How are Elon Musk’s electric cars environmentally friendly when 2/3 of US electricity is produced from fossil fuel (coal included)?

External combustion engines, which are used to drive generators, have a higher thermal efficiency than small spark ignition engines. This is especially true when you consider all of the losses that must be added to convert engine output into turning tires. The IC engine wastes almost 80% of its fuel energy as heat. The transmission will then absorb 10-15% of the energy that the engine didn’t waste.

It means that even if your electricity came 100% from coal, an electric vehicle still beats a regular car. It gets even better: the national coal-fired generation is now less than 40%. This is because plant owners are rushing to switch to natural gas firing, which is half the cost and emits half as much CO2. There is also the third generation, which doesn’t emit any CO2, such as hydro, nuke and solar. Our electricity, while not as pure and reliable as the driving windmill, is still better than you might think. The current generation mix of EVs is far better than a traditional car, and this gap should continue to widen.

Another way to make the argument is this: Take a look at the sticker on a new EV’s window. You will see a MPGe box with numbers on it. The MPGe number is calculated by giving the cars the equivalent amount of fuel as a gallon of gasoline. They then see how far they go. They measure charger losses, which is the loss of charge from the battery to get power from the motor to the wheels, etc.

This was the mileage of our car. It covered 110 miles. Tesla models may be able to go down to 90 miles. When we first looked at the BMW I3, it was 126. You might be able to find a comparable-sized car with an equivalent non-e MPG that matches it. They are still cleaner than they were before.

Let’s now turn our attention to batteries. For over 20 years, naysayers have underestimated the life expectancy of a battery pack. Some predicted that we would need to buy a new battery pack every five years when we purchased a hybrid (Prius), back in 2000. This was half the cost of buying the car new. (despite a warranty for 8 years, 80k miles, or in CARB states, 10 years, 150k mile)

We sold that car at 15 years old. The car was in good condition and the pack had 90% of its advertised capacity when it was new. It needed to be repaired on the conventional drivetrain side, which cost nearly twice the car’s book value. A friend’s first hybrid, a 2002 Prius, made it to 350,000 on an original unaltered pack. It was a child who ran a light and then t-boned it. His second hybrid made it to 330k before it was also damaged in collision. His current one was a disappointment. It had 250,000 modules out of 28 and dropped to 45%. This code threw an error code. It cost $50 to replace the module and took three hours to fix. The pack cannot be considered original or untouched.

Many people are skilled at repairing and rebuilding batteries for various vehicles. There is also salvage. There will always be vehicles that are mechanically sound but have had their sheet metal rearranged beyond repair until the robots can take over driving.

Materials: The primary battery technology for new EVs is lithium-based. Lithium mining is benign in comparison to extracting oil, particularly heavy shale. Because it is water-soluble, they simply rinse the liquid out with alkali sand and then evaporate the water in shallow solar evaporating pools. This process is similar to how some sea salts are harvested. There are no tailings contaminated with arsenic or cyanide. It’s just washed with sand. There are no random sulfides that were released at the smelter.

They don’t even bother wildlife. The “mine” from which almost all of it is sourced happens to be located in the Atacama Desert, one of the most uninhabited places on the planet. It is a place where virtually nothing can survive. The desolation occurred without the assistance of humans. NASA used it for testing the Mars-rovers-possible-life detectors.

It is simple to recycle lithium. Having it in a car’s battery pack will make sure it doesn’t end up in a landfill unlike the 18650 cells in your solar Christmas lights. The most easily recycled item humans produce is the car. If the secret junkyard cabal finds that a yard owner allowed a metal worth more per pound than steel to end up in a landfill they will send them to take his pit bulls away and replace them with yapping toy breeds.

 

Leave a Comment