Just saw a Renault advert and my immediate thought was if we all had electric cars wouldn't power stations burn more coal, oil and gas and nuclear thingys to charge them?
Aren't they just transferring the problem further up the energy chain? I thought hydrogen fuel cells were the next thing, what happened there?
Not greener in 2010. But once you have all these new wind and tidal generators built then electrio cars for part of an energy ecosystem. With smart energy meters, the cars will become part of the national grid. The cars will sell their battery energy to the grid at peak times (after corrie!) and will charge up overnight while we are all in bed using zero leccy, but the turbines are still producing.
I am really excited about this!
Nope, they aren't greener. Mainly due to the manufacture I would say rather than where the fuel comes from.
I still think fuel cells will be where we end up, simply as refuelling battery cars is a problem. You can't top up on the go, and they rely on availability of power up options. What happens if you live in a flat/terrace/other house without drive way/garage? You need to be able to pull into a fuel station and fill up in the 5 minutes or so that it currently takes to be properly viable.
Or people could start living where they work and not travelling... but that isn't going to happen!
oh...so in summary. Yes I would have one tomorrow. Someone has to be the early adopter of the tech of the future. This is the next big thing (since the internet, satnav, mobile phones and MP3).
Look to Hydrogen cars.....
Rob S is right, I think 50% plus cars will still have "fuel" of some type to give instant range, but many people could live full time with a 150mile battery range, that could be filled back up within 4 hours ( not quite there on the tech for that yet, but like LED's its changing fast).
oh hang on...this thread is the original, please post on this and delete the dublicate.
copied from other thread:
Power stations are significantly more efficient than an internal combustion engines and distribution losses of electricity through the grid is very efficient. In terms of fuel usage electric cars are far more efficient than their fossil fuelled equivalent. Whether that makes them greener is another question as the energy/pollution of manufacture must also be accounted for and that is a much more difficult question to answer.
One big power station will always be more efficient than lots of small IC engines. So yes electric cars are less polluting.
Hydrogen fuel cells even more so. Even allowing for hydrogen production (very energy intensive) it will still be more efficient overall than extracting oil, refining it to fuel and burning it in an engine.
distribution losses of electricity through the grid is very efficient.
Deal lord I have clearly had too much to drink. That should read "distribution losses through the grid are very low" but then I'm sure everyone figured that out.
"If electric power is going to replace internal combustion, then where is the electricity going to come from to power my six metre plasma screen from, or my electric newspaper page turner, or my electric power arse-scratcher?
I mean, the enviroment is all very well, but you cant expect people to do without the essentials."
Sorry, this was an ironic post, maybe we should all find ways to cut back a bit (including car use) before we have to have power stations taking up valuable real estate that we could use to build airports, motorways or shopping malls.
But cycling uses Oxygen and produces CO2. China is regarded as one of the states with the largest "carbon footprint" and there are more than 10 million bicycles in Beijing (increased since the song was penned)
Recent news talks of power stations being built everywhere.
This is attributed to their recent growth in manufacturing and use of fossil fuels to facilitate this industry.
But levels of CO2 emanating from China have not been measured so stringently before.
What if the CO2 levels they produce are only proved to be 5% from heavy industry and the rest from 20million people breathing out heavily while cycling to work?
It could be real bad for us "real cyclists"
An Electric Motor is not as efficient as an I/C engine under constant load, in terms of energy required per KW of power produced.
Where Electric Motors are more efficient than I/C engine is under acceleration and deceleration. I/C engines require a lot of extra energy to accelerate in comparison, but Electric motors also have the added bonus of being able to be used as a generator, thus giving energy back to the battery, under deceleration. Hence in a hybrid car, the electric motor is not used at all under constant load, but under light acceleration it is used solely (heavy acceleration both engines/motors will be used for extra power) and under deceleration the I/C engine will be switched off and the electric motor used as a generator to charge the battery.
So no... Electric cars are not the answer to the future... Though we are increasingly driving in more and more traffic, most of our driving as at near steady speeds on open roads and motorways. Where the electric vehicle makes more sense is in the inner city, where short journeys only are taken through lots of stop start traffic.
The answer is indeed of course the Hydrogen Fuel Cell... When of course Hydrogen becomes cheap and easy to produce as a fuel ie. when scientists finally perfect the art of Nuclear fusion, so some way off yet methinks (along with the cure for cancer!)...
The answer also lies with not changing our cars every 3 years (or however long) with them being designed for a 10 year shelf life. It is far less environmentally damaging to keep a 10 year old car running that perhaps does 30mpg than it is to go out and buy a new equivalent that does 45mpg! Mainly because the amount of energy required to make a car in the first place is estimated to equal the equivalent amount of fuel a car will burn in an average 7 years on the road milage!
Anyway... I'm off to worry about something I'm MUCH more likely to be able to have some influence in deciding the outcome of... 
No
its a greenwas.
Unfortunatly a lot of the driving force for less polluting cars comes from the california but there they are only interested in pollution at5 the point of use - not total pollution - so you get stupid thingsd like the Prius and electric battery cars.
A battery car will cost more polution to build than a conventional one as the batteries are very polluting to make and dispose and there inneffeciencies of conversion to and from electic add to pollution - basically you export pollution from where the car is used to the power station.
Hydrogen clee is no better as you still need massive amounts of electricity to produce the huydrogen.
the only answer is to drive less, use smaller morte fuel efficent vehicles.
Electic / huybrid is an expensive, useless and counterproductive greenwash.
TJ, that must be the worst post you have ever made.....did you type it with mittens on
5 am towards the end of a night shift on a puter with no spellcheck
Electric car in use is around 7 times more efficient than an internal combustion engine (not sure if that's petrol or diesel from memory); however there is also the efficiency of creating and transporting the electricity to the car charger and then charging the car. Even using coal fired plant a fag packet calculation still suggests the electric car is less carbon intensive - better still id it's wind energy charging the car. Unfortunately you need to make the electric car (which is OK) and the battery (which isn't). At the moment this is where they fall down.
However they are still well ahead of the hydrogen fuel cell car which is increasingly looking like a non-starter in the mass production stakes - you'd be better off in a decent diesel.
The Prius thingy is about as efficient as a good diesel and a lot worse to make. The next generation will be better.
Work at the moment is heading towards a common battery standard. Your car might carry 2, 4 or 6 say, and on the motorway you swap batteries (like soda stream bottles for those who remember) rather than charging them. You might have a 6 battery car, but only carry 2 batteries Monday to Friday so you don't have to carry the weight on the 10 mile commute. And the batteries might provide storage for the national electricity system which would reduce the need for spinning reserve (the power stations which are kept running but not outputting any power just in case one of the power stations which is running falls over). This would also help with intermittent generation such as wind power, giving some decent smoothing of output.
The down side? You ain't going to be able to lift one of those batteries so there will be a need for lifting equipment to swap batteries or to put the other four batteries in at the week end to go to Glentress.
I'm slightly surprized this topic keeps coming up and yet even more surprized that there is no mention of methanol.
I agree that the electric is not the answer and I'm worried by the UK governments apparent willingness to fund, subsidize, whatever, electric car development. As already mentioned, batteries aint nice things to make or to handle once they are spent. Unplugging a hot battery pack at a motorway battery replcement station isn't going to be a nice job either, and then theres the street parked cars getting a power cable to them, etc, etc. There are many arguements against the battery powered E-C, but it gets media attention because the car companies get money for electric cars.
This is after incorrectly advised politicians believe that E-Cs are the answer to scoring green points.
The green lobby need to get realistic and work with the concept of a world with cars in it, rather than aiming for a world without cars.
Hydrogen fuel cell has some good attributes, as James May pointed out in his review of the Honda sold in California.
However, the investment required to change-out the entire global fuel handling infrastructure to handle hydrogen. Makes this option prohibitably expensive.
Mr May makes a good point when he highlights the fact that the Honda could be the car of the future, because its like the cars we already drive as far as once the tank is empty, you just refill and continue on your journey. I do not believe that battery powered cars offer that kind of useability.
GM bacteria, conusming recycled waste to produce methanol would seem a likely answer, but one that right now, isn't fashionable enough for the media.
Methanol, like hydrogen, can be handled in liquid form, hence being able to keep the format we already have of a refillable fuel tank, taking a few minutes to refill at a fuel station.
However, unlike Hydrogen, Methanol requires only minimal investment to be spent on the global fuel handling infrastructure to move from handling petrol, to handling methanol. So methanol beats hydrogen on this point.
I've worked in the car industry for many years now, been to many different Companies and sat in on a few internal presentations.
Car companies are very focused on pre-empting the "fuel of the future" so that they can have product in place for it. Problem is the politicians, few of whom appear to want to "grasp the nettle" and fail to get down to the facts and plant a stake in the ground.
Arnold tried it in California, a state in the world's largest economy, rolling out a Hydrogen fuel handling infrastructure. But few other countries could afford such an experiment.
I'm just pointing out that battery powered E-Cs aren't the answer, and as tempting as Hydrogen is, its just a bit to expensive to roll out across the globe. So, perhaps Methanol has some mileage in it. When, if, people allowed to discover it...
Solo.
Lgm, the Tesla Model S uses that way of thinking, it carries a small amount of batteries day to day but if your going to travel further you can rent a larger battery pack from the company for temporary use. As far as battery swapping perhaps something like the project better place battery swapper could be employed? Clicky
Electric / hybrid is an expensive, useless and counterproductive greenwash
All technology improves with use & development!
Not so long ago solar cells were "expensive, useless" now they're being used on new builds.
ECs may not be the 'final answer' but they will certainly develop technology that will be eventaully used - if it were up to the TJs we'd never get anywhere unless the first step were also the last..........
I kind of agree that methanol could be a solution - either in a fuel cell system or an IC engine. I still think that hydrogen could be the fuel of the future though, the reason:
If you have a whole load of lovely wind turbines cranking away there is no way to balance their output with grid need at that time. If we put new developments along the coast/off shore then the excess power generated could be used to crack hydrogen from sea water. This could either be done to provide fuel for power stations - essentially using hydrogen as a battery for want of a better word - or for transportation.
The same goes for tidal power and wave power.
Looking at the global picture: Hot arrid climates are potentially very good for hydrogen production. There was a suggestion a while back in one of the journals that floating solar platforms could be positioned off the coast of places like Africa/Spain/Australia etc to crack hydrogen.
Using such techniques you would be creating your energy source using renewables, which is all good. There still needs to be a decent solution to transportation and storage, but that is almost certainly being worked on at the moment.
To be honest the solution that is going to take off is going to be whatever the large global powers decide they are going to get behind. Fuelcell/Battery/IC with an alternative energy source... it's going to be a mix of the US and Chinese Governments backing something, and everyone else will follow suit, as without Government investment into a power infrastructure to suit we are going to be stuffed.
The only other way it is going to be resolved is to leave it to market pressures. Fuel is going to get increasingly expensive (I do a LOT of miles for work, the cost scares!) and people will start looking for alternatives. Although it is hard to buy into an alternative unless someone makes refuelling/charging issues simple.
Electric car
Economy: (efective, when looking at CO2 per km) 150mpg
Performance: Crap
Range: Crap
Prototype Volvo estate
Economy: 155mpg
Performance: mehhhh, its a volvo estate not a porche, but average
Range: you'd run out of road before it runs out of fuel!
The idea of electric cars is dead in the water untill we come up with green electricity that actualy works! Diesle/petrol-electric hybrids is where it's at!
As for the short-medium future of fuel, my money's on bio-fuels, there's vast area's of desert that can be converted into alge farms, which yes could be used for food, but currently isn't. The infrasttructure is already in place, there's no need to change cars, etc etc etc.
untill we come up with green electricity that actualy works!
Successful bids for nine new offshore wind farm zone licences within UK waters have been announced.
A consortium including Npower and Norway's Statkraft won the licence for the biggest zone, in Dogger Bank, which could produce nine gigawatts of energy.
Turbines in the nine zones could generate up to 32 gigawatts of power, a quarter of the UK's electricity needs.
Now that's a lot of green electricity
Turbines in the nine zones could generate up to 32 gigawatts of power, a quarter of the UK's electricity needs.
personally, i dread the day i can no longer drive my V8... 
nothing will replace that, just for the sheer joy of the sound of it 
Power stations are significantly more efficient than an internal combustion engines and distribution losses of electricity through the grid is very efficient.
I'd like a cheap to run electric powered vehicle but the combustion engine is very hard to beat in terms of efficiency.
Turbines in the nine zones could generate up to 32 gigawatts of power, a quarter of the UK's electricity needs.Now that's a lot of green electricity
An utterly pointless waste of money.
Oh no.....you're right...when the wind drops they don't work!
Quick, you better let them know before they build the things. What an obvious oversight.
MaverickBoy... care to expand on your claim that electric motors are less efficient under load than an IC engine?
I wasn't aware that IC engines were capable of operating at efficiencies over 90%, which is where an electric motor would operate.
It's quite a simple thing really, if electric motors were less efficient than IC engines, why aren't the motors running water cooling systems to remove all of that waste energy?
On the wider topic, electric cars will be the future, but quite when that becomes a viable one is anyones guess. Before they can be mainstream we need to sort out the energy supply and the batteries, both of which have been highlighted above.
For the energy supply, well, as it's electricity, we have a number of different possible generating sources for this, so to some extents it's less about efficiency here, and more to do with the stability and abundance of supply. With petrol/diesel prices ever rising and constant news about peak oil, the point at which it becomes sensible to use electricity is approaching... and when fusion kicks off, which it has to as without fusion we can't meet the current growth in energy demand, let alone adding electric cars into the mix, then the energy becomes cheap and plentiful.
As for batteries... unsuprisingly there is rather a lot of work going into these at the moment, such as near instant charging batteries, and batteries made of paper among other things. So, at some point the batteries will become less polluting and cheaper.
Windmills & the like, another government white elephant. We need nuclear powerstaions asap before this country falls even further behind the rest of the world.
Not so long ago solar cells were "expensive, useless" now they're being used on new builds.
Turbines in the nine zones could generate up to 32 gigawatts of power
I'm quite intrigued to see what Renault come up with regarding their zero emission cars. The marketing certainly makes it sound like a very bold step and whether they succeed or fail, it can only be a good thing to add to the debate and development of fossil fuel replacement.
The problem with Hydrogen cars is the Hydrogen is extremely difficult to transport and we dont have an infrastructure for transporting it. So it would have to be built.
Never mind the problem of producing the hydrogen to begin with.
We already have a system for producing and transporting electricity. So I expect electric cars to catch on quite quickly for driving in cities.
Once this has happened if we can somehow produce large quantities of renewable electricity ie wind,nuclear,fusion. I would then expect electric cars to go mainstream for long journeys too as all the infrastructure would be there.
Once this has happened if we can somehow produce large quantities of renewable electricity ie wind,nuclear,fusion. I would then expect electric cars to go mainstream for long journeys too as all the infrastructure would be there.
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