Life Cycle Emissions: EVs vs. Hybrids vs. Combustion Engine Vehicles

Visual Capitalist ^ | 07/03/2023 | Selin Oguz, Graphics/Design: Sam Parker

[D Rider]

For example, what fuel is the ICE burning? E15 produces much more CO2 than pure gasoline alone.

[swingdoc]

Exactly. Also funny that they did t put in the “C02 cost” of building our county’s electricity supply infrastructure from where it sits currently to the point at which it could support a fully electric transitioned vehicle swap. That is going to be a huge C02 circle and should be part of the C02 cost per unit.

[Sequoyah101]

Because the hydrogen oxygen bond in water is extremely hard to break and takes more energy than the hydrogen liberated can produce?

From somewhere between high screwl and college physics. Certainly freshman therm chemistry.

Hydrogen is just another expensive and hard to manage battery for storing throwaway power.

[Sequoyah101]

From an electric car maker?

Yeah, sure. I trust that.

[jonrick46]

Also the energy loss of transporting that electricity though the distribution plant and the battery recharging circuit.

[jonrick46]

Is the energy loss from charging up the “hydrogen battery” less than the energy loss transporting that electricity through the electrical grid and through a energy losing charging circuit? Hydrogen from electrolysis can be done with electricity generated by a ton of methods. Safe hydrogen management has been successfully achieved. When was the last time a earth shattering explosion has come from hydrogen? Look at the hydrogen used for NASA’s space program. It has come after solving the many problems liquid hydrogen presents. Today, liquid hydrogen is the signature fuel of the American space program and is used by other countries in the business of launching satellites. In addition to the Atlas, Boeing’s Delta III and Delta IV now have liquid-oxygen/liquid-hydrogen upper stages.

Hydrogen with all of its technical problems, has its advantage:

Hydrogen — a light and extremely powerful rocket propellant — has the lowest molecular weight of any known substance and burns with extreme intensity (5,500°F). In combination with an oxidizer such as liquid oxygen, liquid hydrogen yields the highest specific impulse, or efficiency in relation to the amount of propellant consumed, of any known rocket propellant.

In cars. hydrogen will not be ignited to drive pistons. Instead it will go through fuel cells that put out electricity!

[Olog-hai]

No, nuclear is still around. The EU is trying their darndest to have it relabeled “clean energy” too.

[Olog-hai]

No; the hybrid does not necessarily have to result in a savings on fuel versus non-hybrid gasoline cars. There are also other thermodynamic-related costs, such as the expense of more moving parts and all that.

[Cobra64]

These CO2 fanatics never heard of photosynthesis.

It’s taught in grade school science class. Furthermore…

https://www.dutchgreenhouses.com/en/technology/co2-enrichment/

[Olog-hai]

Mainly has to do with the electropolarity of oxygen in water when one is talking about breaking the hydrogen-oxygen bond; it’s extremely strong.

Making elemental hydrogen from methane by thermal cracking is also energy intensive, since high temperatures are needed to decompose the carbon in methane into elemental carbon, releasing the hydrogen gas.

[Olog-hai]

These are the kind of people who call carbon dioxide a “greenhouse gas” without even considering the fact that greenhouses are very poor in carbon dioxide since the plants in there are breathing it in. Humidity in greenhouses is caused by water vapor, just like in the rest of the atmosphere; but water vapor is just the gas they exclude from their “warming” equations.

[Political Junkie Too]

I know that my hybrid gets 400+ miles to a 10 gallon tank of gas, while my prior car got only 200 miles for the same 10 gallons.

That's an MPG of about 40 vs. the 20 I was getting. Wouldn't that mean that my hybrid is putting out less emissions per miles driven since it's double the miles for burning the same 10 gallons of gasoline?

-PJ

[Psalm 73]

Wow, that's a lot of carbon emissions.

You know what else emits a lot of carbon? Humans.

[Plumberman27]

You left out how all parking garages will need to be reinforced due to the weight of EVs. And the nations bridges will need to be done the same with. Design standards will certainly need to be changed too costing everyone more in taxes and building costs.

[joshua c]

all of this is moot

they are banning gas cars without even the remote possibility of replacing them with EVs

the purpose of this exercise is to ban private transportation

we will be on the bus

[Tell It Right]

...weight of EVs

For what it's worth, our 2022 EV crossover weighs 5% more than the 2009 ICE crossover it replaced, and about 10% less than the mid-sized ICE pickup we still own. IMHO the weight of EV's is a non-issue.

The issues I have with this article are the bogus way "emissions" are calculated, the false belief that CO₂ is somehow a pollutant while the same people say we need lots and lots more trees (Orwellian double-think), that the world needs saving from the Modern Warm Period (which is a good thing like the prior warm periods), or that the elites are our messiah who can save us with more government control. They can talk up a bunch of goobly gook to justify more and more government control over our lives but it's just talk, they're almost always wrong on the "facts", and they have NO RIGHT to implement whatever they push.

That's the argument us conservatives should make regarding EV's or anything else. The solution is always free markets, free markets, free markets and let people buy and sell what they want. When we try to counter their "facts" with our "facts" (i.e. weight of EV's) we often make our side look as silly as theirs.

We don't need saving from this:

[norwaypinesavage]

"Hydrogen, I still don’t understand why we haven’t seen that as an alternative fuel."

As others have replied, hydrogen is too expensive to produce, store, and transport. Actually, it's not simply too expensive, it's impossible. Presently, almost all hydrogen comes from natural gas, a future no-no. In Green La-La land, it will come from 'hydrolysis' of water, using solar and wind power. This process requires far more electricity than is produced when using the hydrogen. It will always take more to produce than use. That's a fundamental law of thermodynamics.

So, how are we doing at replacing the energy we are using with solar and wind power? The actual result is dismal. Over the last half-century, we aren't even keeping up with the world-wide increase. We would have to build dozens of times more than we are building now, just to keep up. Here's a chart showing the actual energy produced and used in the world from solar and wind sources compared with the total used over the last 50 years:

[fruser1]

They would need to account for the what the lifetime of each vehicle is.

I.e., how frequently are the EV batteries replaced within the 200k miles that a ICE vehicle can last easily now?

[Fresh Wind]

For what it's worth, our 2022 EV crossover weighs 5% more than the 2009 ICE crossover it replaced, and about 10% less than the mid-sized ICE pickup we still own. IMHO the weight of EV's is a non-issue.

You have to be careful comparing weights. Many EVs don't have a direct equivalent ICE model, and manufacturers constantly change specs over time which affects vehicle weight. One that comes to mind is the 2019 VW eGolf (now discontinued) which came in at around 3450 lbs, and the ICE equivalent was around 3000 lbs, in nearly the same physical package. That's a 15% increase for the EV over the ICE model.

Whether that's significant is debatable, but there was some news reporting (after a collapse) that some existing parking garages were built to older standards and might not withstand the added weight of EVs. I believe that issue is not just with EVs, vehicle weight in general has increased over time. Using the Golf example, a 1980 Golf weighed around 1900 lbs.

[blitz128]

Not to mention disposal of used batteries, and windmill blades
Additionally the “carbon footprint” for building and installing and maintaining a windmill is enormous. They require times of concrete alone as well as gasp oil to lubricant and miles of lines to connect them to the grid

If I recall Sweden has thrown in the towel and is going nuclear, smart move Sweden