesn't match my intuition, I accept that that's what fuel economy.gov is reporting. And, when I drill down into their discussion of the factors they use when computing these estimates, the discussion certainly seems comprehensive.

For my particular region, Massachusetts, the story is much better: 150 g/mi for Model S versus 218 g/mile for Prius versus 351 g/mi for a 4 cylinder POS versus 453 g/mi for the 2013 BMW 535i xDrive that I might have bought instead of the Model S.

@AmpedRealtor - do you have any citations for the figures you just cited?

I think that we need to de-carbonize the power production grid, as part of a larger set of changes to reduce the impact of CO2 on our environment. So I still view the electrification of transport as being very useful from a CO2-reduction standpoint, when taken in conjunction with grid de-carbonization. But it's good to have data that forces me to reconsider my intuition about the combination of electric vehicles with coal-burning power sources.

Thanks,
Alan

 

[AndY1]

I don't have time to read the full 21 page document right now but will do so later today. The calculations you showed earlier were based on a conventional ICE. For example:



Look at your own quotation from that paper. They are comparing a mid-size 5-seat Prius often used in taxi service to microcars and a 2 seat low-profile sports car. Perhaps that was required because of the lack of available commercial passenger EVs when the paper was written but it's still not a realistic comparison.

I will have to see when I read the full report whether they were putting any other pinky fingers on their scale.

In Europe, we don't usually drive such big cars than what you drive in the US, thus our regular ICE cars' consumption is very low - diesel ones even more. That's why Priuses don't get sold to much in the EU.

Let's take Citroen Cactus for example:

Citroën C4 Cactus | New Citroën C4 Cactus | Citroën UK - Citroën United Kingdom

The car's BlueHDi 100 engine emits only 82g/km (UK's 91.1mpg (76 US mpg)) on a NEDC combined cycle. How much CO2 does Prius emit per km?
Edit: Found it. Prius emits 89g/km on NEDC: TOYOTA Prius 1.8 VVT-i T3 CVT CO2 89 g/km

So, comparison of EU's petrol&diesel cars with the Prius is valid. That's why Prius isn't sold in the EU as much as in the US.

 

[Patrick W]

@Patrick W,

Keep in mind that you and other Utah residents still have the option to purchase a Tesla over the web. Tesla will deliver it to you at your home or a nearby location with enough room for an 18-wheel truck, and will service and support it as well. You will have some additional paperwork to do on your end, but nothing that many other folks in this forum haven't already been through. You'll charge every night at your home, just like the rest of us, and wake up each morning with a full "tank".

Alan

Hi Alan,

Yes, that's exactly what I did. And I'm looking forward to seeing the truck pull up in front of my place and deliver the car (assuming they can get into my narrow street).

 

[caddieo]

Anyone here have data comparing the amount of pollution created by burning fossil fuels to create enough electricity to drive a Model S a given distance versus the amount of pollution caused by burning fossil fuel in a similar sized ICE sedan going the same distance? Better still, a link to a study on the subject by someone not connected to Tesla or any other EV manufacturer.

This is not a valid comparison and is one mistake often made by those critical about EV's. You are comparing the production of an energy source (electricity) to the utilization of an energy source (gas or diesel) on the erroneous assumption that gas in the pump is the starting point. You should compare the pollution from the production of the EV's energy source (electricity) to the pollution from the production of the ICE's energy source (gasoline and diesel refining - or for practical purposes, the entire oil industry). If you are going to disregard this, then the only remaining valid comparison is between no-emission EV's and tailpipe emission of ICEs - both in the sphere of utilization.

 

[Vic_F]

To really do a full analysis you would have to include the entire production from raw materials, use, and recycling of the vehicle given some period of useful life.

 

[nwdiver]

Get rid of the 'long tail-pipe' and EVs win... hands down;

Then there's the fringe benefit that EVs can actually HELP displace dirty electricity by providing demand response. Renewables like Wind and Solar are obviously a variable source of power... the best companion for a variable power source is variable consumption. Consumption don't get much more variable than an EV. You plug in when you get home and you need 12kWh to get you to work... it doesn't matter when in the next 16 hours that 12kWh finds its way into your battery; your utility can tell your car to charge when there's excess energy available. The same is true when you plug in at work the next day.

Vs Biofuels

Aside from not being able to assist with demand response and potentially V2G one day... Biofuels are SIGNIFICANTLY less energy dense than solar PV. My roof produces enough energy annually for me to drive ~50k miles. Even if I could somehow put a biofuel plant on my roof... it's not going to produce enough energy for me to drive 20k... let alone 50k...

We're adding >10x more renewable production than EV consumption every year. Electric for the win.