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Why Electric Cars Are NOT Green

carlinkid

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This is very simple reasoning, I'm sure some of you have figured it out. Electric cars run on electricity deriving from the power grid, which in most cases is obtained from coal fired power plants or nuclear reactors. What you are really doing by using an electric car is diverting the emissions from the exhaust pipe to a power plant.
 
Whilr nyuclear poer is actuall;y rather green. There si also the fact that when electric cars will become viable more people will probably be charging their cars with wind or solar.
 
This is very simple reasoning, I'm sure some of you have figured it out. Electric cars run on electricity deriving from the power grid, which in most cases is obtained from coal fired power plants or nuclear reactors. What you are really doing by using an electric car is diverting the emissions from the exhaust pipe to a power plant.

Internal Combustion Engine efficiency: 25-30%
Electric Motor efficiency: 95%

Pollutants are much easier to mitigate when centrally produced, impossible when produced in distribution.

Yes, you are shifting to a far more efficient production, transmission, and efficient use of power.

Debate over!
 
This is very simple reasoning, I'm sure some of you have figured it out. Electric cars run on electricity deriving from the power grid, which in most cases is obtained from coal fired power plants or nuclear reactors. What you are really doing by using an electric car is diverting the emissions from the exhaust pipe to a power plant.

Economies of scale make power generated centrally more efficient than fuel burned in vehicles.

Acceleration/deceleration cycles are where the waste is in ICEs.

Electric cars aren't "green", just "green-er".
 
Internal Combustion Engine efficiency: 25-30%
Electric Motor efficiency: 95%

Pollutants are much easier to mitigate when centrally produced, impossible when produced in distribution.

Yes, you are shifting to a far more efficient production, transmission, and efficient use of power.

Debate over!

Beat me to it!
 
Internal Combustion Engine efficiency: 25-30%
Electric Motor efficiency: 95%

Pollutants are much easier to mitigate when centrally produced, impossible when produced in distribution.

Yes, you are shifting to a far more efficient production, transmission, and efficient use of power.

Debate over!

That is as bad a "science" as it gets. Your message is based upon some theory you have that the batteries mus magically perpetually charge themselves.

That is the GREAT "green" lie of them. The "power" source of the vehicle is NOT the batteries. It is the power source that powers the batteries. But the electric car lovers ALWAYS deny that even exists and falsely call them "zero emissions" vehicle. Electric cars are coal powered cars.
 
Nuclear is "green?!"

Yeah, tell that to the people in Japan and parts of Russian.

The true disaster of Al Gore's video is that most people believe the singular environmental issue is greenhouse gases - thus all the toxins and poisons and all other environmental damages are no longer relevant - as "green" has been reduced to Al Gore's movie topic.
 
That is as bad a "science" as it gets. Your message is based upon some theory you have that the batteries mus magically perpetually charge themselves.

That is the GREAT "green" lie of them. The "power" source of the vehicle is NOT the batteries. It is the power source that powers the batteries. But the electric car lovers ALWAYS deny that even exists and falsely call them "zero emissions" vehicle. Electric cars are coal powered cars.

I don't know how to tell you this... but no one mentioned anything you are talking about.

The OP is about remote central generation vs. distributed generation. No batteries anywhere in the discussion. Please stay on topic.
 
Economies of scale make power generated centrally more efficient than fuel burned in vehicles.

Acceleration/deceleration cycles are where the waste is in ICEs.

Electric cars aren't "green", just "green-er".

Once again wrong, because of the loses of irregular demands, conversions to various amps and volts and electrical transmission lines, stations and grids.

This thread is people claiming voodoo magic powers electric cars.
 
Nuclear is "green?!"

Yeah, tell that to the people in Japan and parts of Russian.

The true disaster of Al Gore's video is that most people believe the singular environmental issue is greenhouse gases - thus all the toxins and poisons and all other environmental damages are no longer relevant - as "green" has been reduced to Al Gore's movie topic.

Apparently for you it has been lowered to responding to something most people have moved far beyond.

But good to know you're anti nuke... duly noted. Hope it doesn't come back to bite you in the ass some day.
 
I don't know how to tell you this... but no one mentioned anything you are talking about.

The OP is about remote central generation vs. distributed generation. No batteries anywhere in the discussion. Please stay on topic.


So now you are denying the topic is electric cars all together? Wrong.
 
Apparently for you it has been lowered to responding to something most people have moved far beyond.

But good to know you're anti nuke... duly noted. Hope it doesn't come back to bite you in the ass some day.

They finally permanently shut the nuke that is less than a dozen miles from our house. Nuclear power is the only form of energy that can alter genetics on a mass scale, the only one for which it's pollution lasts 100,000 years, and the only one that can render an area uninhabitable for thousands of years. It also is outrageously expensive and possesses massive security and terrorism attacks.

Nuclear power fuel is NOT renewable, is the most dangerous substance in the known universe, and outrageously expensive compared to other sources of electricity.

I hope someday it doesn't cause your prodigy to have severe birth defects. Support of nuclear power is like a religion loyalty, who keep explaining how it can't ever happen again after each disaster.
 
Once again wrong, because of the loses of irregular demands, conversions to various amps and volts and electrical transmission lines, stations and grids.

This thread is people claiming voodoo magic powers electric cars.

Still more efficient than ICEs.

Especially when you figure in the costs/losses in drilling, refining and distribution to your local fuel depot.

Further, electrics don't care where the electricity comes from. So new technologies won't require changing the national vehicle fleets.

And if everybody had electrics, a smart grid would allow excess capacity to provide the holy grail of the grid:

Storage.
 
Internal Combustion Engine efficiency: 25-30%
Electric Motor efficiency: 95%

Pollutants are much easier to mitigate when centrally produced, impossible when produced in distribution.

Yes, you are shifting to a far more efficient production, transmission, and efficient use of power.

Debate over!

With the exception the grid is already under extreme pressure without the gigawatts required to keep those electric cars humming along. Then there is the energy required to rebuild and upgrade.

No gains with out pains. Battery electric is just a stop gap.
 
So now you are denying the topic is electric cars all together? Wrong.

ELECTRIC CARS WERE IN THE OP... BATTERIES WERE NOT. NO ONE HAD MENTIONED BATTERIES UNTIL YOU ACCUSED ME OF BAD SCIENCE FOR MISSING WHERE THE ENERGY IS STORED AND THAT IT'S GENERATED SOMEWHERE ELSE...

Do you have any idea what context is?

Can you follow it without needing every tiny detail explained to you?

Read the OP, then try again....
 
They finally permanently shut the nuke that is less than a dozen miles from our house. Nuclear power is the only form of energy that can alter genetics on a mass scale, the only one for which it's pollution lasts 100,000 years, and the only one that can render an area uninhabitable for thousands of years. It also is outrageously expensive and possesses massive security and terrorism attacks.

Nuclear power fuel is NOT renewable, is the most dangerous substance in the known universe, and outrageously expensive compared to other sources of electricity.

I hope someday it doesn't cause your prodigy to have severe birth defects. Support of nuclear power is like a religion loyalty, who keep explaining how it can't ever happen again after each disaster.

Don't get your posters confused... I have no use for nuclear power. For many of the same reasons.
 
With the exception the grid is already under extreme pressure without the gigawatts required to keep those electric cars humming along. Then there is the energy required to rebuild and upgrade.

No gains with out pains. Battery electric is just a stop gap.

Most cars charge at night during low peak usage. And while there are a few places where infrastructure is strained, and must be upgraded anyway, we have lost massive manufacturing throughout the northeast and midwest. Infrastructure there is no where near capacity.

You speak of the grid as if a local condition exists everywhere on the grid... it doesn't. And where it does, we have no choice but to upgrade anyway. It's not like cities are going to get smaller and energy use isn't going to increase exponentially anyway.
 
This is very simple reasoning, I'm sure some of you have figured it out. Electric cars run on electricity deriving from the power grid, which in most cases is obtained from coal fired power plants or nuclear reactors. What you are really doing by using an electric car is diverting the emissions from the exhaust pipe to a power plant.

Partially true. But as has already been pointed out, the electric motor is far more efficient than the internal combustion engine. Even a coal power plant is better at turning fossil fuels into electricity than your gas motor is at turning fossil fuels into motive force. End result: more miles per "gallon" from the electric. Additionally, not all electricity comes from fossil fuels. About a third of US electrical production is from sources other than fossil fuels, so as a national average an electric motor gets about a 33% boost in effective emissions efficiency.

Nuclear plants are "green" from this perspective. They don't have any harmful emissions. (although obviously the waste has its own environmental concerns, which most people have a grossly inflated idea of)
 
They finally permanently shut the nuke that is less than a dozen miles from our house. Nuclear power is the only form of energy that can alter genetics on a mass scale, the only one for which it's pollution lasts 100,000 years, and the only one that can render an area uninhabitable for thousands of years. It also is outrageously expensive and possesses massive security and terrorism attacks.

Nuclear power fuel is NOT renewable, is the most dangerous substance in the known universe, and outrageously expensive compared to other sources of electricity.

I hope someday it doesn't cause your prodigy to have severe birth defects. Support of nuclear power is like a religion loyalty, who keep explaining how it can't ever happen again after each disaster.

How many people died as a result of Fukushima or Three Mile Island?

Chernobyl's disaster was a result of several major errors in design as well as deliberate bypassing of safety mechanisms. Such an event is impossible in a modern reactor.

A substance with a half-life of 100,000 years isn't terribly dangerous. Extremely long half-lives mean it's less radioactive, not more. Uranium waste from a nuclear plant is more dangerous as a heavy metal than it is as a radiation source.
 
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Most cars charge at night during low peak usage. And while there are a few places where infrastructure is strained, and must be upgraded anyway, we have lost massive manufacturing throughout the northeast and midwest. Infrastructure there is no where near capacity.

You speak of the grid as if a local condition exists everywhere on the grid... it doesn't. And where it does, we have no choice but to upgrade anyway. It's not like cities are going to get smaller and energy use isn't going to increase exponentially anyway.

I speak of the grid as if the condition I mentioned is real, since it is. In recent years the Northeastern US has experienced complete blackouts. Brownouts have been experienced throughout the Southwest. With San Enofre Nuc plant shut down in Southern Cal, power will need to be brought in from outside sources, further taxing the grid.

By all means, ignore these facts, and stock up on candles.
 
Internal Combustion Engine efficiency: 25-30%
Electric Motor efficiency: 95%

Pollutants are much easier to mitigate when centrally produced, impossible when produced in distribution.

Yes, you are shifting to a far more efficient production, transmission, and efficient use of power.

Debate over!
25 to 30% of what?
 
25 to 30% of what?

Only about 25-30% of the thermal energy in gasoline is actually turned into motive force by the car's engine. The rest is waste heat and vibration. (edit: plus, some energy was used in actually creating and delivering that gasoline, which we generally don't account for in the car's MPG rating!) (edit2: and those are the maximum efficiency values for an I.C.E. in city driving it is substantially worse. idling, the efficiency is 0%!)

An electric motor turns more than 95% of the electric energy it is given into motive force. (more like 99% on some of them).

Since the (modern) power plant can generally do closer to 50% efficiency with the same fossil fuels, you're better off burning the fuel at a power plant and then delivering it to a battery. (there's some transmission loss and a little lost at the motor, but the end result is more efficient) This is further improved by the previously-mentioned fact that not all of the electricity we generate actually comes from fossil fuels.
 
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Only about 25-30% of the thermal energy in gasoline is actually turned into motive force by the car's engine. The rest is waste heat and vibration.

An electric motor turns more than 95% of the electric energy it is given into motive force. (more like 99% on some of them).

Since the (modern) power plant can generally do closer to 50% efficiency with the same fossil fuels, you're better off burning the fuel at a power plant and then delivering it to a battery. (there's some transmission loss and a little lost at the motor, but the end result is more efficient) This is further improved by the previously-mentioned fact that not all of the electricity we generate actually comes from fossil fuels.
So the end result is more efficiency, however it is not a perfect option by any means.
 
I speak of the grid as if the condition I mentioned is real, since it is. In recent years the Northeastern US has experienced complete blackouts. Brownouts have been experienced throughout the Southwest. With San Enofre Nuc plant shut down in Southern Cal, power will need to be brought in from outside sources, further taxing the grid.

By all means, ignore these facts, and stock up on candles.

Okay, you do know the difference between generation capacity and transmission capacity.... right?

The grid and the power plants are two separate things. One hooks into the other. I spent two years studying the "grid" for a project. I'm very, very familiar with it's capacities, strengths and weaknesses.
 
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