Diesels greener than battery cars, says Swiss gov report

[ChrstphrR]

Originally Posted by tumnasgt

Not only the US reports will be doing that, sensational news items are a nuisance available almost everywhere these days.


The one problem I see with this is how many people actually get under 3.9l/100km in their diesel. Lots of people on here struggle to match the EU numbers, so most people must be doing about 20-30% worse than that. So that means the VW Polo will actually be using 4.6-4.9l/100km, which is way over the cut off.

20-30% worse than the 3.4L/100km for a Polo quoted in the article would be 4.1-4.4, not 4.6-4.9 (which would be 35-45% over).

Given my experience with a now 10 year old diesel, much bulkier and heavier than the Polo... It is pretty damned HARD to screw up your mileage that badly. Careful adjustments of the nut behind the wheel... are only marginally better than tromping firmly on the accelerator for light car diesel engines.

Severe cold, hard braking, and/or hard acceleration, possibly all three, would be required to seriously degrade mileage on maintained diesel car/engine.

[TomEV]

Not sure where they came up with a 3.9l/100km number for electrics. Modern EVs such as the RAV4-EV and the Tesla are generally less than 1.75l/100km (175 wh/km) using a rough 'fuel' comparison between petro and electric at .1 liter of diesel ~ 1 kWh electricity. Although coal puts out somewhat more CO2 than diesel, it isn't twice the amount - perhaps 20% to 30% more than diesel.

But both fossil sources ignore the amount of pollution generated during extraction, transport, etc. as do many nuclear energy carbon calculations.

They also don't seem to account for the possibility that diesel vehicles can be powered by more carbon neutral sources such as waste vegetable oil or biodiesel, or that electricity can be generated by any number of sources that are cleaner than coal.

Nor do they account for the likelihood that lithium batteries will be recycled as opposed to going directly to a landfill.

The best possibility would be a vehicle that could use multiple types of fuel/power, so the driver could decide to use electric, or diesel, or natural gas, or whatever fuel happens to be best / cheapest / least polluting depending on how far they need to go, availability, carbon burden, etc.

In my situation, electricity is the best answer for my daily drive around town and to work. Fortunately, our power is relatively clean here in Alameda -

Alameda Municipal Power - Power Content Label

At 1.51l/100km (electric equivalent) for the past 90 days in the Citicar, and using Alameda's power content, 'fueling' it with electricity it is about as clean and as cheap as I can get in a car... Perhaps someday I'll install solar.

[Ryland]

At 2 cents per mile, I tend to average $10 per month in electricity used, my electric bill has gone up by $10 this month by using box fans in the windows at night on their low setting to draw cool air in to the house, if you switch your two most used lights in your house to more efficient lighting you can save $10 per month, or by putting your water heater on a timer you can save that much.
People heat their homes, cook their food, preserve their food, cool their homes, light their rooms all with electricity, spending an average of $100 per month, a good chunk of that being wasted and yet people throw fits about the idea of plugging a car in at night to charge.

[Piwoslaw]

Which is better depends on how it is used, as has been mentioned. My diesel doesn't even get warm when I sometimes have to transport stuff within 5-8km of home, so an EV would be much more efficient. On the other hand, I can easily get 3.2-3.5 l/100km on a long distance trip, and no need to haul a heavy battery pack then.

Originally Posted by TomEV

The best possibility would be a vehicle that could use multiple types of fuel/power, so the driver could decide to use electric, or diesel, or natural gas, or whatever fuel happens to be best / cheapest / least polluting depending on how far they need to go, availability, carbon burden, etc.

A plug-in diesel-electric hybrid, with 16km (10 mi.) range in pure EV mode.

Originally Posted by RobertSmalls

Piwo, I bet you're ahead of where you'd be in an electric large station wagon.

I'd aeromod it all the same

[Arragonis]

Interesting responses. The basic problem with any study like this is what is included and what isn't. We haven't seen a Hybrid vs conventional or an electric vs ICE vs Hybrid comparison yet that we can all agree has included all factors on both sides.

Which kind of means that carbon emissions (if that is what is important to you) are pretty much impossible to measure without including or excluding something which someone else doesn't agree with. Which makes cap and trade pretty much meaningless as there is no standard - and can't be as there is no-one who can make this standard that has the trust of all sides.

No wonder cap and trade is dead and the carbon emission trading companies are laying off staff.

[NeilBlanchard]

Biodiesel certainly has a chance to be greener than battery powered cars, using our current grid, etc. But, I doubt they included anything other than the actual diesel fuel itself; whereas the electric numbers had to include all the embedded energy.

Oil has a lot to account for:

Exploration is getting harder all the time; and can take years; and lots of energy is consumed doing so.

Drilling is very hard to do, and takes a lot of energy, including making a lot of "drilling mud", which takes a lot of energy to make, and to inject deep down underground. Look it up! The BP drilling rig is nowhere the deepest at ~23,000 feet below the surface of the ocean.

Extraction takes a lot of electricity (with all of it's overhead!) -- possibly more than refining(!); never mind the energy to build and move and operate those gigantic oil rigs.

Transportation to land is expensive, and super tankers burn a lot of fuel, with it's overhead of embedded energy. The routes taken now have to be lengthened to avoid pirates, and pipelines are hard to build and maintain.

Oil then has to be pumped into tanks onshore for storage, and/or into pipelines. Any energy used along the way has it's own overhead of embedded power.

It then has to be transported to refineries; burning more fuel with it's embedded overhead.

Refineries use a lot of electricity (and all it's overhead!) and they use a lot of natural gas to heat the oil, in a process that takes days. There is a lot of blending and other chemicals used, all of which that have to be made ahead of time, using yet more energy and all of it's overhead. The various fuels and by products are then pumped again to storage tanks.

Then the gasoline/diesel is pumped and transported using pipelines, trucks, and trains, burning more fuel and using electricity, added yet more to the overhead.

It then has to be pumped into the storage tanks at the filling stations, and then pumped out again into the cars, using more electricity, adding that overhead of energy.

I HAVE PROBABLY OVER SIMPLIFIED THIS LONG AND ENERGY INTENSIVE PROCESS.

Electricity from coal, on the other hand is fairly easy: mining takes a lot of effort and energy, then moving it around in the storage yards, then transporting it on trains, then moving it on storage yards, then burning it, and disposing of the ash waste.

Electricity generated from natural gas is more similar to making gasoline/diesel, except for the refining stage.

Grids losses are not as bad as you might think: the average is a bit less than 8% loss on the grid. Any and all of the overhead for electricity that is used at all the various stages along the way to produce oil -- get added to the oil! So, the 7.5kWh PER GALLON of gasoline could instead just be used directly to move a car 30-60 miles *rather* that making the gasoline.

By rights, we should also include the military used to defend and maintain our access to oil, and maintaining stability in oil prices. There are huge hidden subsidies in foreign policy, too. Don't fool yourself to think that much of our battle with terrorism is tied to this whole messy and corrupt situation. Do you know how much oil gets stolen in the Congo or in Iraq?

I almost forgot -- it isn't just the fuel! ICE engines require a lot of lubrication and maintenance: you have to add in all the steps to find, produce, transport, store, refine, store, transport, use, then dispose of the engine oils used in the ICE. So, many of the same steps I listed above have to be repeated for the other consumable carbon based things used by ICE machines, including the lubrication oils and the filters, etc. This accumulates even more carbon footprint.

Electricity can come from renewable sources: solar PV, solar heat, wind power, geothermal (by drilling deep holes!), biomass (methane from plant and animal waste and others), wave power, tidal power, small scale hydro, etc. The more we use of these, the smaller the carbon footprint becomes in the future, as we make the new wind turbines from renewable energy, and so on, and so on.

All of these use energy from our sun, in one form or another -- much more directly that oil an gas.

Each gallon of petroleum fuel represents ~100 TONS of biological material, that is millions and millions of years old. We are squandering it -- using so little of it potential. We should use it only when absolutely necessary.

We *must* think very long term, if we are to survive on this Eaarth we share. We can live without a lot, but we cannot live without the Eaarth.

[euromodder]

Originally Posted by NeilBlanchard

By rights, we should also include the military used to defend and maintain our access to oil, and maintaining stability in oil prices.

Military interference has only destabilized the oil market and pushed prices up, rather than stabilizing them.

[Piwoslaw]

Oh, but think of all the jobs our wasteful lifestyle generates...

Total energy assessment keeps springing up here every so often. Maybe we could start a thread and jointly try to arrive at better estimates than the ones we've found so far? We'd start with Neil's outline and discuss how far we want to go: Since we're talking about (energy) costs of oil platform operation, then should we also take into account how many people work on the platforms, how much energy goes into transporting them, and food for them, to and fro, and how much energy goes into producing that food, etc.? And when we want to assess the energy input required for RE we should take into account the resources and rare earths needed for batteries, motors/generators, PVs, etc.

Estimating the amount of energy needed to produce a certain amount of oil, gas, fuel, coal electricity, solar electricity, wind electricity, etc., is no easy task, but that just makes it so much more interesting. And I bet we would find out about things the media don't write about...

[tumnasgt]

Neil, that was the most thought provoking thing I have read in ages.

It's really amazing thinking about how many processes depend on one another (or even themselves) to function. Now I'm not going to be able to sleep, I'll be too busy thinking about how many steps everything goes through to get the final product.

[euromodder]

Originally Posted by tumnasgt

Now I'm not going to be able to sleep, I'll be too busy thinking about how many steps everything goes through to get the final product.

About that mattress you'll be sleeping on ... its foam will be made from oil
You've had it transported home from the shop, and they got it from the factory.

Even sleeping has a carbon footprint.