Is it clean -electric car?

Question

You plug your car in the wall every day and drive it every day. How many miles to a buket of coal do you get. And that is if that is the closest plant to you.

Answer 1

They thing that most people do not know about the electricity that you would use to charge up your EV is that during the nights the electric power plants can not be shut down for a few hours when demand is low. The dynamos are making electricity all night long and shunting the excess to the ground. That means that even though we are using tons of coal every night to generate electric power we are wasting the power after it is made. And we would be charging our Ev's at night when we are not driving them, right? So actually we would be using the electricity more efficiently if we used Ev's.

Of course if we used cleaner methods of generating electric power like Solar and Wind, Tidal Flows and Wave Motions then we would be even more efficient. Even in the worst case scenario, which is coal, we are better off using Ev's than any other fuel source.

Answer 2

It is clean if you wash it.  So is my Viper.

Answer 3

Coal fired generators are are constantly monitored and maintained to run at optimum load, temperature and efficiency for minimum pollution, using unrefined fuel, close to source - they tend to use very big buckets :)

Unlike petrol engines which rarely get to temperature or correct gear.

Because your wall socket connects to the grid the all suppliers will contribute to your electrons, not just the closest.

So you can buy electric from a renewable energy supplier wherever they are.

Also because electric cars provide energy storage, surplus electric (consider you have a range of 250 miles but only drive 30 a day)  can be sold back to balance the variable renewable supply, http://www.acpropulsion.com/technology/v...

Electric motors are far more efficient at providing motive power than infernal combustion engines, which mostly produce heat, and need complex inefficent transmission systems. (the Tesla, http://www.teslamotors.com only has 8 parts in it's drive chain)

No technology is "clean", but evs are far superior to complex clunky unreliable infernal combustion products, dependent on a fragile fuel supply chain, foisted on us by global manufacturers who crushed their EVs http://www.whokilledtheelectriccar.com

Answer 4

You have a great point.  Only about 35% of our electricity comes from "clean" sources (hydroelectric, solar, wind, nuclear).  65% comes from fossil fuels.  In other words, electric cars are about 1/3 cleaner than internal combustion engines.

Answer 5

ICE = gasoline car (internal combustion engine)

HEV = hybrid gas-electric car (uses gasoline to recharge batteries)

EV = electric vehicle (plugs in to recharge batteries)

EVs reduce CO2 by 11%-100% compared with ICEs and by 24%-54% compared with HEVs, and significantly reduce all other greenhouse gas emissions, using the U.S. grid mix. If all U.S. cars were EVs, we’d reduce global warming emissions. Using electricity strictly from coal, EVs still would reduce CO2 by 0%-59% compared with ICEs (one analysis found 0% change; six others found reductions of 17%-59%) and might produce 30%-49% more CO2 than HEVs (based on only two analyses). On the other hand, if electricity comes from solar or wind power, EVs eliminate all emissions.  Using natural gas to make electricity, emissions fall in between those from coal and renewable power.

Answer 6

You raise a god point.  Electric cars are a technology whose" time is here" in terms of capability.  Costs are high right now--but increasing volume will take care of that.

But--the electricity has to come from somewhere.  Electric is PART of the solution--we really arne't going to get off oil without such technologies.

But the other half of the solution is alternative energy production. There's a variety of technologies under development--primarily advanced and more cost-effective solar, wind, and even nuclear.  

The point--there is no "magic bullet"--shifting away from fossil fuels makes good economic sense, even without the environmental issues.  But it's going to take a range of technologies and solutions, not just one--even electric cars.

Answer 7

You make a very good point.

The electricity need to charge the batteries of an electric car is generated by fossil fuels in almost all cases.

Before we will be able to use electric cars to significantly reduce carbon dioxide emissions we will have to generate our electricity by means that do not use carbon based fuels.