[wil421]

Electric cars IMHO are missing the point, which is to get off fossil fuels. When you switch to an electric vehicle you are just shifting from Gas to Coal. The US still relies heavily on fossil fuels to power the grid.

My question has always been: Does shifting from gas to depending on the electrical grid actually help? Or are we just smoking cigars (or e-cigs) instead of cigarettes?

Also, what is the downside to collecting Hydrogen?

[jgon]

Electric cars are actually a great idea to get off fossil fuels. Electricity is inherently "fungible" if you will. You can generate it anywhere you can rotate a commutator. Internal combustion engines rely on fossil fuels full stop.

If we switch over to electric vehicles, yes in the short term we are still generating that electricity with fossil fuels, but we don't have to. And in fact because the generation is currently centralized, each plant we switch over has a huge knock-on effect. Switch to hydropower and boom, 500,000 cars on the road just became carbon neutral (excluding production outputs of course). Even better, because electricity is so easy to generate it opens up the possibilities for decentralized generation! It would be impossible for everyone to have their own oil well, but in a decade or 2, everyone affording their own solar panel or wind turbine could be pretty feasible. Boom, now you've not just moved to carbon neutral generation, but decentralized generation!

In practical terms, moving as much as we can to using electricity instead of combustion gives us way, way more flexibility in terms of future directions. Solar, wind, hydropower, geothermal, etc, etc. All of these can be a power source for electric cars, but we only have one method of getting gas. Moving to electric cars would be a huge boon.

[Oculus]

In an interview at Ted with Chris Anderson, Elon Musk was asked the same question:

CA: Most of American electricity comes from burning fossil fuels. How can an electric car that plugs into that electricity help?

EM: Right. There's two elements to that answer. One is that, even if you take the same source fuel and produce power at the power plant and use it to charge electric cars, you're still better off. So if you take, say, natural gas, which is the most prevalent hydrocarbon source fuel, if you burn that in a modern General Electric natural gas turbine, you'll get about 60 percent efficiency. If you put that same fuel in an internal combustion engine car, you get about 20 percent efficiency. And the reason is, in the stationary power plant, you can afford to have something that weighs a lot more, is voluminous, and you can take the waste heat and run a steam turbine and generate a secondary power source. So in effect, even after you've taken transmission loss into account and everything, even using the same source fuel, you're at least twice as better off charging an electric car, then burning it at the power plant.

Url: http://www.ted.com/talks/elon_musk_the_mind_behind_tesla_spa...

[wil421]

Thanks! Great to hear it from the Horse's Mouth. I am going to watch that Ted talk.

[outworlder]

> Electric cars IMHO are missing the point, which is to get off fossil fuels. When you switch to an electric vehicle you are just shifting from Gas to Coal. The US still relies heavily on fossil fuels to power the grid.

Yes, because the whole world has the same reliance on fossil fuels as the US. Homework: what's quicker to replace? A few power stations, or the whole vehicle fleet? Also notice that electric engines are way more efficient than gas engines.

> My question has always been: Does shifting from gas to depending on the electrical grid actually help? Or are we just smoking cigars (or e-cigs) instead of cigarettes?

Long or short term? Electrical vehicles do not care where the power comes from. If you are that worried, power your EV yourself at home with solar/wind/whatever power.

> Also, what is the downside to collecting Hydrogen?

If it is from fossil fuels, it is kinda obvious. It is apparently possible to sequester CO2 from the process of extracting hydrogen from natural gas, but I have no idea if it is even required by regulations, or economically viable.

If it is from water electrolysis, then you'll be using the same fossil fuel power plants to split water.

Do not forget that electric cars have WAY less parts (the simplest conceptual car is a battery and engine) and require much less environmentally unfriendly stuff, such as lubricants, additives, etc.

[bryanlarsen]

"Homework: what's quicker to replace? A few power stations, or the whole vehicle fleet?"

average vehicle age in the US is 11.4 years.[1]

average power plant age in the US is over 30 years.[2]

1: http://www.autonews.com/article/20130806/RETAIL/130809922/av...

2: http://qz.com/61423/coal-fired-power-plants-near-retirement/

[outworlder]

Thanks for the data.

More number crunching is required however. See, we stopped producing all gasoline vehicles today, based on your source, it would take 11.4 years in average for the fleet to be replaced, so it would be an obvious win.

But we are not doing that. As this whole EV vehicle discussion proves, it is very difficult to replace the fleet. And the infrastructure.

[wil421]

>Yes, because the whole world has the same reliance on fossil fuels as the US.

Notice how I said US instead of World. That was done on purpose.

>Long or short term? Electrical vehicles do not care where the power comes from.

Long term: if the state I lived in switched to 50% usage of EVs overnight. How much more Green House emissions would be generated by the power plants? Would it be an overall decrease of GH gasses for my state? I doubt the hydro power is going to help that much.

http://www.georgiapower.com/about-us/media-resources/plant-b...

>If it is from fossil fuels, it is kinda obvious. It is apparently possible to sequester CO2 from the process of extracting hydrogen from natural gas, but I have no idea if it is even required by regulations, or economically viable.

Interesting I didnt realize we had to use natural gasses to get H. Wow even Helium is produced from Natural gas.

[hueyp]

Hydrogen is no different then what you spell out as downsides for electric vehicles. The best source of hydrogen is natural gas. In order to get hydrogen from non-fossil fuel sources you need cheap non-fossil fuel electricity. If you have that ... whats the problem with electric cars again?