Well we all knew it….. 😉

BBC Report on Crap Leccy Cars

The Norwegian University of Science and Technology study found greenhouse gas emissions rose dramatically if coal was used to produce the electricity.

And what if it’s not?

What kind of driving?

Is it a co-incidence that this is a Norwegian university (hint – probably not)

In addition, producing batteries and electric motors requires a lot of toxic minerals such as nickel, copper and aluminium

How much of that is recycled material?

“A more significant reduction in global warming could potentially be achieved by increasing fuel efficiency or shifting from petrol to diesel,

That’s flawed (check out reports on diesel production from cracking heavy fuel oils), plus it’s mostly already happened.

Hello Moly, thought you might be around 🙂

An assumption of 100,000km decreases the benefit of electric vehicles to 9-14% with respect to petrol vehicles and results in impacts indistinguishable from those of a diesel vehicle

Not really crap, just no more environmentally friendly than a normal diesel.

See also this – live debate (on the same report and inviting authors and other collaborators in) on The Guardian site…

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2012/oct/05/electric-cars-emissions-bad-environment

Combine it with this story and the whole electric car idea starts to look even more flawed.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-19842401

No smell of burning petrol and oil
No symphony of sound

I concur, they’re crap

That’s quite an impressive set up the Guardian are doing having live dialogue with the authors.

IanMunro – Member

That’s quite an impressive set up the Guardian are doing having live dialogue with the authors.
I agree. Although I don’t go on news sites very often (so it could be common), it does look to have been a very good tool to get to the heart of this study.

The Norwegian University of Science and Technology study found greenhouse gas emissions rose dramatically if coal was used to produce the electricity.

And what if it’s not?

Exactly! If a car runs on electricity, then it doesn’t matter how that electricity is generated (cough nuclear nuclear nuclear cough) the car still works. Some great electric bike prototypes coming out too.

In addition, producing batteries and electric motors requires a lot of toxic minerals such as nickel, copper and aluminium

How much of that is recycled material?

And how much COULD be, a proper recycling infrastructure around electric cars is a no brainer, along with leased batteries or possibly battery swaps in “refuelling stations” (instead of plugging the car in) it wouldn’t even be hard.

I think these things might have occurred to the researchers too.
You can read the responses on the Guardian link.
‘Could’ type conjectures are largely pointless though. I mean we ‘could’ all just use cars less 🙂

An assumption of 100,000km decreases the benefit of electric vehicles to 9-14% with respect to petrol vehicles and results in impacts indistinguishable from those of a diesel vehicle

Not really crap, just no more environmentally friendly than a normal diesel.

You find me a pure electric vehcile that has or will manage to cover 100k before the batteries die and need to be replaced and I’ll eat my hat!

And how much COULD be, a proper recycling infrastructure around electric cars is a no brainer, along with leased batteries or possibly battery swaps in “refuelling stations” (instead of plugging the car in) it wouldn’t even be hard.

The batteries still need to be produced to lease/swap them and that is the biggest part of the production ploution problem. There is no realistic/enviromentally friendly/reuseable/cost effective way of recycling them

As the study talks about the environment impact of battery production, does it take into account the impact from oil drilling and refinement?

If you were really devoted to saving the planet surely you’d be riding an electric bike in all weathers instead of hauling all that weight around..?

I’d consider electric on 2 wheels if there was

1) Fun achievable, ie not being overtaken by kids on skateboards
2) At least a days range

I mean we ‘could’ all just use cars less

We could.

Or, we could create another massive, complicated, damaging and expensive industry for producing faux-tree-hugging vehicles.

Then we don’t need to think about being environmentally responsible or accountable because our car has an ‘eco-something’ badge on the back that means it’s all ok.

It’s offset further if we recycle our Marmite jars too.

As the study talks about the environment impact of battery production, does it take into account the impact from oil drilling and refinement?

Yes.

>>As the study talks about the environment impact of battery production, does it take into account the impact from oil drilling and refinement?

>Yes.
Where?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2012/oct/05/electric-cars-emissions-bad-environment#block-2

So does this make electric bikes unecological, surely producing electricity from coal is on the wane anyway.

We’re just about to launch an electric bike, in conjunction with SRAM, based on a Townie, it’s quite cool, the SRAM unit is very unobtrusive and spare batteries for recharge would considerably lengthen it’s 30 mile range for commuting, I’d always thought they were knaf until I tried it, now I think they’re great.

I’d also been a great fan of electric cars, wish they had commercial vehicle options, the thought of a Van or Truck with huge batteries, solar on the roof plus a small diesel generator driven hybrid system seems excellent, they just seem to be dragging their heels with the whole electric thing.

“They” whilst I’m in full rant, should have thought about standardising batteries so they can be exchanged fully charged at fuel stations and the whole range thing goes out the window, solar could also be used to charge them at way stations.

Makes me mad all this anti electric bollox from vested interest groups.

Sorry, rant ends.

You find me a pure electric vehcile that has or will manage to cover 100k before the batteries die and need to be replaced and I’ll eat my hat!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nissan_Leaf
“The Leaf’s battery is guaranteed by Nissan for eight years or 100,000 miles ” It is also 95% recoverable but i don’t really know what that means?

Makes me mad all this anti electric bollox from vested interest groups.

I don’t think I’ve really seen much in the way of bollox from vested interest groups. I’m not even to sure who the groups would be. It won’t be car manufacturers – they’ll be happy to sell cars whatever powers them, it won’t be energy companies, they aren’t exactly short of demand and never will be.

I’d also been a great fan of electric cars, wish they had commercial vehicle options, the thought of a Van or Truck with huge batteries, solar on the roof plus a small diesel generator driven hybrid system seems excellent, they just seem to be dragging their heels with the whole electric thing.

Genuinely, who do you think is dragging their heels? People demanding a cheap environmentally friendly electric car with a decent range won’t produce a cheap environmentally friendly electric car with a decent range, just as if enough people demand a moon on a stick won’t result in said product.

>>>As the study talks about the environment impact of battery production, does it take into account the impact from oil drilling and refinement?
>>Yes.
>Where? http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2012/oct/05/electric-cars-emissions-bad-environment#block-2

No, that’s where the author claims it does take that into account. I can’t find any mention of it in the paper, nor any weighting matrices in the model supplied in the supporting documentation that comes with the paper that would be associated with this factor being taken into account.
Can someone point to where it is addressed in the paper? I’m very interested to see how they’ve quantified the environmental effect of oil drilling.

Edit: Seems Kryton and I are thinking along the same lines:

…we still don’t know the true impact of the internal combustion cars and the fuel they use. This information is obfuscated by historical habit, for 100 years no one wanted to know. For example, how much electricity from coal burning power plants goes into refining oil? Try and find out how much per gallon? I’ve asked when filming at a massive oil refinery that had it’s own set of pylons coming from a nearby coal burner. No one wants to tell you.

igrf – Google ‘Smiths Electric Vehicles’.
Purely electric, so not quite the same as you mention, but commercial electric vehicles, nonetheless.

A 1500kg vehicle takes a lot of energy to move it, no matter how it is powered.

No, that’s where the author claims it does take that into account. I can’t find any mention of it in the paper, nor any weighting matrices in the model supplied in the supporting documentation that comes with the paper that would be associated with this factor being taken into account.
Can someone point to where it is addressed in the paper? I’m very interested to see how they’ve quantified the environmental effect of oil drilling.

Have you checked through the ‘supporting information’ zip file?
/Edit – Sorry! Just read your post properly – you’ve already looked.
I haven’t, as I’m meant to be doing work, but that would be my starting point. After that If I was concerned I’d email the authors.

We have a new generation Prius, yes Iknow. Actually it’s a damn fine car. It wasn’t bought with the ecological “save the world” mindset as much as “will it save me money”

I’m after a Lexus CX200h next, same mindset.

You find me a pure electric vehcile that has or will manage to cover 100k before the batteries die and need to be replaced and I’ll eat my hat!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nissan_Leaf
“The Leaf’s battery is guaranteed by Nissan for eight years or 100,000 miles ” It is also 95% recoverable but i don’t really know what that means?

And how long will it take a vehicle with a circa 80 mile range to do that sort of mileage. The average UK drivers mileage is now approx 7500 miles a year. So Mr average will run out of his battery waranty well before he get to 100k.

Having worked for a maufacturer that had about 40 100% electric vans in service with Westminster council for comming up to 10 years, they are used on a 7 day a week basis and the highest mileage I came across was about 60k. Most of them had had batteries replaced, due to the users in a ,managed fleet not following the charging guidlines.

I don’t believe the type of person who will use one of the current crop of electric vehicles (or many gererations to come) will be doing 12k+ a year. When they need batteries unless the manufacturer sells the replacements at a massive loss (a bit like the inital sale) it will right the car off.

Never mind all that, have your eaten your hat yet?

No, that’s where the author claims it does take that into account. I can’t find any mention of it in the paper, nor any weighting matrices in the model supplied in the supporting documentation that comes with the paper that would be associated with this factor being taken into account.

I really doubt they’re lying.

Never mind all that, have your eaten your hat yet?

Nope left it in the Leaf when the battery went flat on the way to a trail centre…… 😆

Thing is though, how do you power an ICE car from a solar panel?

Can someone point to where it is addressed in the paper? I’m very interested to see how they’ve quantified the environmental effect of oil drilling.

It says in the supplemental data that the impact data is derived from the econvent database.
http://www.ecoinvent.org/

http://www.environmental-expert.com/Files%5C6037%5Carticles%5C5815%5Clca3.pdf

You can get a guest login and then search for petrol and get the appropriate datasets (I’ve just done the search, rather than the download)

We have a new generation Prius, yes Iknow. Actually it’s a damn fine car. It wasn’t bought with the ecological “save the world” mindset as much as “will it save me money”

I’m after a Lexus CX200h next, same mindset.

Yep, at +£24k that’ll save you a barrow-load…

However, in some cases electric cars still made sense, the researchers said.

depends on all the factors.

However…
Oil is a finite resource that is running out, tackling this problem by shifting to electric cars (even if they are 100% renewable none polluting sources) is missing the opportunity to sort out the crap transport system we have. personal transport can be a worthwhile thing but the way it’s implemented at the moment is just rubbish. Exchanging noisy smelly fuel burning gridlock for clean quiet elastictrickery gridlock is just stupid

It’s on a lease, so will the next one, I get a good “hand back” deal on it on trade up, hence one of the reasons for buying it.

THe CX is 30k, I don;t think thats a lot for a car, a hybrid at that.,

Is it a co-incidence that this is a Norwegian university (hint – probably not)

What point are you trying to make here?

We have a new generation Prius, yes I know. Actually it’s a damn fine car. It wasn’t bought with the ecological “save the world” mindset as much as “will it save me money”

I’m after a Lexus CX200h next, same mindset.

The only way that’ll save you money is in company car and road tax. Lugging all that electric stff around on top of a petrol engine really doesn’t do much for your fuel consumption – despite what the VCA figures say.

Prius

Lexus

Peugeot

The only reason all the manufacturers are going ‘Hybrid’ is to cut their average Co2/km figure, from which they either do or don’t get massive fines from the EU on every vehicle they produce no matter what its power source. And to sell the cars to people who live/work in city’s with congestion charging zones where due to the stop start traffic they run on their petrol/diesel engine most of the time anyway!

Lugging all that electric stff around on top of a petrol engine really doesn’t do much for your fuel consumption

+1 I had a Toyota Auris hybrid on hire for work a few weeks ago. It was an astonishingly bad car. I managed to squeeze an average of 55mpg out of it but by god it was hard work. By way of comparison the hire car I had before that was a huge Peugeot saloon with a massive turbo diesel under the bonnet. Even driving it like a loony I failed to achieve less than 55mpg. If I’d been concentrating on fuel economy I reckon I could have got low 60’s easily.

The Toyota also had no boot space as the back was full of flaming batteries. Despite this it would only cover about a mile in full electric mode before the petrol engine kicked in.

I love the idea of an electric car. Seriously, think it through for a minute, there’s no torque-curve, so all the torque is available from 1rpm upwards if you so desire. Plus you can make it sound like a seventies Alfa Romeo at the flick of a switch, what’s not to like?

They’re only as “green” as the power station that generated the electricity that goes into them…who’d have thunk it? A proper recycling network would also take care of disposing of the heavy metals too.

Granted, the technology isn’t there yet, but we’re making progress all the time.

THe CX is 30k, I don;t think thats a lot for a car, a hybrid at that.,

£30k! Who are you trying to kid? That’s a chuffing fortune for me, I can only dream of being able to buy a brand-new Panda 4×4, or a Citrôen DS3, because there’s no way I can actually afford one, £30k+ is hopelessly far out of reach for me, and pretty much every single person I know! 🙄