Well to wheels, Cradle to grave analysis by MB shows B Class ED emits less carbon

[sendler]

Well to wheels, Cradle to grave analysis by MB shows B Class ED emits less carbon than the fairly frugal B 180 on the same chassis.
.
.

.
.
Mercedes B-Class Electric Car Cuts Lifetime Carbon Emissions Up To 64 Percent
.

[sendler]

Even in a coal heavy UK grid the CO2 advantage of the EV still holds.
.
Electric Car Life-Cycle Analysis: Renault Fluence ZE Vs Diesel, Gas Models
.

[Astro]

ICE vehicles 5.5 to produce after 100 years of refinement.
Electric vehicles 10.1 to produce after only a handful of years and in small quantities.
Not a bad start.
Cleaning up the grid wouldn't just improve electric vehicles CO2 figures but everything else that used electricity from the grid would also have dramatically reduced CO2 emissions.

[MPaulHolmes]

So is a conversion with a solar array 5.5+0.2+0.6 or so?

[Astro]

Originally Posted by MPaulHolmes

So is a conversion with a solar array 5.5+0.2+0.6 or so?

It would depend on the CO2 to produce the panels divided by the panels life expectancy or total lifetime power output.
I would guess at it being very close to the hydro figures and VERY far away from the coal figures.

Both solar and hydro produce little to no CO2 after initial installation. Whereas coal is a continuous high producer of CO2 for it's entire lifetime.

If only the room temperature super conductors could be used to create a transmission path that encircled the equator so that solar generated anywhere in the world could be used by the entire world. Making solar a base load supplier without the need for any sort of energy storage.

[California98Civic]

At 3.8 or 3.9L/100km my little "black & green" modded/hypermiled civic burns about 28% - 30% less fuel than that B180 Mercedes. Given the Cali power grid is possibly about the same as the EU grid, I'd bet I'm about even with the electric car, if pretending that there was a comparable new 1998 civic EV. But when you consider that there is no EV and I have extended the life of this old 1998, forgoing the carbon emissions associated with producing a new EV, I'm in pretty good "green" position relative to a new EV.

That said, I have learned to admire the EVs a lot. I'd love to have one, someday.

[sendler]

Originally Posted by MPaulHolmes

So is a conversion with a solar array 5.5+0.2+0.6 or so?

No. The B class platform has been a gas car for years. And still is. To make it electric, Mercedes did a "conversion". So the extra manufacturing carbon footprint to make the batteries would be the same for them and you.

[Astro]

Originally Posted by sendler

No. The B class platform has been a gas car for years. And still is. To make it electric, Mercedes did a "conversion". So the extra manufacturing carbon footprint to make the batteries would be the same for them and you.

To do a conversion i purchase cells that are a certain size, shape and capacity. Made in a way that makes them appropriate for many different applications.
I get them shipped to me as a small shipment that may travel a very convoluted path to reach me. A manufacturer would be buying in vastly larger quantities and would probably get them shipped direct to their facility by the container load. Reducing transport generated CO2 emissions.
A manufacturer that is producing large numbers of vehicles can get the cells custom made. So that instead of individual cells with enough wall strength to be used independently they can get them integrated into a module where walls between cells can be reduced. Knocking a large amount off the total amount of plastic or other material required. Reducing CO2 required to produce.
In a custom designed module cell interconnects wouldn't need to be via large terminals on each cell and bolts and washers etc, etc. Again reducing CO2 generating manufacturing steps.
There are many ways that a commercially made electric vehicle could reduce CO2 produced during manufacture. These are just a few off top of my head.
Once the people that know the abilities of large scale manufacturing and transport get their teeth stuck into the problem of CO2 reduction i bet they would be able to beat the ICE CO2 figure.

[MPaulHolmes]

I sure didn't use 5 tons of CO2 to unbolt 4 bolts that held the engine on, so it would have to be in producing the lead acid batteries. But I hope it doesn't take 10,000 pounds of CO2 to make 400 pounds of batteries.

If using hydro, it's close to 1MJ/gram of CO2 according to Wikipedia. Recycled lead takes around 5MJ/Kg for cradle to grave in a lead acid battery. The plastic in the batteries was like 30MJ/Kg. The acid was almost zero MJ/Kg.

[freebeard]

Originally Posted by Astro

If only the room temperature super conductors could be used to create a transmission path that encircled the equator so that solar generated anywhere in the world could be used by the entire world. Making solar a base load supplier without the need for any sort of energy storage.

The Equator isn't the 'critical path':

[From Critical Path by RBF, 1981, p. 206.]

``It is engineeringly demonstrable that there is no known way to deliver energy safely from one part of the world to another in larger quantities and in swifter manner than by high-voltage-conducted `electricity.' For the first half of the twentieth century the limit-distance of technically practical deliverability of electricity was 350 miles. As a consequence of the post-World War II space program's employment and advancement of the invisible metallurgical, chemical, and electronics more-with-lessing technology, twenty-five years ago it became technically feasible and expedient to employ ultra-high-voltage and superconductivity, which can deliver electrical energy within a radial range of 1500 miles from the system's dynamo generators.

``To the World Game seminar of 1969 I presented my integrated, world-around, high-voltage electrical energy network concept. Employing the new 1500-mile transmission reach, this network made it technically feasible to span the Bering Straits to integrate the Alaskan U.S.A. and Canadian networks with Russia's grid, which had recently been extended eastward into northern Siberia and Kamchatka to harness with hydroelectric dams the several powerful northwardly flowing rivers of northeasternmost U.S.S.R. This proposed network would interlink the daylight half of the world with the nighttime half.

``Electrical-energy integration of the night and day regions of the Earth will bring all the capacity into use at all times, thus overnight doubling the generating capacity of humanity because it will integrate all the most extreme night and day peaks and valleys. From the Bering Straits, Europe and Africa will be integrated westwardly through the U.S.S.R., and China, Southeast Asia; India will become network integrated southwardly through the U.S.S.R. Central and South America will be integrated southwardly through Canada, the U.S.A., and Mexico.''

1969!