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Originally posted by mcerd1
whatever the technology there will be some kind of emissions – the metals and plastics used in the car add up pretty fast, the higher the grade the more energy it took to make and don’t forget to add spares/ replacement parts and batteries
but also the factory making the materials is itself made of concrete/ metal/ glass and probably only has a 50 year lifespan so that all needs factored in too (concrete, glass and aluminium are all energy intensive to produce)

I'm not against the idea of electric cars as such (assuming ways around the limitations can be found at some point) - but I wish folk would stop pretending they were squeaky clean

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Originally posted by swanny
the other bit of the equation for electric vehicles as several have pointed out is that electricity generation via the grid is largely not emission free. it will only be when micro-generation is more widely adopted and properly integrated with the grid that they could be seen as a 100% replacement.

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there is no such thing as emission free energy
if you take into account all the major factors none of them are truly emission free or sustainable….


solar panels are expensive because they cost a large amount of energy to produce - on top of that they are only 18% efficient at best and produce DC power at low voltages which you isn't that useful without a transforming it up and converting it to AC (you lose power in this process too)
German businesses have big incentives to use them (paid for out of normal electricity bills) but all its done is drive up the price of electricity for everyone else

wind power is no were near as efficient as they claim when they build them, ant the cost of building them in energy terms is often more than they ever make back in there lifetime.
(the big offshore wind turbines have ~160m diameter blades made largely from carbon fibre – there is a huge energy cost in making these)
the 'micro generation' size ones suffer the same issues with low voltage / unsuitable outputs than need processed before they can be linked to the grid, the worst of these can actually use power to run and give you a net loss of power (some suppliers were even taken to court over this)

Wave and tidal are a little better, but you can’t just put them anywhere.
And hydro can be good, but your limited to where you can build it and also involves lots of concrete

and you need to add the cost of building and maintaining the power grid itself (lifespan of just 40 years for each bit of it)


Micro generation of any form is a con – mainly because the transformation and transmission losses on low-voltage home based setups are huge
this is why the UK grid's backbone runs at 400,000 volts ! and until it gets to your street most power is still at 11,000 volts.
micro only works if you use it at the source (ideally at or close to the voltage you generate at like a 12/24v lighting etc..) or it can work for ‘off-grid’ locations, but even that often costs more in the long run than just paying for the electricity



These things all sound great to politicians, because they don't care about the facts, they only want something that sounds good enough that they'll get elected again – but do the sums on total lifecycle costs / energy production and energy used and you’ll find none are really emissions free
(that goes for nuclear too btw – yeah the reactor might not give any emissions, but what about all the steel, concrete, aluminium etc. it took to build it, never mind the energy/cost used in producing the fuel etc….)

if you follow this logic with internal combustion then you need to add in the cost of finding, extracting and refining the fuel as well as the costs of building and running the oil rigs, ships, pipelines, refinery's, tanker lorries and petrol stations - and I'm afraid this is were the 'diesel is as good as electric' argument stops working


There are some promising looking new reactor designs floating around, some of which even use a high proportion of old nuclear waste as the fuel, that’s where I think we should be putting the money – but don’t kid yourself into thinking they are totally ‘emissions free’



[Edited on 10/7/2014 by mcerd1]

[Edited on 10/7/2014 by mcerd1]

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