How environmentally friendly is an electric car?

Question

We are constantly told that the mass produced electric car will soon be with us and many people argue that this means zero pollution.
Clearly these people overlook the fact that as most of our electricity comes from burning fossil fuel we are merely moving the pollution from the actual vehicle to the power station.
Has anybody actually carried out any research into how environmentally friendly electric cars are when all factors are taken into consideration? I do not know the answer but my instant gut reaction is that electric cars are probably worse polluters that petrol or diesel cars; it must be less efficient to convert oil into electricity and send it round the country to charge batteries for cars than simply burning it within the vehicle.

Answer 1

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The answer really only depends on the GGE mileage of a given electric vehicle. On average electric plants emit 1.341 lbm CO2/kWh. Since the GGE is 36.3kWh, a GGE of electricity would emit 40.66 lbm CO2. This is in comparison to 19.6 lbm CO2/gal for gasoline. Divide this by the average mileage of the gasoline cars (20.8) and you get 0.94 lbm CO2/mile. Now to do better than this an electric car would need to go more than 43.4 miles on a GGE. Some quick research turned up that most vehicles did do better than this, except the Ford Ranger EV at 39 MPGGE.

Source(s):

web.mit.edu/evt/summary_mpgge.pdf

Answer 2

i had to do a report on hybrid vehicles and found out that they are even less environmentally because of the disposal of the batteries and other components used in them which go bad in about 8 years so from that i would say a 100% electric car might be the same pollution factor of a regular gas powered car at best, since they energy is still probably coming form the burning of some fossil fuel like you said.

Answer 3

That is a great question..and a dilemma

Electric cars may be environmentally friendly.. Ideally electric cars are less polluting and taken alone they are less polluting. However, if we continue to burn coal to make electricity to recharge them they will necessarily not be environmentally friendly.

The hope is that we can increase renewable energy production such as wind, wave, solar, (some would day nuclear), etc. That way electricity for recharging electric vehicles would be carbon neutral or reduce the generation of CO2.

Further centralized electricity production will allow easier (centralized) collection of the CO2 if we choose to collect CO2.

Finally, we currently use Coal to produce electricity.. not Oil .. if we go to electric cars it will at a minimum reduce our oil usage and dependence on foreign oil.

So electric cars are not a solution but a way of changing the type of energy we use.. and it may be less polluting if we take pains to change the way we generate electricity. But electric cars are not the total solution if we do not change the entire energy system.

Answer 4

I have installed solar panels on my roof , so the power come from renewable energy sources .

There is reason why they can't invent an electric car that can charge with some form of solar panels while driving along .

They are much cheaper to maintain . You don't need to pay for spare parts like oil filters , oil change etc etc .

The batteries should be able to breakdown into its components and go to recycling at the end of its lifespan .

The fleet of electric cars manufactured in mid 1990 was destroyed by GM motors . All the drivers were campaigning hard against it because there was nothing wrong with the cars . If these cars don't need parts like oil filters etc , there are less business for them . These automotive companies and the oil company only think for their pockets .Shame on them !

Answer 5

It would be more efficient to use electric cars on the electric grid because the same amount of coal gets used 24/7, regardless what is using it.

Electric companies can take a unit off line when demand is low, but for every unit that is producing steam is running at near 100%. It's not one of those scalable services that are using 30% energy, so 30% coal is burnt. Doesn't work that way. To maintain the steam, coal output remains the same per unit. That's actually wasted energy we could be putting into transportation, particularly that most electric cars would be charging in the off peak periods. So less petrol, more efficient use of existing electric services.

Research how an electric plant works. With coal, it's broken down to dust. It shot a long tall chamber that gets ignited and looks like a big fire tornado looking swirl. There are metal interconnected pipes several feet thick running the length of the chamber. If the heat changes all the time, in wide variances, the pipes next to fire storm break and leak. This is huge downtimes for the plant to fix, so once a temperature is reached, it is maintained. The superheated steam is then fed into steam turbine.

One day electric car will be chargeable by home renewables, but in the meantime our current infrastructure would support electric cars, and not really add any extra pollution as electric production would remain the same.

Answer 6

It depends on who you want to listen to.

Some studies show that, even though the energy starts from fossil fuels, the pollution will still be less (according to the movie "Who Killed the Electric Car"). However, other studies show the opposite. Nobody really knows.

But if we first switch to 100% renewable energy (wind, solar, ect), then we can generate electricity without the need of fossil fuels.

Answer 7

I'll repost my answer to a similar question:

Electric cars aren't the ultimate solution to our environmental woes, but they are a start.

The big benefit electric cars will have is in economies of scale. Even though most of the power will come from dirty power plants (coal, oil), the economy of scale of a large point source like a power plant makes it more efficient than tons of little power plants driving themselves around. Also, it is much easier to stick a pollutant scrubber on a single power plant than it is to stick one on every car that's driving around.

Another thing with electric cars is that they set the stage for renewable energy. Gas cars will always run on gas. Electric cars can potentially run on wind or solar or whatever. As we slowly switch our electricity supply over from dirty to clean, electric cars will get cleaner and cleaner.

Finally, as another poster pointed out, the hope is that electrics cars will be driven during the day and then set up to charge at night. If this is done these cars will essentially produce no pollution as they're using electricity that would have been wasted anyways. Many power plants, especially coal, cost too much to shut down and start up, so they're left running during off-peak hours and the electricity is just wasted.

All that being said, the ultimate answer will be to change our world so that there is very little use for cars at all. When we change our cities so that people can live near their jobs and other amenities we make it easy to walk and bike. Add convenient transit and many people will find they have no use for a car at all. When we do this we reduce the emissions from cars altogether as well as the environmental costs of the infrastructure that supports cars.

Answer 8

Electricity as currently generated in the U.S. is made at an average 30% thermal efficiency. Power transmission via the grid is at 90% efficiency. Charging a battery is 80% efficient. Electric motors are about 90% efficient. My math says that results in 19.44% efficiency, when you look at generation to turning wheels. 20% is a best--real-world case for a gasoline-engine car, some run at more like 15% efficiency. Diesels tend to run at around 25-30% efficiency (some diesel ships run at 45%), and the Toyota Prius runs at about 35% efficiency.

Of course, the calculation of efficiency for cars omits the energy used in extracting, transporting, and refining the gasoline--just as the calculation for electricity omits extracting and transporting the coal.

This calculation leaves out a couple other environmental factors--if you look at only thermal efficiency, that doesn't mean anything unless the weight and coefficient of drag are also equal. A more aerodynamic, lighter car will get better fuel economy (and thus less CO2 emissions) than a heavier one. Electric cars tend to be far heavier than gasoline-engine cars, due to the weight of the battery pack.

Also, some have criticized the environmental impact of manufacturing batteries.

All this is not to say that electric cars are worse--just that they are approximately comparable to gasoline-engine cars based on current power generation and distribution. Electricity can be generated directly from the sun, by geothermal, by hydroelectric, by nuclear, or from the wind--and none of these generate carbon emissions. Also, the newer fossil fuel electric generators can run at 60% thermal efficiency--in other words, they can generate the same electricity on half the coal and half the carbon emissions. When the old, inefficient design electric power generators are phased out, electric cars will be much less polluting than they are today.

Source(s):

For current electric grid efficiencies, Department of Energy.

Answer 9

if you install a solar panel on your house, than the source of the electricity powering your car will be totally green.

Answer 10

Any alternate fuel technology that increases the manufacturing requirement above current replacement and growth manufacturing is not environmentally friendly. It takes a lot of energy and materials to make a new vehicle, even more for an electric vehicle as the public would not accept a "Batteries not included" policy. The batteries would also need to be recycled every two years which involves even more energy and some additional materials. All of this represents an enormous carbon footprint. Also, where is the electricity from, most electricity today are either from coal or natural gas. A gasoline car running on Fischer Tropsch synthetic gasoline made by bio-mass gasification would be carbon negative whereas an electric car charged on coal produced electricity would be carbon positive hence in that case, the gasoline car would be more environmentally friendly.

The most environmentally friendly alternative fuel option would work with existing vehicles and distribution networks in order to avoid the environmental costs of replacing the vehicle fleet and of constructing new infrastructure. This limits the options to bio-butanol, bio-diesel, and synthetic fuels. Of course, automobile manufacturers prefer the electric, hybrid and hydrogen routes as they get to make and sell more cars.

The public will probably go with the environmentally harmful electric, hybrid and hydrogen options due to ignorance and marketing efforts even though the technology to produce biomass derived synthetic fuels have been around for the better part of a century and has been proven on scales as large as entire countries (WWII Germany, and embargoed South Africa).

Source(s):

http://news.mongabay.com/bioenergy/2007/…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fischer-Tro…
http://velocys-files.gripmanager.com/new…
http://www.velocys.com/docs/Microchannel…
http://www.diversified-energy.com/index.…
http://www.afdc.energy.gov/afdc/pdfs/epa…
http://www.sandia.gov/news/publications/…

Answer 11

most electricty is coal produced...new cap and lol,,trade [pay] will up the electricty price a lot...im hearing double and triple price...

Answer 12

U are right . The electric car requires about 40% more power in the charging of the battery. The battery ranges is about 120 miles. Not very good completion for fossil fuels.

Answer 13

They are suposed to be less poluting even with coal as the power source.

The main reason they are not being made is new factories would be required and a whole new workforce would need to be trained. Plus a whole bunch of existing factories would become useless and many highly paid union employees wuold no longer have viable skills.