Dave

We are on the same side really. I just worry that people will see PHEV’s or all-electric cars as some sort of fantastically green climate change solution, when (by themselves) they are not at all. In a globall free market economy in which CO2 is never really priced out of the system I can easily see the world effortlessly transitioning from liquid fuel powered vehicles to coal-fired electricity cars as a market solution to peak oil. We can also expect to see a move to CTL and GTL. All these solutions are at least as bad for CO2 emissions as just burning straight gas or diesel.

The key thing is how we wean the world off fossil fuel, not finding ever more imaginative ways to continue using it. And that takes you straight back to global climate change politics, not a hybrid vehicle factory in China.

I’m not confident that this will do too well, mainly because, as a battery company, the complex mechanics for the parallel drivetrain would be way outside their expertise. Toyota had a huge amount of instituational knowledge, combined with excellent quality control, to make the Prius so reliable. So unless these guys are buying that drivetrain directly from Toyota, it’s going to be rife with issues for some time.

Instead of that, they should have gone w/ much lower-capacity battery (20mi? 10mi?) that has a higher power output (possibly with some ultracaps to aid in burst accelerations), and used the weight savings to employ a bigger electric motor, in a purely serial-hybrid setup.

A smaller electric-only range is still very useful, as it still boosts the overall mpg significantly, and it also gets real cars out into the marketplace faster and cheaper, thereby providing the real-world feedback data that is going to be absolutely vital to knowing how to improve the battery capacities and durability in the right way.

http://www.aie.org.au/ melb/ material/ resource/ pwr-eff.htm

If you do a little research into the laws of thermodynamics and the Carnot cycle you will see why efficiencies are so low. Also, the issue of transmission losses is crucial, especially with AC distribution. HVDC would help as losses can be made much lower.

I agree with your arguments about well-to-tank efficiency. This is generally discussed in terms of EROEI – energy returned on energy invested, which is falling to very low levels on some modern projects such as oil sands where it takes 3 barrels of oil to make 1, so to speak. By the same token you should not ignore coal-mine to electric motor effiency, taking into account all the losses of generation, distribution and battery storage.

I enjoy reading your stuff (otherwise I wouldn’t stick around), but you have a tendency to go into “sell” mode, refusing to allow any sort of in-depth discussion which might undermine your position. You don’t know all the answers – no-one in the world has cracked the problem of CO2 yet, least of all your country, the USA.

The subject of end-to-end energy efficiency is extremely complex. No energy is carbon free because it all relies on equipment which has to be manufactured, maintained and decommissioned. This generally takes large amounts of metal, concrete, transport, etc. all of which create CO2 and other forms of pollution. Have you done a piece on this? It has been done very well elsewhere on sites such as http://www.theoildrum.com/ and http://www.energybulletin.net/ which I read avidly.

[JR: Everyone is selling something -- their position. You certainly do. You wrote: "Modern gasoline engines have an average efficiency of about 25 to 30% when used to power an automobile. That’s roughly double the effective efficiency for coal electricity." That statement is simply untrue. The "effective" efficiency of most coal plants in this country (i.e. including transmission) is 25% to 30%. If the use of the word "effective" means some sort of a well to wheels comparison with EVS, then you are comparing apples and oranges, which was my point.]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engine_efficiency

“Modern gasoline engines have an average efficiency of about 25 to 30% when used to power an automobile”

That’s roughly double the effective efficiency for coal electricity.

[JR: Alex -- I'm not certain how long I can put up with you posting factually inaccurate statements. You are simply comparing apples and oranges here. The engine efficiency is one part of the entire fuel cycle from crude oil extraction to actually moving the tires. The tank to wheels efficiency for a typical US gasoline engine is maybe 17% -- that is what Toyota uses in its analysis, and it is probably generous. The well to tank efficiency of oil production is about 80%. Electric drives are incredibly efficient, plus they allow regenerative braking. That's why, when you throw all of the factors together, my original statement stands: "Even running on mostly coal electricity in China, electric cars will have lower greenhouse gas emissions than most gasoline powered cars."]

I did read the whole post. I take issue with this bit, hence the comment:

“Even running on mostly coal electricity in China, electric cars will have lower greenhouse gas emissions than most gasoline powered cars.”

Due to the limitations of heat engines (basic thermodynamics, specifically the Carnot cycle) coal fired power stations are generally no more than 35% efficient, even good ones in Europe and the US. That reduces even further when you take into account transmission losses and (arguably) the carbon cost of building and maintaining the generation and distribution infrastructure. Bottom line – you are unlikely to get more than 25% of the original energy in the coal converted to usable engine power.

Furthermore, coal is 1.5 times worse than liquid fuel on CO2 for the same energy. 25% x 2/3 = 16%

[JR: And yet my comment is accurate based on the literature, which I have replicated in my own analysis. Throwing up a few handwaving numbers as you are doing is not substitute for the many life-cycle analyses that have been done.]

What is it exactly that is ‘overdesigned’ about the car. It turns out my commuting distance is 43 miles round trip and I want as much of that to be on electric propulsion as possible.

If your response is cost then I recall the Partnership for a New Generation of Vehicles goal was to build cars that got 80 mpg. The cost to build these cars was $80,000.00 to my recollection and that was because of the advanced materials used in the cars like aluminum frames and carbon fibre composite bodies along with their hybrid electric drive trains. Dont’ get me wrong I love those cars and would have been proud to drive them but if cost was is a factor for the Volt due to its overdesign then doesn’t it also apply to the cars produced from the PNGV program as well?