In China, it’s even worse. If all of Hong Kong and China drive EV instead of gasoline powered cars today, our CO2 problem would be much worse.[/quote]
The argument ignores one of the main benefits of EV: it centralizes power generation at the plant. It is much easier to replace a single CO2 plant (or install carbon scrubbers/storage on them) than it is to replace millions of cars.
It also ignores the efficiency of EVs. Electric motors are about 80% efficient, compared to about 20% for combustion engines. So even if EVs are burning CO2 at the plant, they’re burning a *lot* less of it.
The equation only improves with time as CO2 plants get replaced with renewables. Meanwhile, those combustion engines will just continue to spew CO2.[/quote]what does that having anything to do with the fact that the cleanliness of EV is heavily dependent on the cleanliness of the power source. IMHO, there’s no point pushing EV when if your goal is to reduce CO2, you should be pushing for elimination of coal.
BTW, the study disagree with you. That’s the whole point of the article that EV is dirtier that ICE today in Hong Kong and China. BTW, it takes a lot longer to replace working coal plant than you make it out to be. I’m not arguing that EV running solar is dirty. I’m simply stating that EV powered by dirty coal plant is worse than gasoline. So, if you’re serious about the imminent problem of CO2, we should concentrate more on replacing coal with natural gas, or nuclear, or solar or geothermal, instead of EV. Once we clean up the energy source, then I believe it’s a perfect time to push EV. I personally don’t believe we should push EV in area that is still powered by dirty coal. The study showed Hong Kong, a pretty wealthy nation, went for 53% coal powered to their goal of 50% coal powered by 2020. We’re talking about 3% reduction as a GOAL in 8 years. At this rate, I would be dead before Hong Kong completely get off coal as a power source.
BTW, I think you’re being a little disingenuous by saying EV are 80% efficient while ICE is 20%. Though those numbers are correct, EV does not generate its own power. It’s still dependent on an external source. What is the thermodynamic efficiency of a coal burning power plant? What about the energy loss through transmission line? Also, this article is talking about CO2 emission, not thermodynamic efficiency. Also, I hope you’re aware that turbo diesel are ~40% efficient? Does that mean a Turbo Diesel car is better for the environment than a gasoline powered car?
Just to give you some perspective, a coal power plant is 35-38% efficient, Natural Gas is 32-38% efficient, and nuclear is 38% efficient. Transmission line loses about 6% of the electricity. So even before putting the electricity in your BEV, we’re only looking at 30-35% efficiency. Then EV loses between 10-20% of that. So, we’re looking at 27-31% efficiency at best and 24-28% at worse. That doesn’t seem too different than the efficiency of an average ICE from several years ago. Gas Direct Injection Engine have an efficiency of 35%. Atkinson cycle engines in Hybrids gets about 10% more. Hydrogen Fuel is about 25% more efficient. So, if your goal is the highest thermodynamic efficiency, then GDI with Hydrogen would be the best choice. Definitely not BEV being powered by coal power plant.
