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Where in Europe is electric car a good idea?

jakubmarian.com

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Re: Where in Europe is electric car a good idea?

#71

Post by zeristor »

virmundi wrote: post #37
greglindahl wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not forgotten by the authorities! In the SF Bay Area the local air quality council subsidizes electric car chargers. EVs reduce the total pollution and moves what's left out of the prone-to-atmospheric-inversions Bay Area.

Isn't ozone worse than traditional pollution and the main byproduct of electrical cars? So unless we go into a draconian charge laws, will cause more harm in this regard. http://www.iop.org/news/11/april/page_50606.html

I thought that too, I studied the pollution maps of London, and it appears that NOx removes Ozone pollution, I was flummoxed for ages.

Perhaps an Atmospheric Chemist can support this?

Re: Where in Europe is electric car a good idea?

#72

Post by yongjik »

Eupolemos wrote: post #49
valuearb wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's an incredibly minor problem compared to global warming. I'd solve the more important one first.

It's minor now. But if it turns out that we'll need an active (as in "needs manpower") care-taking of this waste for several thousands of years, we get into the compounded interests area. Also, there's the immediate (last 50 years) issues such as barrels of waste being treated in silly manners; e.g. thrown into the ocean near the coast and shot to pieces by air-planes if they surface... Politicians and corporations w…

(1) We have to keep something dangerous deep underground in some remote places, and if something goes wrong, it may leak out and contaminate dozens of kilometers around the spot. Dozens of kilometers.

(2) Every coastal towns, cities, estuaries, and natural preserves will be wiped out within a thousand years. Across the globe. Including entire nations. (Well, to be fair, they will cease to be nations long before that.)

There's really no comparison.

For arguments regarding (2), see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-term_effects_of_global_wa...

> A study in 2015 found that assuming cumulative fossil fuel emissions of 10 000 gigatonnes of carbon, the Antarctic Ice Sheet could melt completely over the following millennia, contributing 58 m to global sea-level rise, and 30 m within the first 1000 years.

Re: Where in Europe is electric car a good idea?

#73

Post by Tade0 »

The numbers seem off.

A Nissan LEAF - which is not particularly efficient - uses 175Wh/km and burning coal for electricity produces ~1000g CO2/kWh, so even after factoring in grid losses(8%) and charging losses(another 8%) the number is still 204g/km.

That's approximately how much a similarly sized car emits in dense urban traffic(assuming 7,5l/100km).

Re: Where in Europe is electric car a good idea?

#74

Post by bjourne »

It's quite annoying that he doesn't link to the data source used to create the map. It is hard to know if his data takes into account energy imports/exports or not. For example, Germany's domestic electricity production is largely based on coal and natural gas but it also imports a lot of electricity from the Nordic countries which is generated using clean hydro power.

Re: Where in Europe is electric car a good idea?

#75

Post by greglindahl »

smsm42 wrote: post #70
greglindahl wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Least discussed? It comes up all of the time on HN! Roughly the same things get said every time, too.

Least discussed in places where it matters?

Well, these days when I see nuclear power discussed in the popular press, it's usually talking about how it's extremely expensive and also almost caused Toshiba's bankruptcy. Probably not what you had in mind.

Re: Where in Europe is electric car a good idea?

#76

Post by stupidcar »

stephengillie wrote: post #46
BoorishBears wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>removing pollution from cities They move the pollution from a tailpipe feet away from people to a large smoke stack specially optimized to lower the effect on air quality in the immediate area.

Combustion is just one type of pollution that cars produce. And while relocating pollution is a tempting way to externalize the problem, it doesn't solve the underlying issue.

It solves the problem of exposing hundreds of millions of people to multiple emission sources of highly deleterious fine particulates in their immediate vicinity, every single day. It's not rocket science, it's an obvious fact, and not a single person posting here can honestly claim not to understand it. Ignoring or downplaying it is a near criminal act of negligence.

Re: Where in Europe is electric car a good idea?

#77

Post by mcv »

This goes completely against another recent report that said even electric cars running on coal would still reduce CO2 emissions after about 3.5 years of average use, simply because the internal combustion engine is so woefully inefficient. (With green energy it was 2.5 years.)

I'm afraid I can't find a link to that article right now.

Re: Where in Europe is electric car a good idea?

#78

Post by mcv »

greglindahl wrote: post #15
zeristor wrote: post #7

A huge benefit of electric cars is removing pollution from cities; this seems to be forgotten. Surely if the pollution is killing thousands of people a year this is an issue.

It's not forgotten by the authorities! In the SF Bay Area the local air quality council subsidizes electric car chargers. EVs reduce the total pollution and moves what's left out of the prone-to-atmospheric-inversions Bay Area.

In Amsterdam, the city creates an electric car parking spot (with charger) near your house if you get an electric car. This is effectively a private parking spot if you're the only electric car owner in the street, and that's incredibly valuable in a city where parking spots are hard to find.

Re: Where in Europe is electric car a good idea?

#79

Post by mcv »

PhasmaFelis wrote: post #63
Kon5ole wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am one of the "panicky" ones and I want to explain my point of view. When I was a kid, living in the equivalent of Kentucky, a nuclear accident in the equivalent of the Bahamas made it so we couldn't eat wild berries from the woods anymore. Now a middle aged man over 30 years later, sheep from my home area still measure levels of radioactivity too high for human consumption. That's why I feel most options are bette…

That's a real problem, but it's still orders of magnitude less harmful than coal. (Also, as a Kentuckian I'm curious what "the equivalent of Kentucky" is.) :)

Nobody is denying that nuclear is less harmful than coal. But for future investments, the comparison should be with solar and wind.

Re: Where in Europe is electric car a good idea?

#80

Post by stephengillie »

BoorishBears wrote: post #64
stephengillie wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Combustion is just one type of pollution that cars produce. And while relocating pollution is a tempting way to externalize the problem, it doesn't solve the underlying issue.

I don't know why you're stretching so hard to make it seem like moving pollution away from population centers isn't an excellent benefit and likely to reduce in many fewer deaths from direct exposure to pollution. The comment above was referring to local pollution in cities (which directly kills thousands through diseases related to particulates in that pollution). Relocating that pollution does solve that problem. (…

I live in a city and am not dying, in fact the air quality is very good. Do people who can afford electric cars live in the same cities where pollution is so bad that people are dying from it? Why don't they move to where the air quality is better? (Why move from a problem when you can make the problem move from you, I guess?)

When the majority of pollution is coming from large trucks anyway, will swapping a few cars even matter?

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