How Great Are The Electric Cars?
The shiny happy people of the world who think all it takes to make electric cars is a snap of the fingers, it’s more like a wave from Harry Potter’s wand, i.e. it’s all fiction. Electric cars are hard for two reasons. Number one, very little was done with battery technology from the beginning of the 20th century until the 1990′s when the electronic revolution really kicked into gear for consumer electronics. It’s only in the last 15 years that money has poured into R&D to move battery technology forward. Only now as we are into the second decade of the 21st Century do we see that investment begining to take hold. While still no where close to the efficiency of internal compustion engines using gasoline or diesel as a storage medium for power, the yields are beging to advance with size and weight declining.
The second problem is three fold, where to charge the vehicle, how quickly can it be recharged and finally what is fuel being used to run the power plants supplying the electricity to recharge. For those that live in “the burbs†where to charge isn’t as much of a problem because it’s assumed that you have a garage where you can plug your vehicle in. For city and apartment dwellers though, pulling a plug out and attaching to some power point is full of hazards. How quickly it can recharge is also an issue. What we’ve seen so far is no matter the vehicle, 8 hours on 110, 3-4 hours on 220, which is what people would have at homes. It’s possible to recharge in 45 minutes with 480v power, but that is an industrial only kind of line. Range is another issue that we’ll skip for the moment.
The last issue and the point we want to make is that electric vehicles like the Nissan Leaf and the Mitsubishi iMiev are not carbon free cars, because there is a power plant producing carbon to make said electricity. In the US over 60% of electricity is provided by coal plants. While there has been and continues to be a large reduction in the carbon emissions from coal plants they by-products of coal plants aren’t the most environmentally friendly, just ask the people of Tennessee about the coal ash slides. Nuclear has a lot of advantages, but people still think of that technology in 1960′s terms, and movies like “The China Syndrom†and Three Mile Island are always brought up. Go ask the French, who are net EXPORTERS of electricity because of their nuclear energy program how they work.
So while electric cars may reduce the the carbon foot print of transportation, it won’t be a one for one reduction because of all the additional power that will need to be generated from the grid to power them.
[Source: All Cars Electric]
1 Comment
It would be a huge reduction still, controlling the pollution on a few power plants is easier then controlling emissions on 260,000,000 aging cars. Then rules on power plants would increase as far as emissions thus cost of electricity would go up plus demand but i think we are good… there are huge natural gas reserves in the usa underground that are just now being explored. Just check out some of the cool gas burning turbine generators that GE sells, i could open a power plant today. Ya nuclear power is amazing and will rule sooner or later. China is buying so much uranium and stock piling it right now that the price is finally increasing after a two year drop.. they also bought two plutonium reactors from Russia in 09.. i think when they start making it better we will use it… kinda like how japan has the best electronics and then we get it a few years later. Electric motors are 90% efficient and moving electricity takes a wire.. not a simi truck.. its going to so much more efficient.. think of all the other power savings.. no drilling, no refining, no trucking it around the usa, no boats shipping it around.