electric car stations

[wwhitney]

Also - I'm not following where your 4 miles per kwh are coming from.

The car tells you your driving efficiency, 4 miles per kwh stored in the battery is pretty reasonable. The nominal 24 kwh battery capacity really means about 21 kwh useable capacity, and conveniently 4 miles / kwh * 21 kwh = 84 miles, the EPA range.

Regardless the 90% efficiency of the charger has nothing to do with the co2 produced for the generation of the power.

90% charging efficiency means 1 kwh at the wall socket gives you 0.9 kwh in the battery. So 4 miles / (kwh in the battery) means 3.6 miles / (kwh from the wall socket).

So roughly the same amount of co2 into the environment in this example.
So with that being said even if these numbers were correct I'll buy a Honda Fit for half the price of a Nissan Leaf 100% of the time.

Yes, if your electric grid is 100% driven by coal, the Leaf seems to match the Honda Fit in CO2 per mile via this simple calculation.

Except the factors we ignored, like the energy costs of refining gasoline versus transporting coal, are all worse for gasoline. Plus nobody's grid is 100% coal, there will be at least some lower carbon sources mixed in. California is already less than 10% coal.

So right now, the Leaf wins on CO2 pollution. And in 5 or 10 years, when the grid is even less CO2 based, that Fit will still be polluting the same amount of CO2/mile, while the grid-powered Leaf has improved.

Or you can buy solar panels when you buy your Leaf, and potentially get to near zero CO2/mile (just the manufacturing footprint of the panels).

Cheers, Wayne

 

[Fitzdrew516]

The car tells you your driving efficiency, 4 miles per kwh stored in the battery is pretty reasonable. The nominal 24 kwh battery capacity really means about 21 kwh useable capacity, and conveniently 4 miles / kwh * 21 kwh = 84 miles, the EPA range.


90% charging efficiency means 1 kwh at the wall socket gives you 0.9 kwh in the battery. So 4 miles / (kwh in the battery) means 3.6 miles / (kwh from the wall socket).


Yes, if your electric grid is 100% driven by coal, the Leaf seems to match the Honda Fit in CO2 per mile via this simple calculation.

Except the factors we ignored, like the energy costs of refining gasoline versus transporting coal, are all worse for gasoline. Plus nobody's grid is 100% coal, there will be at least some lower carbon sources mixed in. California is already less than 10% coal.

So right now, the Leaf wins on CO2 pollution. And in 5 or 10 years, when the grid is even less CO2 based, that Fit will still be polluting the same amount of CO2/mile, while the grid-powered Leaf has improved.

Or you can buy solar panels when you buy your Leaf, and potentially get to near zero CO2/mile (just the manufacturing footprint of the panels).

Cheers, Wayne

I don't care if it produces 4 times the emissions; I'm gonna buy the $15k car over the $30k car that does the same job, not to mention a battery powered car is way less convenient. ...The last calculation was run on numbers that weren't accurate . And to your point of manufacturing - there have been plenty of studies that show the mining for all the raw material needed for battery powered cars is much more detrimental to the environment. The numbers I had given were lbs of co2 generated prior to inefficiencies of said charger so that point really makes your argument worse unless you have a 100% efficient charger (which will never exist). Anyway - I will respectfully disagree and bow out because it seems you will never concede.

 

[wwhitney]

I don't care if it produces 4 times the emissions; I'm gonna buy the $15k car over the $30k car that does the same job, not to mention a battery powered car is way less convenient.

OK, that's fine, a $15k price difference is quite a lot and many people would make the same choice. (Although a Honda Fit is a smaller/less featured car than a Nissan Leaf). Just don't think the $15k car is producing less emissions per mile than an electric car. Understand that you are making a choice to pollute more because it is cheaper.

And to your point of manufacturing - there have been plenty of studies that show the mining for all the raw material needed for battery powered cars is much more detrimental to the environment.

There may have been plenty of such studies, but my understanding is that cradle-to-grave pollution accounting is very tricky and dependent on a bunch of numbers that aren't well measured. So the studies you mention are likely the ones funded by electric car opponents that have used the uncertainty at every point to make electric cars look bad.

Cheers, Wayne