How would the emissions performance of a General Motors EV1 fully
electric car compare to similar, gasoline-powered cars if the
AGGREGATE emissions of the US national power grid used to charge it
were considered?

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Request for Question Clarification by webadept-ga on 26 Oct 2002 02:26 PDT

Hi, 

Should we also take into consideration the emissions produced by the
oil refineres, tankers, and pumping stations for the gasoline-powered
car as well?

webadept-ga

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Clarification of Question by coloth-ga on 26 Oct 2002 04:24 PDT

Thank you for an interesting question! My initial response is: no. If
I'm deciding on a car based on emissions, there would be no
statistically significant impact on the current infrastructure
emissions, whether I chose a regular car or a "zero emission" electric
car. However, it would be fascinating to know what the overall impact
would be if ALL cars were electric (I'm just using the EV1 as a test
case), and all the gas stations and tanker trucks, etc... were
unnecessary. (This could be difficult to answer, because clearly there
would still be some petroleum infrastructure, concentrated on feeding
power plants. Also, energy demands may change.)

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Clarification of Question by coloth-ga on 26 Oct 2002 04:42 PDT

After some more thought, I want to revise my clarification (!). I said
before that there wouldn't be a "statistically significant" impact on
infrastructure emissions because of this vehicle choice. But that's
the whole point of my question! A lot of statistically insignificant
changes can combine into measurable change. So, my question might
better be expressed as: "What is the total emissions benefit of
choosing a GM EV1 over a similar gasoline-powered car, taking both
vehicle and infrastructure emissions into account?"

coloth-ga,

I found the following two related links, which may be of use:

1. The FAQ page of the Electric Vehicle Association of Greater
Washingotn DC
( http://www.evadc.org/ev_faq.html ) says:

"Because EV's run on electricity from batteries, they offer freedom
from high gas prices. Nationwide, only about 4 (four) percent of
electricity generation is produced from oil. "

"EV's are nearly twice as efficient as internal combustion engine
(ICE) vehicles, and therefore significantly less polluting, even when
power plant emissions are considered! "

2. The Electric Power Pollution Calculator 

http://www.infinitepower.org/calc_pollution.htm

enables you to calculate the amount of polluting materials generated
from a given number of kilowatt-hours of electricity you use.
Presumably if you knew the technical specifications of the EV1 car
such as charging time, electricity consumption of the charger, and
range in miles, you could calculate the electric power consumption per
mile and use this site to calculate the amount of pollution generated
per mile. The site distinguishes between five types of energy sources:
Western coal, eastern coal, gas, biomass, and oil, so you would need
to know also the distribution of these energy sources in the overall
electricity output of the U.S., and of course how they compare to
"clean" sources such as hydroelectric power, wind, etc., to make a
true statistical comparison of electric-car-generated pollution versus
gasoline-powered cars.

Then again, there is also nuclear-energy-based electricity, and it is
disputed how much pollution this actually generates - certainly the
pollution is of a very different nature than oil-based pollution and
the two would be very hard to compare. All in all, coloth-ga, I doubt
you can get a truly satisfactory answer to your question.

Yours,
dannidin

Perhaps it would be interesting to factor in battery disposal at the
end of the product life cycle, for the most complete comparison.

The concept you are asking about is referred to as a "life cycle
analysis" or more simply, an LCA.  A Google search on ["electric
vehicle" LCA] will give you a bunch of highly relevant results,
including this one:

http://www.ulg.ac.be/cior-fsa/publicat/8lca_ve.pdf

which concluded that electric vehicles have 1/4 the emissions impact
of gasoline powered vehicles.

[My ANSWER]

Dear coloth

The EV1 electric car is still far superior to gasoline- powered cars
in terms of harmful emissions because of the following reasons:
1-Modern thermal power plants use complicated  and expensive gas
cleaning equipment to reduce harmful emissions which are not practical
in small scale. So they are cleaner.

2-Modern thermal power plants have an efficiency of 55%. It means that
only 45% of the fuel burnt in them is wasted. The efficiency of a car
engine is usually less than 20%. More than 80% of the gasoline burnt
in a car is actually wasted to produce heat.

3-Powerplants are located away from populated residences and   send
their exhaust gases to the upper atmosphere  by means of very high
chimneys, thus avoid direct poisoning of people. A gasoline engine
sends its exhaust gases directly into the lungs of the city
inhabitants without diluting the poison with large volumes of air.

4- EV-1 requires less oiling and lubrication than a gasoline car, less
soap and detergent to wash hands and clothes after a repair job. This
means less water pollution.

5- Electric power is beautiful and clean. Anything electric is
convenient, safe, and silent. Electric power has replaced and is
replacing other sources of power at homes and in the factories.
Electric power is gentle and kind like golden hair winged angles in
the fairy tales.

Regards

i remember reading something about this in cosumer reports a while
back and if i remember correctly, their take on it was that a gas
powered car is less efficient than a combination of electric car and
the power plants needed to generate the electricity. I could be off by
a good amount here, but i remember their data to suggest that a fully
electric car will put off about half as much emissions as a typical
gas powered car, when factoring in the production of the electricity
used.