Assuming that the electric power plant in your city burns coal or oil to produce electricity, do electric cars produce less pollution?

An electric car has to be plugged in to an electric circuit at your house in order to get recharged. That electricity is produced at the plant miles away. A Petroleum product is burned to turn the generator and pollution is released into the air. Electricity travels down the wires and some power is lost through resistance. The process is not completely efficient.

Is the pollution generated to charge the elect car less than the car would generate if it were a gasoline powered car of equal power and range per tank/battery charge? I understand that there are many variables like mpg and distance from power plant etc.

If the difference is huge, mph won’t make a difference.

What I’m getting at is are we being fooled?

Anyone out there with any knowledge or insight?

I understand that power produced by wind solar, water, nukes won’t generate petroleum byproducts. I am referring to petroleum based fuel fired power plants,not including natural gas.

Comments?

I was just having the same conversation with my wife. Over 50% of the electricity on my grid is produced by burning fossil fuels. Another 22% is generated from nuclear. The balance from hydroelectric. Minute amount from wind and solar.

I am sure there are some electric car geeks here that can chime in and know exactly what is costs to charge their car vs. mileage vs. gasoline equivalent costs.

The bigger questions is - if 75% of the US converted to electric vehicles tomorrow - and the fossil fuel footprint was reduced to practically nothing - would anyone be able to drive anywhere at all?

All things equal, power plant generation will be more efficient and environmentally friendly.

A combustion engine uses little mini explosions to create pressure to move a crankshaft. Only a little bit of the fuel's stored energy is converted to gas pressure. Most of the energy is lost as heat being ejected out the exhaust and radiated out.

At a power plant, electricity generation is done by burning the fuel completely, and using the heat energy to turn a turbine. More of the fuel's stored energy is used, and combustion can be made cleaner through super high temperatures and scrubbers.

Also, there is increased efficiency due to scale.

If it was more efficient to generate power at the point of use wigh an internal combustion engine, we would all have generators attached to our houses and have piped natural gas as fuel.

Mining the needed metals and the ore refining generate their own kinds of pollution. As well, some of the metals come from countries that are in states of civil war or other instability, are hostile to the US, or both.

The real issue with electric cars is the watermelons (green for environmentalism on the outside, red for communism on the inside) trying to force us into them.

https://www.prageru.com/video/...c-cars-really-green/

Related:

https://www.prageru.com/video/the-war-on-cars/

Put me in the camp all this electrical vehicle/transportation crap is bullshit. Pure and simple.

Sure lets have the chicom's build more batteries. What a croc. All this environmental save the planet bullshit is all more propaganda for the school children.

Some of you are missing a step in the process . Fossil fuels are burned to boil water , create steam ,which is then used to spin a turbine . AFTER WHICH , this steam is then condensed , the water is cooled and is recycled back through the process . There are a whole lot of fans , pumps , etc. which are themselves consuming electricity .

It’s not quite that easy but in some locations electric cars can actually increase the overall pollution.

I read a study that was published by ASME last year that looked at the impact of EV at various locations around the world. I will see if I can find it.

As for what I have come to understand is that the lifespan of an electric vehicle is 1/3 of a conventional one.

If the environmental impact were the primary objective, wouldn't we get tax subsidies for buying a used car?

Something I'd like to see is the Carbon footprint of an EV vs. normal car. I can't believe it is any better with all the battery requirements with the EV.

Also, for many, an electric car has little to do with being greener. A Tesla Model 3 is supercar fast with a 0-60 of 3.2 seconds.

Don’t care about relative pollution. All the analysis above is too high level to know the real differences anyway. There are larger threats to quality of life than just ice vs ev pollution. I’ll be long gone.

It doesn’t really matter what we think that is where the entire industry is headed. I’ve read studies arguing both sides so I’m not sold on either being better for the environment. I personally think the push is that it will be way cheaper to manufacture an electric car than an ICE car in the near future and an electric car seems to be way easier to make autonomous which is also where we are headed whether we like it or not.

And an autonomous car is easier to regulate, control and tax.

Recently the Tesla servers were down and people couldn't get into their cars since most don't use the keys.

quote:

Originally posted by braillediver:
And an autonomous car is easier to regulate, control and tax.

Recently the Tesla servers were down and people couldn't get into their cars since most don't use the keys.

Which was a personal choice. Tesla gives you a card like key that you can easily keep in your wallet. If someone relied on their cell phone to unlock their car, and they didn't carry the physical card key, that's their bad. No different than relying on your phone as a payment method and not being able to pay for something because if a network outage or no service.

My fallback position on this. If it were actually better I would know it without having to sit down with a slide rule and a thermodynamics expert. Every swinging dick in town would be driving one, sorta the same way I don’t see any horses at the store.

quote:

Originally posted by braillediver:
And an autonomous car is easier to regulate, control and tax.

Recently the Tesla servers were down and people couldn't get into their cars since most don't use the keys.

Seriously? I would consider this mission critical with multiple redundancies. Unless Tesla is saying don’t depend on it.

quote:

Originally posted by konata88:

quote:

Originally posted by braillediver:
And an autonomous car is easier to regulate, control and tax.

Recently the Tesla servers were down and people couldn't get into their cars since most don't use the keys.

Seriously? I would consider this mission critical with multiple redundancies. Unless Tesla is saying don’t depend on it.

Tesla provides a credit card shaped key.

The Tesla app that allows you to access and manage your car is a convenience feature.

quote:

Originally posted by braillediver:
And an autonomous car is easier to regulate, control and tax. .

I understand California is considering a per mile excise for electric vehicles, as they don't pay gasoline taxes but do use the roads.

Thinking the push for electric vehicles is mostly having the manufacturers get the EPA off of their collective asses.