How Green Is Your Electric Car? The problem is that this analysis does not compare the same things between gasoline autos and EVs. With gasoline vehicles, the analysis takes into account fuel going back to the point where gasoline is created at the refinery. But with electricity, it does not do this and instead it only looks at the power used to motivate the car. More below. Both should look back to the creation point of the fuel, whether gasoline or electricity. The reason they do not is that the gasoline fuel system has taken significant efforts to limit evaporative and other losses between the refinery and the motivation of the auto, while the EV manufacturers and power companies have made no efforts to reduce these losses. If one adds in these losses, the EVs do not compare well at all with gasoline vehicles and often produce more pollution than gasoline vehicles. Update on the EPA's Electric Vehicle Mileage Fraud | Coyote Blog
The problem is EVs rely on electricity which suffers significant losses (commonly about 10%-15%) between the power plant and the motivation of the vehicle. However, once the vehicle is fueled by electricity, if not used relatively soon, it will begin to dissipate that electrical energy. There are other problems as well. The most important is understanding how much carbon/pollution the vehicle requires during the design, engineering, construction, and delivery of the vehicle. EVs commonly create much more carbon and pollution in this phase than do gasoline autos. For example, Tesla car battery production releases as much CO2 as 8 years of gasoline driving This is a big hurdle to overcome especially since the average auto owner only own a vehicle for about six years. Average length of U.S. vehicle ownership hit an all-time high | Kelley Blue Book There is a further concern which is the carbon and pollution costs of producing gasoline versus electricity. I am talking about the costs of finding, oil, drilling for oil, and cracking the oil into motor vehicle fuel versus finding the fuel for electricity, obtaining the fuel (whether fossil, nuclear, or alternative energy), and producing the electrical power. If carbon and pollution are essential, we should have a creation to destruction model for both the auto itself and the fuel from finding it to auto motivation. From those calculations, we can then understand which produces lower carbon and pollution, and by how much. I have never seen a comparison for the last bit the creation of the fuels themselves. My understanding of the first two, fuel loss from production to auto motivation and design to destruction lifecycle of the auto, does not seem to indicate that there is any real advantage to the EV based on total carbon or pollution. EV's total lifecycle carbon and pollution not much better than fuel autos If the man pimping antique electric car technology, incapable solar energy via government rent-seeking is not a neo-Luddite who is? How will the coal-fired car change the world? Articles like the one above are not helpful; they create confusion about a complex issue which needs clarity. I have no idea why the proponents of EVs do not perform this analysis. But, because they do not, I suggest that the issue is unlikely to come out in their favor. If it would, they would rush to show the extreme benefits to the EV. EV's, electrical power, alternative energy, have become shibboleths in the cult of global climate alarmism and the solution to death by carbon. If the EV becomes a viable and low-cost alternative or replacement for the liquid fuel vehicle, booyah! I won't lose any sleep over this issue.
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