By: Johan Young
According to Transport Watch, only about 30% of the energy generated by the power plant in fact reaches the vehicle because of losses in the transmission route. Of the energy delivered to the vehicle, 20% is then lost to the batteries and electric motor. This means that most Electric Vehicles are only about 24% efficient. So, if your electric vehicle is charged with electricity from a coal-fired power plant, then the Carbon dioxide emissions to fuel your Electric Vehicle are about double the amount emitted by a diesel engine, due to the inefficiencies in electrical power generation and transmission.
electric vehicle schematic
As a result they assume that the notion that electric cars will decrease emissions is a fiction unless we hypothecate that the UK electricity generating industry will be de-carbonised.
But if we want to consider this issue carefully, we will find a huge advantage of electric vehicles.
And now, let us consider some definitions:
- Hybrid-electric vehicle: This uses an internal-combustion engine for most of its power, but also has an electric motor run from batteries recharged by the engine. Typically the engine shuts off when the car is stopped. Hybrid Electric Vehicles include the Toyota Prius and the Honda Insight.
- Plug-in hybrid-electric vehicle: An Hybrid Electric Vehicle that can charge its batteries by plugging into a charger, permitting all-electric short trips. The forthcoming Chevrolet Volt is such a car.
- Battery-electric vehicle: an electric car powered solely by batteries.
All three can charge their batteries using regenerative braking, which recaptures energy otherwise lost as heat when bringing the car to a stop. That’s a huge advantage of electric vehicles.
How much energy is lost getting electricity from the power plant to your Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicle? Plenty. In the U.S. right now, about 70 percent of the energy used to make electricity – more than four million gigawatt-hours – comes from fossil fuels. About 70 percent of that amount is wasted generating the power and transmitting it to your door. Other energy is lost when charging batteries and operation electric motors. Overall, electric cars use fossil fuel at 20 to 25 percent efficiency, but dismal as that sounds, it beats an internal-combustion car, which typically operates at about 15 percent efficiency. An HEV uses around 0.48-0.74 kilowatt-hours per mile, while PHEVs in electric mode and BEVs use 0.18-0.46 kWh per mile. By contrast, a conventional car getting 25 MPG uses 1.35 kWh/mile. To put the issue in more familiar terms, a Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicle offers fuel economy equivalent to as much as 188 miles per gallon.
Now let’s talk pollution. A huge advantage of electric vehicles is that their energy can come from renewable sources, such as hydroelectric, wind, or solar. Even if the energy source is fossil fuel, installing state-of-the-art emission controls on a few big power plants is way easier than installing ’em on hundreds of millions of motor vehicles. What’s more, since many electric plants use natural gas, Carbon dioxide emissions from power generation are a modest 1.27 pounds of Carbon dioxide per kWh – 1.9 pounds per productive kWh once we account for losses during battery charging and so on. Evaluate that to gasoline, which produces the equal of 3.9 pounds of CO2 per productive kWh.
Not until there are, the battery electric car is far more environmentally friendly than conventional car batteries. For example, Tesla’s Electric Roadster Battery can make the most of the amount of materials that can be reused, recycled, and minimize energy consumption utilized during the transportation and recycling process
They can divide the elements and re-use what can be re-used (cobalt, aluminum, nickel, and copper, etc). So the battery pack saves thousands of gallons of gasoline/diesel over the life of the vehicle, it is less toxic than the lead-acid batteries that are in regular cars, and at the end of its life it is recycled. That’s a huge advantage of electric vehicles.
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