Progressive Automotive X-Prize [Final] Round

[NeilBlanchard]

Patrick, The well-to-wheels comparison shows that electrics are far better than petroleum powered cars: ~40gm/km vs ~450-500gm/km. Really.

[Patrick]

Originally Posted by NeilBlanchard

Patrick, The well-to-wheels comparison shows that electrics are far better than petroleum powered cars: ~40gm/km vs ~450-500gm/km. Really.

You're talking about carbon, not energy. And that's what Llewellyn said, but not the other people who were reading the GREET charts. So who to believe?

[NeilBlanchard]

Carbon is energy, in this case!

You take a 80-90% efficient motor, and it will beat a 20-30% efficiency engine every time.

The MPGe numbers in the X-Prize are apples-to-apples. The electric cars are using a lot less energy on average than the ICE powered cars.

Take the 7.5kWh per gallon of gasoline, and use it instead directly in an EV and you go farther -- and you'll save all the gasoline.

[RobertSmalls]

I was really hoping the topic of MPGe wouldn't come up, as I think we have enough threads on it already, including a thread where I express my opinion that the EVWorld article is an example of one-minded and misleading EV advocacy, and that a world without refineries would be dark indeed. But since the topic is up, I have to mention that the X-Prize's MPGe figure is off by a factor of about 2.5 by CO2 equivalence or life cycle energy content. That being the case, only the Lion, the XTracer bikes, and the three Edison2 cars meet the 67mpge criterion.

When the X-Prize announced their 34KWh/gal figure, I cringed, and Jack McCormack said it was one reason he didn't enter his car, which I think is a shame.

I am happy for (PH)EV operators who enjoy their hobby, and who bring a diversity of fuels to our collective fleet. But the 34KWh/gal figure produces some utterly ridiculous figures, as Patrick's post details well.

[Patrick]

Originally Posted by NeilBlanchard

You take a 80-90% efficient motor, and it will beat a 20-30% efficiency engine every time.

I agree with you here. But that electricity had to be made somewhere, I don't think they're producing any 100% efficient power stations yet. So multiply your motor efficiency rating by the efficiency of the powerplant to get the actualy energy input to make the EV move.

Originally Posted by NeilBlanchard

Take the 7.5kWh per gallon of gasoline, and use it instead directly in an EV and you go farther -- and you'll save all the gasoline.

Again, the electricity had to be generated somewhere. Unless it was via renewables, then a fossil-fueled plant with all its inefficiencies produced it. Coal, CNG, or something else was used to make it. The electricity didn't just appear out of thin air. That's why well-to-wheels is the only fair comparison, IMO.

[rbrowning]

From an environmental perspective the well to wheels is the most all encompassing. However it is impossible to come up with an accurate universal number. How is "your" electricity made? In some areas it is mostly hydro, others areas wind, solar CNG or coal. Which area are you going to use or are you trying to come up with an ever changing worldwide average that keeps changing the advantage of one vehicle over another even though the vehicles didn't change? Just from my location I have a nuclear plant 70 miles to the east and another 120 miles to the west, a coal plant 30 miles north and a CNG emergency back-up plant 3 miles to the south? How much carbon does "my" electricity produce?

From an economic perspective, who cares? I have no control over the cost of producing either except that I would have the option of generating my own electricity and or hydrogen. I can see the price of gas and the cost of electricity and it is pretty simple to compare the cost per mile. And that hits me every time I have to "power up" regardless of the power source.

If you want to compare just the vehicles you have to compare pump price/content to what you as a consumer gets out of your receptacle and ignore what is going on up stream of that.

[RobertSmalls]

Rbrowning, the correct CO2 equivalence factor varies with time and place, but they should have at least tried to nail it down, using the most recent US grid average available. Their current estimate of the grid being 100.0% efficient was off by a factor of three, and gas should also get a 17% penalty for the energy required for refining and distribution.

Lots of people will use cost-equivalence, and I won't blame them. I'll just point out that there are all kinds of costs and subsidies that method ignores. For example, it doesn't apply a carbon tax to either fuel, and it doesn't explicitly care about the oil spills in Nigeria.

At the current US average prices of $2.78/gal and $0.12/KWh, PAXP's mpge numbers for EV's are 50% larger than they should be by cost equivalence.

[NeilBlanchard]

The 33.4kWh / gallon of gasoline is a direct BTU equivalency. The X-Prize wants to measure the efficiency of the vehicle, so this is completely fair and accurate.

As far as emissions goes, if electricity has to include the source, generation, and grid losses, then the gasoline also must include the exploration, drilling, refinement, and transportation loses.

The 40gm/km source-to-wheel (including waste disposal, too!) vs the 450-500gm/km for gasoline is comparing apples-to-apples -- electricity has far lower emissions.

Additionally, you must include the oil used for lubrication (or maybe the above numbers already do?).

The best thing about EV's is they have the potential for getting cleaner and cleaner as they are used -- because electricity *can* come from renewable sources! Liquid fuels can too (biodiesel, etc.) and methane from biomass is also renewable -- but gasoline as we know it is finite.

[rbrowning]

If you think about it, they really had an impossible goal of trying to set a "fair" comparison between EV / hybrid / ICE, in city / urban / highway on flat land / mountain with 1 /2 / 4 passengers with / without luggage. There is no universal perfect vehicle, nor energy source.

I commend Progressive for their efforts, and I acknowledge that there are probably thousands of other ways it could have been done.

[NeilBlanchard]

I've uploaded a lot of new photos from the X-Prize:

Progressive Automotive X-Prize Knockout Round pictures by NeilBlanchard - Photobucket

Including a bunch taken during the big all-car photo on the Tuesday.