120 comments on Can hybrids make a difference in the near future?
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120 comments on Can hybrids make a difference in the near future?
Comments can no longer be added to this story.
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Most electric power is generated from burning coal, natural gas, and oil. Their is gigantic inefficiency in converting these precious fossil fuels to electricity and then more energy lost in power transmission lines. Thus, electric cars are not efficient and 1/2 the energy comes from dirty coal burning -- CO2, mercury, sulfur, and carbon particulates.
Electric motors are so much more efficient than internal combustion engines that they are cleaner overall -- even when accounting for dirty coal plants and transmission losses. See the report Environmental Assessment of Plug-In Hybrid Electric Vehicles by the Natural Resources Defense Council and Electric Power Research Institute.
From the ENVIRONMENTAL ASSESSMENT report (page 2): "The 'well-to-wheels' analysis accounted for emissions from the generation of electricity to charge PHEV batteries and from the production, distribution and consumption of gasoline and diesel motor fuels." This means that the greenhouse gas emissions from coal mining, processing, and transportation are not counted for EVs. The same is true for electric power generated from natural gas and oil (the emissions for drilling, production, and distribution are not counted). This compromises the study and the credibility of the NRDC. The EPRI is a biased source. This casts doubt on the entire study. More important than green house gases are sulfur dioxide (acid rain), mercury (ocean/fish contamiation), and particulate contaminants from coal burning (1/2 of electric power generation. And, this analysis excludes the ecological damage from coal mining (land, forests, habitats, rivers, farmlands).
You're simply wrong.
The key is that while generating electricity from fossil fuels is inefficient, running a car on fossil fuels is so much more inefficient that electric cars come out far ahead even under the worst of assumptions.
Comparing a 1999 Ford Ranger to an electric version, the latter is more energy efficient and less polluting by a factor of two, even assuming 100% of its electricity comes from coal. Take any electric vehicle and a similar regular vehicle, do the math, and you'll come to the same conclusion.
20% of electric power is lost in transmission and 25% is lost in the chemical reaction in the battery. In addition, coal (source for 1/2 of the electric power generation) consumes much diesel in mining, transportation, and processing. Because we are concerned about energy consumption, these must be considered when comparing efficiencies.