# The Hidden Costs of Clean Electric Cars



## Coley (Jul 26, 2007)

The comments are much better than the article....


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## Technologic (Jul 20, 2008)

Coley said:


> The comments are much better than the article....


Actually a large large part of the electricity in the western US is solar, hydroelectric and wind power (something like 40% now).

Must suck to be such a moron


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## david85 (Nov 12, 2007)

Technologic said:


> Must suck to be such a moron


Actually I hear being dumb can be an easy life.


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## speedboats (Jan 10, 2009)

She talks of ancreased transmission costs because of increased infrastructure. Firstly, as already pointed out in the comments is the fact that the grid has surplus capacity off peak, when most would likely charge their vehicles. Secondly, What is the cost of 'transmission' of current fuels? It has to be loaded on ships, refined, then put in trucks for distribution across the country. Surely this attributes to a significant impact on both monetary and environmental resources?

Also pointed out in the comments is the relative effiencies of pulling energy from fossil fuels through the thermal process (early steam turbines in large ships were seriously efficent, the weak link was often the desalinator). Energy cannot be created or destroyed, only converted. Internal combustion engines convert the chemical energy into kinetic energy (crank rotation), heat energy (dissipated to atmosphere through the radiator) and sound energy (muffled through the use of mufflers), there are a few othere but we can deem them insignificant for this arguement. Most thermal power generators burn the fuel to product heat which is transfered to water to create steam which passes through, driving, a turbine. There are minimal residual energy losses. 

Bottom line... Producing a kW of electricity burning fossil fuel is more efficent than producing a kW in an internal combustion engine.


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## david85 (Nov 12, 2007)

speedboats said:


> Bottom line... Producing a kW of electricity burning fossil fuel is more efficent than producing a kW in an internal combustion engine.


Exactly. Which is why even if no new alternative energy development were made in terms of wind solar or other clean renewables, electric cars are still better even if the power plants are fossil fuel fired. Even the worst case senario with EVs is better than the best case senario with ICE or ICE fueled hybrids in terms of the environment and net energy efficiency.


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## Guest (Jan 31, 2009)

Track this article back to it's source, and I think you'll find it is funded by a company owned in turn by an oil company. There's a cottage industry going on in doing studies to prove electric cars are as bad as gasoline burners.

If they can convince the largest portion of the public that there are no environmental gains, they defuse a big motivator for electric cars. This is no conspiracy theory, they're doing it.

Note that lack of specifics. Why would they quote the U.S Department of energy as noting that 70% of electricity production without providing any numbers for the production of gasses?

I just walked through this for my own curiosity the other day, and indeed, the U.S. Department of Energy website was where I got a good part of the data. 

Let's talk about CO2. Here are the facts. Burning a gallon of gasoline in Uncle Jed and grannies petrol burner produces 19 lbs of CO2.

Electricity, produced ENTIRELY from COAL, the dirtiest fossil fuel we have, produces 2.05 lbs of CO2 per kilowatt. We DO have a mix of hydroelectric, wind, nuclear, and natural gas (the other predominant fossile fuel). When you take the WHOLE mix, INCLUDING the coal (58%), you get 1.35 lbs of CO2 per kilowatt.

The average mpg value for our U.S. fleet is 21.5 mpg. 
The average electric car uses about 250 wH per mile. It would then take 5.375 kW to drive 21.5 miles. That results in 7.25 lbs of CO2 per "gallon" equivalent in electricity from the grid as a whole.

IF we ONLY use coal generated electricity, this is a smidge over 11 lbs of CO2. So if you WERE able to somehow specify the dirtiest electricity available, you're putting out 57% of the CO2 that a gas burner does.

In reality, you get what you get from the utility company, and that is 38% of the CO2 produced by gasoline.

Here's some other little items of interest. We're driving 8 billion miles per DAY and consuming 373 million gallons of gasoline PER DAY. This is actuallyl down a bit from the previous year's 397 million gallons PER DAY - it is supposed due to the $4 price we had last summer. With the current drop in prices, it is undoubtedly back up there, but they don't collect the data that quickly.

Our average daily driving is 39.4 miles, and over half of the 203 million drivers are driving less than 30 miles per day.

At 373 million gallons, that's 3,543,500 TONS of CO2 PER DAY. If we drove entirely electric, that would be 1,346,530 TONS of CO2 per day. Or would it?

And that takes us to the part you already have picked up on. Turning up a nuclear or coal fired power plant is not precisely like firing up your Fiero. The power plant has to be designed to produce the maximum power we are going to pull from it cummulatively, residential, commercial, industrial, etc. Air conditioning is the biggest consumer of electricity, not cars. And so at 3:00 in the afternoon, on July 24th, all across America, whatever we are using to do everything we do, and on that afternoon, do it in cool comfort, is what the grid has to produce. 

They don't just hit the kill switch at 9:00 PM. They can do a few things to damp it down, but basically it runs all night at an only slightly reduced rate. 

Of course, we use our electric cars during the day, and largely charge them at night. We are basically using totally free electricity (to the power company, not to us) that was going to be produced anyway, with precisely the same amount of pollutants that it was going to produce anyway.

Perhaps at 230 million vehicles, we could move that needle. But for a paltry 10 million or so electric cars, we don't actually produce ANY CO2 that isn't already being produced, nor do we consume ANY electricity that isn't already being generated.

The entrenched governmental and corporate interests in all this simply are not going to have it that you will drive an all electric car. There is TOO MUCH money in the game. 

400 million gallons, even at $1.75 is $700 million dollars PER DAY or 255.5 BILLION per year. Over 26 BILLION goes to the Federal Government. Indeed, virtually every state government in the union is going broke because we're driving less due to the $4 rate and the tax revenues are coming in way below what they had budgeted for roads from the STATE tax on fuel. Missouri actually taxes electric cars $75 per year for the gasoline taxes they are NOT paying.

Sixty percent of that 255 billion goes directly overseas. Surprisingly, the largest point to benefit from this is NOT Saudi Arabia or Iran. It's actually Canada and to a lesser degree Mexico. But a lot of it does go to the Middle East.

For that kind of money, we could not only convert to electric cars quite easily, but we have ready to hand a total solution for the range concerns with electric cars.

MIT and Intel have both demonstrated a very nice improvement on a not very new technology - inductive transfer of power. Intel demonstrated a 75% efficient transfer of electric power, lighting a light bulb from several FEET away. This uses the concept of axially aligned tuned resonant circuits with very little radiation, and lots of harmless magnetic field. 

In the 1990s there were several studies, actually demonstrations, of inground rails that inductively coupled to a moving vehicle.

You want a stimulus package? Let's rebuild the Interstate Highway system, with a conduit under one of the lanes, or running along side. This conduit would carry all of our electric grid (totally upgrading the national grid) in easily maintanable underground lines (no more helicopters trimming trees), an entirely new conduit for glass (total upgrade of Internet/data communications) and a total new surface with all those bridges and so forth that are falling down.

In the process, we could build a "rail" of coils in the pavement. You could add a very simple coil to the bottom of the car to pick up power from these coils as you travelled on the Interstate.

The range problem pretty much goes away. If you are within "range" of an Interstate on your batteries, you get on the Interstate, and drive as far as you like in your electric car. On arrival at the destination, your batteries are fully charged. You drive around there as much as your pack allows, and then get back on the Interstate for the trip home. 

As a side benefit, the power from the coils is naturally a function of how well centered you are over them. You basically have a steering signal. It is trivial to use this signal for a steering error correction to allow the car to help you stay centered. And at that point, you are on cruise control. You can watch TV or dick around on the Internet (coupling the data signal through the power signal is again, not even a technology it is so simple). 

A little radar braking and your car is driving itself for the several hours of Interstate trip.

We'd get an entirely new concrete surface, an entirely new national electricity grid, and an entirely new data network, AND we would be able to make electric cars truly unlimited in range. 

What would it cost? Well, ummm, a lot. But with 255 billion to play with (that's at a $1.75 remember - well over half a trillion at $4) what difference does it make? If it were $10 trillion dollars we would likely have it paid for in 20 years.
Of course it would cause lots of angst in arrears. The Luddites would be telling us "I told you so." In doing it, demand for gasoline would plummet and it would be readily available for 50 cents a gallon - plus tax.

This is entirely doable. It would create millions of jobs and an economic expansion that would last a dozen years.

Is it going to happen? Utterly ridiculous. IBM didn't invent the personal computer. The railroads didn't invent the car or the trucking business. It is inherently in the nature of entrenched interests to defend the status quo.

Your government isn't going to do this. The oil companies aren't going to do this. And General Motors, above all, isn't going to do this. In fact, the car companies, Toyota included, are struggling manfully to reinvent the definition of an electric car as a gasoline car. This hybrid nonsense is actually a pretty heavily, and quite attractively I might add, engineered approach to convincing you that a gasoline powered car IS actually an EV! It is utterly comical. 

The next step is that you've really all been driving EVs all along! See the dome light?

(contd next message)


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## Guest (Jan 31, 2009)

contd from previous message

It has been my distinct privilege to have seen this go down before, a couple of times. In a prior life, I was editor and publisher of Boardwatch Magazine. A scant handful of people wanted a global data network where they could communicate freely (as in beer) and freely (as in no censorship). You're using it now. It was not invented by the telephone company. It was not invented by the cable company. And yes, Al Gore had more to do with it than you think he did. 

It was done by a few tens of thousands of mostly geeky guys who just wanted it really badly and spent their own money mostly in making it happen while under CONSTANT harassment by the telephone companies, the government, and every large corporation in the country. Not a handful of us even remember their names. In the corporate double talk media of our times, Microsoft and Cisco and Apple, and Verizon and AT&T all built the Internet. 

I was there. It didn't happen that way. And the guys who built it will always be super heroes to me. Ironman just has no clue.

These days, I've found a new group of super heroes. And its you. Every time one of you gets a rickety 1972 piece of shit pickup truck to drive 12 miles on bad batteries, my antenna start to vibrate. You are committing a really neat act (soon to be classified as a crime if I don't miss my guess). You're saving the world.

Like Pinky and the Brain. What are we going to do today Brain? Save the World Pinky. Take it over. Whatever.

Is it kind of frustrating? Do you feel like the world is against you? Do you feel like you are not being heard? Do you have to answer the same questions over and over again? Are you constantly assaulted by opinions that it doesn't make sense economically? Do you feel alone some times? Misunderstood by your wife and kids? Constantly struggling to justify spending money on your "toys." Even your friends "yeah, thats cool but what is it good for?"

WELL DIG IT! JUST DIG IT!

That's the sweetly nostalgic feeling you get, just before you take over the world. I have LIVED this once before. I'm not guessing. I know who's going to win this time, AGAIN. It's an idea that spreads slowly at first, from one geek to another. First there are three guys in a city, not enough for a club. Then five. Then seven. Then 10. It keeps growing because the idea itself is attractive. Then ten, and then twenty. More pizza. More beer. 

ANd there are ways, clumsy, expensive, and horrifically ugly ways, to play with it and experiment with it, and push it along an inch at a time. And then fifty. And then a hundred. If you think today's EVs are a little clumsy, you just weren't there for home made 300 baud modems. Two 300 baud modems do not make 600 baud, and two 120 volt controllers do not make 240 volts. Smoking piles of idiocy both times.


And when you reach 100,000, there is a pause. And dejectedly you realize that at 100,000 strong, you statistically don't actually quite exist in the vast panorama of 300 million people. And no matter how much you do, it will never get there.


The following Monday, it explodes. EVERY body wants one, and no one knows where to find one. Guys are spewing out $100 million dollar checks for idiotic business plans that mostly exist in some newcomers mind, and is barely on paper. The gold rush is on.

Good time to exit the scene. I sold out for $38 million in 1998.

This is exciting. You guys are heroes. And like all heroes, you don't feel like heroes, you don't know you're heroes, and frankly, to the rest of the world, you really don't look that much like heroes.

But you are...

Jack Rickard


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## speedboats (Jan 10, 2009)

Wow, that's a hard post to follow. Eloquently put. Guess you got out before the crash of Silicon Valley?

Your idea of putting a power / data cable alongside the interstate intrigues me, someting I thought about myself onthe 60 mile long trip to work (one way) 6 days a week. I was conceptualising a way to more productively spend this time (learn another language, new boat design concepts, write a screenplay... whatever), when my thoughts drifted to some sort of sensor placed in the centre of the road to 'guide' my vehicle. To use the same 'sensor' to transmit power both between cities and recharge vehicles is a truely brilliant step I would never have made. Problem is how do you put it in. Firstly the cost alone is prohibitive for any one person or private group to fund, then the transit authority would certainly frown on any attempt to 'dig up' THEIR roadside. 

The only way (I see) to do it would be to convince the utility companies and Government to work together for the greater good (yeah... right) Utility companies may be a little easier as the transmission grid is ageing and needs an overhaul anyway, and the expected increase in revenue should offset this over the comming years (remember money would need to be spent on an 'upgrade' anyway).

A way would need to be sought to charge for /pay for the energy 'inducted' from the grid (there is no such thing as a free lunch), and would the resultant EMF be a problem for any onboard electronics, or electronics onboard (wrist watch, i-pod, laptop, etc...)

On the note of consipracy, I'd imagine 'they' would be soon to pull out the cnacer card, saying that the EMF created by EV's increases the rate of some cancers. Perhaps an awareness camaign of our own is warranted?

I'm still not convinced about the CO2 and global warming arguement, and it's not why I'm here. I was sick of WASTING engery every time I touched the friction brake and had to re-accelerate, I was also attracted to the performance benifits, (max torque available at 1 RPM), handling benifits (possible low COG), and importantly the regenerative braking. 

We are looking at doing a ground up purpose design and built EV capable of my needs, 120 miles round trip plus change. Needless to say that's alot of amp hours on one charge, a 'charge on the run' system scuh as you've mooted would certainly cut down on battery requirements, therefore on required weight, further enhancing the performance benifits of the EV.


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## Guest (Feb 1, 2009)

> Wow, that's a hard post to follow. Eloquently put. Guess you got out before the crash of Silicon Valley?


Timing is everyting...



> Your idea of putting a power / data cable alongside the interstate intrigues me, someting I thought about myself onthe 60 mile long trip to work (one way) 6 days a week.


I don't really claim it as an original idea. As I said, there were actually several actual track demonstrations of this in the 90's using ordinary induction.




> Firstly the cost alone is prohibitive for any one person or private group to fund, then the transit authority would certainly frown on any attempt to 'dig up' THEIR roadside.


We used to fantasize about how EASY it would be for the telcos or cable cos to give us what we wanted, almost as a byproduct of what they were doing at the time. They could have actually DONE all the data we could have imagined then, in the dead space between voice on the data lines they had.
As I said, none of this is going to happen. Not for a hundred years and then only AFTER electric cars become ubiquitous and they are scrambling to find a way to rewrite history so it was their idea all along.



> A way would need to be sought to charge for /pay for the energy 'inducted' from the grid (there is no such thing as a free lunch), and would the resultant EMF be a problem for any onboard electronics, or electronics onboard (wrist watch, i-pod, laptop, etc...)


Not really. The utilities suffer about 7% transmission loss now. I doubt if it was bumper to bumper across all lanes would it amount to much more than that. Remember, we're running the main trunk right down along side it.

The EMF is not a problem. Please look up WiTricity and read the original work from MIT. It is a MAGNETIC field, no electric field to speak of - ostensibly no more than a cell phone. 

Finally, you may be surprised to learn that I share your view on CO2. My plants love it. And i don't really mind it. Here in Missouri this week we could use a bit of global warming. But those are the numbers as best as I could track them down.

In truth, my attraction to electric cars is more about elegance. When I get in and press the accelerator, the sound it makes causes me to want to turn to whoever's with me and say "Warp Factor Seven, Mr. Sulu."

In the ICE burner, on acceleration, I'm more inclined to say "Jethro - make sure Granny is tied on good in back."

The internal combustion engine was an ugly choice a hundred years ago. The problem was, gasoline was about 20 cents a gallon, and electricity was about 20 cents a kilowatt hour. That money is the equivalent of $4.56 a hundred years later. Gasoline is $1.75, but it was $4 a few months ago.

Electricity on the other hand is ubiquitously available now, and the national average price is 11.34 cents per kilowatt hour.

Doing this backwards, it would cost me about $107 to recharge today if the price of electricity had not DRAMATICALLY declined over the past 100 years. I doubt I would find it very "elegant" if that were the case. At 70 cents, I like it a lot better.



> We are looking at doing a ground up purpose design and built EV capable of my needs, 120 miles round trip plus change. Needless to say that's alot of amp hours on one charge, a 'charge on the run' system scuh as you've mooted would certainly cut down on battery requirements, therefore on required weight, further enhancing the performance benifits of the EV.


Good luck. It sounds like an exciting, but challenging project. I like a lot of what are in cars today, air conditioned seats, heated wiper fluid, bluetooth phone connections, XM radio, frost free remote controlled mirrors, ABS breaking, computer tuned suspensions, etc. etc. and don't really think we need to reinvent the car per se. It's just the drive train. 

There's no way I can engineer something as beautiful as the new hybrid drive trains on a Highlander or Lexus RX400h. They've got the engine, the starter/generator, and the main drive motor all on a single shaft to a Continously Variable Transmission.

But they don't want me to have what I want...control over charging, batteries, and more batteries.

My next project is a 2009 Mini Cooper Clubman. We already have the car and most of the components. We're just finishing up the Porsche Speedster and its kind of cold in the garage these days. 

Basically, for me, buy a NEW car, yank the engine and other oily smelly things, and remake it as an electric. I'll probably lose a couple of back seats. But I'm a grandpa at this point and it is very rare these days for anyone to be following me around in the car from the back seat anyway.

With the right donor car and enough LiFePo4 batteries 120 miles is probably achievable. I live in a small town in the midwest and drive about 120 miles a week. Truth to tell, over half the population drives less than 30 miles a day.

But I want ALL the creature comforts, air conditioning, heated seats, the works.

Electrifying the Interstate would simply remove the one disadvantage of electric cars - range. With it, you would have unlimited range. You could drive for DAYS and arrive fully charged. ANd yes, you'd have a steering signal.


Jack Rickard
http://www.evalbum.com/2363


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## Technologic (Jul 20, 2008)

jrickard said:


> Electrifying the Interstate would simply remove the one disadvantage of electric cars - range. With it, you would have unlimited range. You could drive for DAYS and arrive fully charged. ANd yes, you'd have a steering signal.
> 
> 
> Jack Rickard
> http://www.evalbum.com/2363


I personally would prefer just having electrolevitating trains throughout the US. 

I would use them for everything if given the opportunity (certainly would cut down on my car usage a lot).


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## speedboats (Jan 10, 2009)

jrickard, love the espeedster conversion, the Speedster is one of my favorite cars...

Yes we intend to have all the amenities available in most cars today, satelite capable radio, a/c, heater, ABS, sat nav, etc.

120 mile range seems excessive, but to compete in todays narrow vision market we need the range to seem like a real option, can't impress a new lady-friend if your range can't make it to 'make-out-point'


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