I firmly believe that anyone driving an electric car East of the Mississippi should have this bumper sticker attached to the back.
COAL-FIRED CAR
I wonder if it would be possible to license a fork-lift truck for the road. The lifting capacity might be useful in traffic jams.
Coal-fired cars were used in Eastern Europe, even after WWII BTW.
Electric cars are green if the electricity to charge them comes from nuclear reactors.
When they put out an electric snow machine (formally generically called Ski-Doo)that will not be found in the spring time next to the decomposing bodies of their Eco-drivers, then and only then will the vast majority of Canadians outside of the GTA (or universe as they refer to it) will believe in that Eco-claptrap.
Honestly, do these idiots when they plug in their cars, actually know where the electricity comes from? I also defy anyone to tell me exactly what kind of generation source the electricity they are pulling off the grid comes from.
Sparky cars are impossible to be cheap or efficient or environmentaly favourable until somebody gets around to inventing and developing the flux capacitator…..
And after 10 years you are the proud owner of a car that’s worth nothing. The tow job to haul this piece of toxic waste to a recycling depot will probably cost you fair coin, after you fill in the 20 forms to comply with government regulations. EV’s make as much sense as Windmills.
At least you can drive an EV for awhile.
“Coal-fired cars were used in Eastern Europe, even after WWII BTW.”
Gasifiers – you can gasify wood, coal and who knows what else.
A cool technology, but not terribly effective, there’s a reason even in europe today at 8$ a gallon, you do not see them chugging around.
Texas Canuck, I’ll take that bet…
My grid power is B.C. grid, (BC Hydro)
Powell River is run off of 4 different installations, with the main backup “base load” from a 1960 era Dam that the tree-huggers have not destroyed YET.
Our new installations come at such a cost (between the Native Bands, the Suzuki “Fruit Fly Army” and various other rent seekers and assorted parasites)…
What a cluster…F@#$
dwright
/rant
“I also defy anyone to tell me exactly what kind of generation source the electricity they are pulling off the grid comes from” – that’s easy! Wind turbines driven by unicorn farts.
Great article. The author should have also mentioned the cost involved in upgrading the electrical infrastructure. If every one of us started driving electric cars those sub-stations that you see on the way to work would *never* be able to keep up.
But it is convenient for electric car investors to keep quiet on these details. They just want to milk the scam long enough to get their money out. They really don’t care if the concept is utterly impractical in the long term.
Using the Leaf – the only true low-cost electric car option:
Assuming the the maximum daily average drive is 35 miles (half the max range when new; about 2/3rds the range at five yrs of age), the most it can be driven assuming that is only driven on business days only is 8700 miles/yr.
If, as the article asserts, the CO2 breakeven is at 50,000 miles, then the car would not be greener until 5.7 yrs which is nearing the point at which the battery would need replacing and the Co2 deficit is reset yet again.
And its pretty safe to assume that most of these leaves are driven far less than 35 mi/day. so in aggregate they are much higher CO2 emitters than conventional options.
And that’s assuming that the electricity source is non-fossil fuel based…
And the extra C02 is generated all at the beginning of the car’s life not during it thus the impact would – presumably be harsher – harder for mother earth to absorb.
What I find disturbing is that those closest to the e-car industry have these numbers and must be willfully ignoring the truth…
Careful, dwright.
There’s a lot of electricity that comes in from Alberta. BC Hydro is strong on capacity but short on energy, whereas Alberta is the reverse. That’s why those two utilities have a greater volume of power exchanges than practically any two other provinces except Ontario and Manitoba.
Fair enough cgh.
Didn’t want to start on [ahem] that particular rant, TransAlta also sends a “metric crapload” of capacity to a lying, prick named O’something or other . Through Montana.
I grew up under those power lines.
dwright
The rare earth minerals, primarily neodymium (mined in China and Ontario Canada), are found in the permanent magnets, which are located in the motors. These magnets are highly recyclable. The batteries for the most part are lithium-ion. Lithium is primarily mined in California.
The lithium will likely end up in a Mexican landfill happily contaminated groundwater for centuries to come.
But you must factor in the whole cost. How much is is worth to piddle along the interstate through redneck Kentucky with the smuggest and most sanctimonious of smiles on your face. Well the answer is it’s priceless, and well worth the birth defects and Down Syndrome of a few worthless brown skinned Mexican babies.
My God, it is so warm and fuzzy under Al Gores’ fat glowing halo!
Hey let’s be accurate here, that’s 5.6957 thousand gazillion metric craploads!
I’m shocked.
Electric cars are green if the electricity to charge them comes from nuclear reactors.Posted by: John Lewis …or your independent off-grid solar array, hydro or wood fired generator.
The newest gen3 small scale reactors make the 40 year old nuclear plants look like Edsels. Decades of electricity and heat from a few kilos of fuel.
Well, putting Lithium into the Mexican drinking water is likely going to dramatically decrease their homicide rate as Lithium tends to mellow people out. Interesting study in Texas a while back where homicide rates/county were inversely related to Lithium levels in the well water.
Still, it makes a lot more sense to give people their daily dose of Lithium than this incredibly expensive watermelon fraud of electric vehicles with a few possible unexpected benefits such as Lithium in the groundwater. I suspect, however, that Li batteries are worth enough that all of the Li will be recycled.
There’s a lot of electricity that comes in from Alberta. Posted by: cgh
Overall, BC tends to be a net exporter to Alberta but it is generally a net importer relative to the United States. http://web.uvic.ca/~kooten/documents/BCgeneratingSystem.pdf
EV’s are an incremental use of electricity since an alternative is obviously available. As such, 100% of the electricity used to charge them should be considered to come from the least desiraable source, since that source would be shut down otherwise. Unless your jursidiction is 100% nuclear or hydro, your EV is being charged by coal. Renewables are even worse for the same reason EV’s have a high CO2 use in construction. Solar requires an even more enormous input of fossil fuel generated power to make. Wind not only requires mining of rare earths, but also concrete for the foundations – a very high energy cost.
Does anyone know how much energy is required to recycle a lithium battery? I’m pretty certain it’s not as simple as just taking the lithium out of the old battery and using it in a new one.
Whatever the energy required is for the recycling process, it should be factored into the overall EV energy calculation as well.
Obama has stated publicly he wants to see millions of green EV’s on America’s roads to replace those “planet destroying” combustion engines. I doubt he has given much thought to how the present electrical capacity of the USA would accommodate that since both windmills and solar are ineffective at night when millions of EV’s would be charging. There seems to be little demand for g3 reactors or any other logical solution. I’m fairly certain the EPA would find a way to bring this logical mode of generating to a halt, as anything logical seems to go against the EPA mandate
Peter, the number is not very difficult to estimate. Total per capita energy use in North America (there’s no meaningful difference between Canada and the US) is about 10 MWh, for every man, woman and child. Assume 30% of that is transport, or 3 MWh.
So the US total transport demand is approximately 1050 TWh (3 MWh x 350 million). A large nuclear reactor produces about 5 TWh annually, so total conversion of the US transport fleet to electricity would require approximately 200 nuclear reactors, about double its current fleet.
Canada with its 35 million people would need about 20 nuclear reactors, approximately equivalent to Canada’s current fleet of large power reactors.
By contrast, when you produce this electricity from wind, getting 1050 TWh from wind requires just over one million of them.
It’s probably doable if you produce all the electricity from nuclear power. It’s not remotely possible with wind generation given the sheer size of the infrastructure required. Given the number of nuclear reactors involved, the T&D requirements are probably about a 50% increase on our current system. For wind, given the dispersed nature of the generators, it’s many times our current T&D infrastructure. You need a million new grid connections rather than 200 additional if larger ones.
No, it’s not that simple. The battery has to be smashed and the resulting parts melted down and sorted into their constituent elements. Because there’s often residual charge in the battery, you first have to freeze it in liquid nitrogen first prior to smashing it into little bits.
All of this costs a lot of money, energy and time. It’s far more complex than the recycling of lead-acid batteries.
cgh, if the US planned on building another 200 nuclear reactors I might look more favorably on EV’s. However, innumerate politicians clueless of the concept of energy density are the ones making the decisions in the US now.
Here in BC the lunatics have clearly taken over the asylum as the BC lieberals put through legislation that prevents any nuclear reactors being built in BC as well as no new large scale hydroelectric plants. Considering the amount of rain that falls on the coast, hydro electricity is a no brainer and one gets flood control and irrigation water as a free bonus. Instead the moonbat watermelons are talking about low energy density wind power and solar power. Solar power in Vancouver is probably the product of the wet coasts vitamin D deficient brains as when 80+% of the population of Vancouver is vitamin D deficient due to lack of sunshine, then it’s obviously not a spot where one would consider solar power. Vitamin D deficiency might account for some of the lunacy in the moonbat capital of Canada, but I suspect that Vancouver is just a moonbat magnet.
The rare earth minerals in those batteries come from the same place that they source them for the special magnets used in all those wind turbines.
China.
Clean Green eco friendly China
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive/article-1350811/In-China-true-cost-Britains-clean-green-wind-power-experiment-Pollution-disastrous-scale.html
Makes the Oil Sands look like Suzuki’s Koi Pond.
I firmly believe that anyone driving an electric car East of the Mississippi should have this bumper sticker attached to the back.
COAL-FIRED CAR
I wonder if it would be possible to license a fork-lift truck for the road. The lifting capacity might be useful in traffic jams.
Coal-fired cars were used in Eastern Europe, even after WWII BTW.
Electric cars are green if the electricity to charge them comes from nuclear reactors.
When they put out an electric snow machine (formally generically called Ski-Doo)that will not be found in the spring time next to the decomposing bodies of their Eco-drivers, then and only then will the vast majority of Canadians outside of the GTA (or universe as they refer to it) will believe in that Eco-claptrap.
Honestly, do these idiots when they plug in their cars, actually know where the electricity comes from? I also defy anyone to tell me exactly what kind of generation source the electricity they are pulling off the grid comes from.
Sparky cars are impossible to be cheap or efficient or environmentaly favourable until somebody gets around to inventing and developing the flux capacitator…..
And after 10 years you are the proud owner of a car that’s worth nothing. The tow job to haul this piece of toxic waste to a recycling depot will probably cost you fair coin, after you fill in the 20 forms to comply with government regulations. EV’s make as much sense as Windmills.
At least you can drive an EV for awhile.
“Coal-fired cars were used in Eastern Europe, even after WWII BTW.”
Gasifiers – you can gasify wood, coal and who knows what else.
A cool technology, but not terribly effective, there’s a reason even in europe today at 8$ a gallon, you do not see them chugging around.
Texas Canuck, I’ll take that bet…
My grid power is B.C. grid, (BC Hydro)
Powell River is run off of 4 different installations, with the main backup “base load” from a 1960 era Dam that the tree-huggers have not destroyed YET.
Our new installations come at such a cost (between the Native Bands, the Suzuki “Fruit Fly Army” and various other rent seekers and assorted parasites)…
What a cluster…F@#$
dwright
/rant
“I also defy anyone to tell me exactly what kind of generation source the electricity they are pulling off the grid comes from” – that’s easy! Wind turbines driven by unicorn farts.
Great article. The author should have also mentioned the cost involved in upgrading the electrical infrastructure. If every one of us started driving electric cars those sub-stations that you see on the way to work would *never* be able to keep up.
But it is convenient for electric car investors to keep quiet on these details. They just want to milk the scam long enough to get their money out. They really don’t care if the concept is utterly impractical in the long term.
Using the Leaf – the only true low-cost electric car option:
Assuming the the maximum daily average drive is 35 miles (half the max range when new; about 2/3rds the range at five yrs of age), the most it can be driven assuming that is only driven on business days only is 8700 miles/yr.
If, as the article asserts, the CO2 breakeven is at 50,000 miles, then the car would not be greener until 5.7 yrs which is nearing the point at which the battery would need replacing and the Co2 deficit is reset yet again.
And its pretty safe to assume that most of these leaves are driven far less than 35 mi/day. so in aggregate they are much higher CO2 emitters than conventional options.
And that’s assuming that the electricity source is non-fossil fuel based…
And the extra C02 is generated all at the beginning of the car’s life not during it thus the impact would – presumably be harsher – harder for mother earth to absorb.
What I find disturbing is that those closest to the e-car industry have these numbers and must be willfully ignoring the truth…
Careful, dwright.
There’s a lot of electricity that comes in from Alberta. BC Hydro is strong on capacity but short on energy, whereas Alberta is the reverse. That’s why those two utilities have a greater volume of power exchanges than practically any two other provinces except Ontario and Manitoba.
Fair enough cgh.
Didn’t want to start on [ahem] that particular rant, TransAlta also sends a “metric crapload” of capacity to a lying, prick named O’something or other . Through Montana.
I grew up under those power lines.
dwright
The rare earth minerals, primarily neodymium (mined in China and Ontario Canada), are found in the permanent magnets, which are located in the motors. These magnets are highly recyclable. The batteries for the most part are lithium-ion. Lithium is primarily mined in California.
The lithium will likely end up in a Mexican landfill happily contaminated groundwater for centuries to come.
But you must factor in the whole cost. How much is is worth to piddle along the interstate through redneck Kentucky with the smuggest and most sanctimonious of smiles on your face. Well the answer is it’s priceless, and well worth the birth defects and Down Syndrome of a few worthless brown skinned Mexican babies.
My God, it is so warm and fuzzy under Al Gores’ fat glowing halo!
Hey let’s be accurate here, that’s 5.6957 thousand gazillion metric craploads!
I’m shocked.
Electric cars are green if the electricity to charge them comes from nuclear reactors.Posted by: John Lewis …or your independent off-grid solar array, hydro or wood fired generator.
The newest gen3 small scale reactors make the 40 year old nuclear plants look like Edsels. Decades of electricity and heat from a few kilos of fuel.
Well, putting Lithium into the Mexican drinking water is likely going to dramatically decrease their homicide rate as Lithium tends to mellow people out. Interesting study in Texas a while back where homicide rates/county were inversely related to Lithium levels in the well water.
Still, it makes a lot more sense to give people their daily dose of Lithium than this incredibly expensive watermelon fraud of electric vehicles with a few possible unexpected benefits such as Lithium in the groundwater. I suspect, however, that Li batteries are worth enough that all of the Li will be recycled.
There’s a lot of electricity that comes in from Alberta. Posted by: cgh
Overall, BC tends to be a net exporter to Alberta but it is generally a net importer relative to the United States.
http://web.uvic.ca/~kooten/documents/BCgeneratingSystem.pdf
EV’s are an incremental use of electricity since an alternative is obviously available. As such, 100% of the electricity used to charge them should be considered to come from the least desiraable source, since that source would be shut down otherwise. Unless your jursidiction is 100% nuclear or hydro, your EV is being charged by coal. Renewables are even worse for the same reason EV’s have a high CO2 use in construction. Solar requires an even more enormous input of fossil fuel generated power to make. Wind not only requires mining of rare earths, but also concrete for the foundations – a very high energy cost.
Does anyone know how much energy is required to recycle a lithium battery? I’m pretty certain it’s not as simple as just taking the lithium out of the old battery and using it in a new one.
Whatever the energy required is for the recycling process, it should be factored into the overall EV energy calculation as well.
Obama has stated publicly he wants to see millions of green EV’s on America’s roads to replace those “planet destroying” combustion engines. I doubt he has given much thought to how the present electrical capacity of the USA would accommodate that since both windmills and solar are ineffective at night when millions of EV’s would be charging. There seems to be little demand for g3 reactors or any other logical solution. I’m fairly certain the EPA would find a way to bring this logical mode of generating to a halt, as anything logical seems to go against the EPA mandate
Peter, the number is not very difficult to estimate. Total per capita energy use in North America (there’s no meaningful difference between Canada and the US) is about 10 MWh, for every man, woman and child. Assume 30% of that is transport, or 3 MWh.
So the US total transport demand is approximately 1050 TWh (3 MWh x 350 million). A large nuclear reactor produces about 5 TWh annually, so total conversion of the US transport fleet to electricity would require approximately 200 nuclear reactors, about double its current fleet.
Canada with its 35 million people would need about 20 nuclear reactors, approximately equivalent to Canada’s current fleet of large power reactors.
By contrast, when you produce this electricity from wind, getting 1050 TWh from wind requires just over one million of them.
It’s probably doable if you produce all the electricity from nuclear power. It’s not remotely possible with wind generation given the sheer size of the infrastructure required. Given the number of nuclear reactors involved, the T&D requirements are probably about a 50% increase on our current system. For wind, given the dispersed nature of the generators, it’s many times our current T&D infrastructure. You need a million new grid connections rather than 200 additional if larger ones.
No, it’s not that simple. The battery has to be smashed and the resulting parts melted down and sorted into their constituent elements. Because there’s often residual charge in the battery, you first have to freeze it in liquid nitrogen first prior to smashing it into little bits.
All of this costs a lot of money, energy and time. It’s far more complex than the recycling of lead-acid batteries.
cgh, if the US planned on building another 200 nuclear reactors I might look more favorably on EV’s. However, innumerate politicians clueless of the concept of energy density are the ones making the decisions in the US now.
Here in BC the lunatics have clearly taken over the asylum as the BC lieberals put through legislation that prevents any nuclear reactors being built in BC as well as no new large scale hydroelectric plants. Considering the amount of rain that falls on the coast, hydro electricity is a no brainer and one gets flood control and irrigation water as a free bonus. Instead the moonbat watermelons are talking about low energy density wind power and solar power. Solar power in Vancouver is probably the product of the wet coasts vitamin D deficient brains as when 80+% of the population of Vancouver is vitamin D deficient due to lack of sunshine, then it’s obviously not a spot where one would consider solar power. Vitamin D deficiency might account for some of the lunacy in the moonbat capital of Canada, but I suspect that Vancouver is just a moonbat magnet.