How to power cars: Assessing the Alternatives

Post by **fuzzy-hair-man** » Fri, 06 Mar 2009, 21:58

I saw this article and thought it was interesting and important to the issue of whether or not you charge your EV from Green energy. Also interesting from the point of view of PbA vrs LiPO4 batteries.

Autospeed Article: Assessing the Alternatives

Upshot for EVs was:

EVs recharged from Coal powered power stations are worse than ICE for greenhouse gas emissions.
EVs recharged from Natural Gas powered power stations involve just under half the ICE greenhouse emissions.
EVs recharged from Renewables are obviously best involving no emissions.

Natural Gas recharged EVs beat NG powered hybrid electrics and NG powered fuel cells powered cars but not by much so the power of BEVs seems to come from their use of renewable energy to recharge.

I think fuel cells get a benefit if using NG as their original fuel source because reforming of natural gas to H2 is more efficient than electrolysis of water using electricity generated from the source fuel.

Website · Post by **Simon** » Sat, 07 Mar 2009, 03:22

Its good to see an auto magazine showing Hydrogen fuel cells for the con job they are!

Post by **AMPrentice** » Sun, 08 Mar 2009, 06:05

fuzzy-hair-man wrote:I think fuel cells get a benefit if using NG as their original fuel source because reforming of natural gas to H2 is more efficient than electrolysis of water using electricity generated from the source fuel.

Fool cells will always be very inefficient even if very efficient sustainable energy production devices can be employed to charge them.

By then when there is a mass of sustainable energy manufacturing, that energy would be better stored directly into batteries/capacitors not yet available or another medium not yet developed?.

Post by **mjcrow** » Mon, 09 Mar 2009, 03:45

You will also find the author (Andrew Simpson) of the paper the article is based on, now works for Tesla Motors

Post by **coulomb** » Mon, 09 Mar 2009, 21:40

mjcrow wrote: You will also find the author (Andrew Simpson) of the paper the article is based on, now works for Tesla Motors

Um, he was; I'm not sure he still is. There was a "bloodbath" at Tesla recently; he may have been let go at that time. He's a Brisbane lad, did his time at the University of Queensland. He gave a seminar a week or two ago:

"Electric-Drive Vehicles - A Technology Update including Recent Experiences from North America"

(see this thread). It might be that he was on holidays, but it might have been a retrospective on his time in the USA, now over. I unfortunately missed this lecture.

Post by **Tritium_James** » Mon, 09 Mar 2009, 21:48

Andrew's a friend of mine (we raced solarcars together at uni), I can confirm he no longer works at Tesla. He left on his own terms before the recent mass layoffs. I think someone recorded/videoed the lecture, I'll see if I can track down a copy.

Post by **mjcrow** » Tue, 10 Mar 2009, 02:07

That's a shame to hear about Andrew, hopefully he's moved on in a positive direction. His paper was what got me interested in electric cars in the first place, it's a very interesting read.

Post by BG » Mon, 23 Mar 2009, 23:07

keep in mind the baseline spec was an EV that could drive 500km per charge in order to normalise it for the study. If you take it more realistically and give a 200km range, it gets better.
also see:
http://autospeed.com/cms/A_111205/article.html