Deep Ocean to Deep Space

Gasoline or diesel powered cars are “dirty”, right? They burn fossil fuels and spew carbons into the air.

Electric cars are “clean”, right? Absolutely no emissions.

I know I am going to sound very negative here when we need to be looking for solutions, but I want us to count up all the costs and make the right decisions now. Electric cars may have an advantage over gasoline or diesel, but is it all that much?

Somehow that electricity got into that battery right? And chances are is that it came from a very “dirty” coal burning power plant and that coal came from a mountain top in West Virgina. Or if it is a oil burning plant perhaps Canadian tar sands. Or maybe a cleaner gas burning plant fueled from fracking. This generation and delivery system is one that operates about 30% efficiency. Yep, did you know that? That means, for the energy packed in the fuel burned we get about 30% of it at the point of usage. Fossil fuel cars might do better than that, but you have to then factor how much it costs to distribute the fuel to the use point.

And when you charge a battery it gets warm, lost energy, and when you discharge a battery it gets warm. lost energy.

Making those very expensive batteries uses energy too. In fact you could look at the cost as being the cost of the energy used along the way to mine, process and manufacture and deliver them.

Right now electric cars cost $10,000 to $15,000 more than a conventional fuel efficient car. That’s for the battery. And does anyone mention that they are good for about 10 years? My experiance with Li-ion powered tools is that they seldom last that long. So after a while you car doesn’t get as far on a charge, and you have to buy a new one.  Right now they go for about $10,000. Ouch! But you didn’t have to by any gasoline, right?

And when they reach the end of their can you just send them to a land fill? No, the materials used to make them are toxic so you are going to be paying to undo what was done.

There are some alternatives we can consider. I like the idea of hybrids. The fossile fuel engine can be operated very efficenaly when it is needed, and electricty stored and consumed without transmission losses. And you get to recharge the battery when breaking.  And refulling time is very short. I can envision fuel being purchased in cylinders that you just pop in, no messy liquid fuel transferes.

The recharge time is going to be an issue. Someday we will have batteries that will take you 300 miles. But try to do a 500 mile a day road trip. How long do you have to wait to replenish?

And there are other ways of storing energy. Compressed gas is one that is being looked at. Yep, we have to pay the envionmenatl impact of the compressor that recharges it, but after that it will operate with zero emissions. *

Electric cars may be the way to go, but we need to look at all the environmental impacts, not just one aspect.

*Need to look up reference in Pop Sci.

I will return to this as I come across more references.

References:

Electric Cars 2.0: How Apps, Grids and Batteries Will Spark a New Era | People for Smarter Cities – IBM is finding ways to connect electric cars with recharging stations through the Cloud so as to better manage power demands.

Will This Battery Change Everything? Brian Dumaine, Fortune, October 6, 2014 – A Michigan startup backed by GM claims its technology will disrupt the electric car industry. Sakti3 says their new battery will cost far less than Tesla’s current and projected future batteries.