Scientists: Electric Vehicles Produce As Many Toxins As Dirty Diesels (dailymail.co.uk) 555
An anonymous reader writes: Thanks to ongoing efforts to reduce engine emissions, nowadays only 10% to 15% of particulate emissions from traffic are coming from vehicles' tailpipes. The remainder originates in tire, road surface and brake wear. A study by Victor Timmers and Peter Achten published in Atmospheric Environment has now found that the extra weight of electric vehicles causes non-tailpipe emissions to increase by about as much as the omission of the internal combustion engine saves. Atmospheric particulates have been shown to cause cancer, cardiovascular disease and respiratory diseases and are widely considered as the most harmful form of air pollution. Achten said, "We found that non-exhaust emissions, from brakes, tires and the road, are far larger than exhaust emissions in all modern cars. These are more toxic than emissions from modern engines so they are likely to be key factors in the extra heart attacks, strokes and asthma attacks seen when air pollution levels surge." The study shows that non-exhaust emissions a vehicle produces is directly related to its weight. Scientists found that electric and eco-friendly vehicles weighed around 24 percent more than conventional vehicles, which in turn contributes to more wear on the tires.
daily mail reporting (Score:5, Insightful)
Can a legitimate news outlet tell us if this is a REAL concern?
Re:daily mail reporting (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: daily mail reporting (Score:3, Informative)
You have, of course, validated the parents point by not even reading TFS which clearly talks about particulate emissions.
Re: daily mail reporting (Score:5, Insightful)
That's exactly the point. It's only about PM. The one type of emission that it's long been known that BEVs don't beat ICEs on. They would also, on the current US grid average, cause more SOx emissions... except for the fact that most SOx-emitting US power plants are already at their sulphur limits, so if they want to sell more power, they have to scrub more. BEVs usually come out slightly ahead on NOx, a moderate improvement on CO2 and trouce ICEs on VOCs and CO. Furthermore, all powertrain-related emissions are moved from "ground level in densely populated areas" to "tops of smokestacks in less densely populated areas", reducing their health effects. It's also worth noting that the grid is getting cleaner, at a surprisingly fast rate, due to the switch from coal to wind + natural gas.
How brake emissions are supposed to work against BEVs is beyond me - because of regenerative braking, BEVs use physical brakes significantly less.
Re: daily mail reporting (Score:5, Funny)
Batteries aren't.
You'd better get down to the battery recycling center and let them know that they're making a horrible mistake.
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Re:daily mail reporting (Score:4, Insightful)
You've made some excellent points, as have other posters in this thread.
When I first saw the source, I immediately thought "Bullshit!"
However, upon reading the TFS, it's possible that they're technically correct.
CO2 is a form of pollution to be sure, but it's decidedly not particulate matter pollution.
Re:daily mail reporting (Score:5, Insightful)
You've made some excellent points, as have other posters in this thread.
When I first saw the source, I immediately thought "Bullshit!"
However, upon reading the TFS
They're reporting that an electric vehicle, which breaks mainly through electromagnet resistance used to regenerate electrical power, produces more break dust than a gasoline powered vehicle that uses breaks.
This doesn't even deserve the title of bullshit.
Re:daily mail reporting (Score:4, Insightful)
Without picking sides, you can't just dismiss this outright. There may be something to this, but it'll need to go through peer review if it hasn't already, in addition to being reproducible.
Re: daily mail reporting (Score:3, Insightful)
heres my limited peer review. from wikipedia for both cars...
top weight range for Tesla Model S: 4300-4900 or so lbs.
top weight for Audi A8- 4400-4800 or so lbs.
Gonna call bullshit on the "heavier electric car more impactful net emissions-wise than gas engined car" thesis of TFS.
Yes, these two cars are peers.
Re:daily mail reporting (Score:5, Insightful)
Electromagnetic braking was the first thing that came to mind. Thank you.
Someone at Daily Fail is asleep at the switch once again.
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Regenerative braking isn't exclusive to EVs. You can also use it on hybrids, which presumably weigh a lot less than an EV.
I'm not saying that this story isn't full of crap—it probably is—but....
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When I had a diesel (and the summery mentions diesels), I usually just downshifted and used the engine compression to brake. Did learn to tap the brake pedal to stop the cops from pulling me over to check that my brake lights worked. With a 23.1 compression ratio, that little Nissan truck slowed down quick with engine compression.
Large diesels often have exhaust limiters (jake brakes) that help using engine braking.
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Maybe a tiny bit more, due to weight transfer to the front wheels. On the other hand, you also have weight transfer away from the rear wheels, so maybe it evens out.
If there was a significant loss of material from tires caused by simple driving around and braking normally, tires wouldn't last ~50,000 kilometers.
Re:daily mail reporting (Score:5, Informative)
And the brakes? Some number of tens of milligrams of brake dust?
Not even that. Electric cars use regenerative braking. So if an electric car going 100 kph needs to stop, the engine runs backwards to slow it down to about 10 kph, and the brakes just handle the last 10% of the speed reduction, but since energy is proportional to the velocity squared the brakes are only dissipating the last 1% of the energy.
Electric cars produce far less brake pad dust than gasoline cars, and the brake pads often are good for the life of the car. The fact that the authors include brake pad "emissions" indicates that they know nothing about how electric cars work, collected no actual data, and just made up their results to generate clicks.
Re: daily mail reporting (Score:5, Informative)
1. Electric engines can go forwards and backwards. I have an EV and reverse is not a real gear, motor actually turns in reverse
2. I had a hybrid for over 7 years, after 50K miles I sold it with 80% original brakes - most of my braking was regenerative. So over the 50k miles I used up 20% of one set of pads.
3. In my current EV, I rarely touch the brake over 20mph. Most of my braking is pure regen, which by the way can easily generate >50KW of power (more than most homes) which is captured by the battery.
Re:daily mail reporting (Score:5, Informative)
Summary is sensationalist, though.
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Can we have a reality check here!!!!???
The magazine is owned and run by Elsevier B.V.
The CEO is this guy:
https://www.elsevier.com/about/company-information/management/ron-mobed
Does --
"Ron is a Fellow of the Institute of Directors and of the Energy Institute. He holds a bachelor's degree in engineering from Trinity College, University of Cambridge and a master's degree in petroleum engineering from Imperial College, University of London."
--- this somewhat smack of propaganda, because my anal smoke detector w
Re:daily mail reporting (Score:4, Insightful)
"The magazine is owned and run by Elsevier B.V."
Yessiree, here's an example of one of those prestigious Elsevier journals: http://www.journals.elsevier.c... [elsevier.com]
Small wonder that scientists line up to pay this buggy-whip publisher $3000 per research paper for the privilege of having their copyright stolen.
Re:daily mail reporting (Score:5, Insightful)
It's actually worse than that:
Victor R.J.H. Timmers: Listed as the first author.
https://uk.linkedin.com/in/vic [linkedin.com]... [linkedin.com]
Hmmm... bachelors in engineering. No experience in the automotive field, 2 months experience as a RA studying the environment. Then he started working for INNAS BV as an intern and got first authorship on this paper.
How about Peter A.J. Achten (second author)?
Zero other publications listed, but his contact in ScienceDirect is the address of... INNAS BV.
Let's see, what does INNAS BV do?
http://www.innas.com/fallacies [innas.com]... [innas.com]
Interesting, looks like they developed the Chiron (R) Free Piston Engine, a two stroke engine that is supposedly "not dirty."
Convenient of them to put their product, and the paper of the two people that published this... thing... right there on the same page next to each other so we can all see the real motivation of it.
Sadly, this paper will get batted around the internet and become more and more exaggerated by anyone with an anti-electric agenda like that idiot hit piece comparing a Prius to a Hummer. Yes, that thing is still quoted everywhere and always.
Address all complaints to vrjhtimmers@gmail.com ... that guy's going to have to change email addresses shortly if this crap paper hits the fan like it probably will.
Ugh.
Sam
Re:daily mail reporting (Score:5, Informative)
This is modded "Insightful"????
The DM took the report from The Sunday Times which was basing it's report on a study published in the journal Atmospheric Environment.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
http://www.journals.elsevier.c... [elsevier.com]
Heh heh (Score:2, Offtopic)
Brought to you and paid for by (Score:5, Insightful)
the Petroleum Institute and Oil Producing Export Countries.
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No shit!
Does The Paper Account For Regenerative Braking? (Score:3, Interesting)
When you use the brakes in an EV the brake pads generally aren't used, instead the motor is used as a generator converting kinetic energy into stored power. I don't see this mentioned in the abstract, are the authors really not including this?
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Do they account for the fact not every car is a 500lb sub-compact? I find the 24% heavier data point bogus as I watch SUVs and heavy duty trucks drive by.
Re:Does The Paper Account For Regenerative Braking (Score:4, Insightful)
They are 24% heavier than the same-sized ICE vehicle.
Re:Does The Paper Account For Regenerative Braking (Score:5, Informative)
Not even close and I've got the freight scales to prove it. The fucking Tesla Model S-60 weighs 1961kg. A comparably-sized car would be the 2016 Taurus, at 1962kg.
25% my fucking ass, son.
Re:Does The Paper Account For Regenerative Braking (Score:4, Informative)
Lies to prove your point, or just ignorance?
Taurus is a much bigger car than the Tesla for starters. And the S-60 has very low autonomy, but lets go with it.
Taurus specs: http://www.edmunds.com/ford/ta... [edmunds.com]
Tesla specs: http://www.edmunds.com/tesla/m... [edmunds.com]
The Tesla is 700lbs heavier than one of the heaviest sedans you could find for your comparison AND its a smaller car.
If you want to call bullshit, makes sure you smell your reply first.
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Their results (based on literature averages):
Comparison between expected PM10 emissions of EVs, gasoline and diesel ICEVs.
Vehicle technology Exhaust Tyre wear B
Re:Does The Paper Account For Regenerative Braking (Score:5, Insightful)
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Yes, virginia, many of the hybrids and electrics if not all of them use regen braking. And yes, it does work. You feel a noticeable drag on the car when it kicks in.
You do use your regular brake pads though. The regen braking is good for a lot of things but it is not enough to stop the car quickly enough. I will say this though your brake pads last for frigging ever, as in so far they have lasted through over 150k miles on the factory pads, and there is still life left.
TO be honest though this is all w
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My Insight has ~180k on it, factory brake pads are at ~40%.
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My Tesla stops just fine with only regenerative braking. I apply the brakes to keep from moving on hills until it's time to move again.
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My boss had to replace the front brake pads on his Prius after ten years and 120,000 miles. The rear ones are still good.
Re:Does The Paper Account For Regenerative Braking (Score:5, Informative)
As a savvy owner of a Prius c hybrid, I think I have some insight into this... Basically, the brake pads *are* used quite a lot by aggressive drivers who tailgate and have to brake hard when the car in front of them slows down. People who drive with a proper following distance ahead of them will rarely have to use the disc brakes.
Hybrid vehicles (and EVs, probably) have smaller brake pads than similarly sized conventional vehicles (though the actual stopping power of the disc brakes in an emergency is just as good as regular cars). The brake pads are about half as thick on my Prius c as the brake pads on my Honda Civic. That's because the manufacturer expects you to use them less often. I'm sure there are some insane drivers out there who can burn through the brake pads on a vehicle like mine in well under 50,000 miles, but those same people would burn through the brakes on any vehicle just as quickly.
I've learned to "feel" the difference between the cut-over between regenerative braking and the disc brakes. The disc brakes slow you down WAY faster. There's not a discrete and obvious jolt when you gradually depress the brake pedal; it's incredibly smooth; but to use an analogy, as long as I'm slowing down at about the same rate as a truck can slow down when using the jake brake (engine braking - that loud "farting" sound that large trucks sometimes make when slowing down), I'm using the regenerative braking system only. If I'm slowing down much faster than that, the disc brakes are being engaged (the brakes and the regenerative braking can be active at the same time, unless you are braking at what would be considered "emergency" speeds, in which case the regenerative braking system disengages, perhaps because it can't handle that amount of torque or current).
As for the article itself: 24 percent?! That's total bullshit.
The Prius c is literally a Yaris Hybrid (it's marketed as such in some parts of the world). It's the Toyota Yaris -- a compact car -- with the Toyota Hybrid Synergy Drive in it. So, it's a Yaris, *plus* the weight of the HSD.
The curb weight of the Yaris is 2335 pounds. The curb weight of the Prius c is 2500 pounds. That's only a 7.066% increase. That's a far, far cry from the 24% the article cites.
OK, you say, let's look at *electric* vehicles specifically, not just hybrids. Because hybrids don't have to lug around 500 pounds of lithium-ion batteries. Hybrid batteries tend to weigh under 200 pounds, with the smallest hybrids' ~1 kWh batteries weighing less than 100 pounds.
Let's take the Chevy Spark. The conventional Spark weighs in around 2270 pounds. The EV? 3000 pounds. That's a 32% increase for basically the same passenger and cargo volume. Fair enough. But 3000 pounds isn't out of this world, and is in the ballpark of many upscale compact cars like the (conventional) Honda Civic.
Another example. The 2016 Nissan Leaf weighs around 3150 pounds. I did some research to try and find a conventional vehicle with similar interior measurements (headroom, cargo space, etc.) and I came up with this: The 2016 Honda Civic EX has a total (usable) interior volume of 110.1 cubic feet with a curb weight of 2799 pounds. The 2016 Nissan Leaf has an interior volume of 116 cubic feet. So for 6 more cubic feet of interior (5.4% more), the vehicle weighs 351 pounds (25.4%) more.
Based on these limited comparisons, it seems like the article's claim about the increased weight of electric vehicles is factual. However, it is absolutely not valid to make the leap to saying that plug-in hybrids or conventional hybrids are anywhere near as bad in terms of added weight.
What I'm not convinced of, however, is the severity and environmental impact of tire and brake wear, regardless of vehicle weight. EVs and hybrids also run with low rolling resistance tires, which should reduce the amount of tire "stuff" in the air, in any case. Did they take that into account?
However, switching out a gasoline engine for a TDI diesel engine adds about 300 pounds to a sedan-
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Indeed I am driving a Prius, now with 230,000 miles on it - and I have never needed to replace the brake pads. I like getting high mileage, and so manage to use regenerative braking exclusively except for emergency stop situations (e.g. someone pulls in front of you suddenly from a slow lane).
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What part of "Prius c " did you not understand? The Prius and the Prius c [wikipedia.org] are two completely fucking different cars! Wikipedia says:
If you're going to be an asshole and "correct" somebody, you'd better make sure you're not the one who's wrong first!
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I have first hand knowledge of owning an eGolf. The amount of regeneration depends (in that vehicle) on the charge state of the battery. If you're below about 70% charge, then under normal circumstances, all braking is regenerative. Above that charge level, or when you use particularly heavy braking, and the actual disks will get used a certain amount.
Brakes? Tires? (Score:5, Informative)
Who knew that stuff was so deadly toxic? Really?
First off, electric cars use their brake pads less, not more. Regenerative brakes do most of the work, and the brakes last 2-3x longer than a regular gasoline car. Tire do last a little less long, but most of those are big particles, and I have never heard of tire dust being considered a major health risk.
Sounds like a hatchet job...
Re:Brakes? Tires? (Score:5, Insightful)
Not only that, the disc pads on a vehicle are very small compared with the fuel burned. Imagine a 0.1kg brake pad that lasts 200,000km verses 160'000 Litres of fuel burned over the same distance.
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I would expect brakes to last a lot more than 2-3x longer - on my last Prius, after 250,000km (155,000 miles) 80% of the brakes were still on the pads.
As for tires, if a 24% increase in weight is SO bad, why aren't they going after the vehicles that are 100% heavier than the average car - SUVs?
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Here is an article that discusses the health risks of rubberized materials such as crumb rubber on football fields.
https://www.washingtonpost.com... [washingtonpost.com]
Personally I do not think that this is a big issue for electric cars being the weight of batteries is what causes tire wear. It is the fact that electric cars are so damn quick off the line. If we can only make electric vehicles as sluggish as gas cars the tire problem would go aware.
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Personally I do not think that this is a big issue for electric cars being the weight of batteries is what causes tire wear. It is the fact that electric cars are so damn quick off the line. If we can only make electric vehicles as sluggish as gas cars the tire problem would go aware.
Launches don't eat your tires in EVs because they have such good traction control. What eats your tires is going around turns without traction, which causes sideways slip that causes the abrasive particles in the road to remove parts of your tires. What causes a lack of traction in turns is taking the turns too fast. What makes it too fast? The ultra low rolling resistance tires used on hybrids, which decrease cornering traction due to decreasing traction in general. So you can either drive your EV with res
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You can get Continental's Extreme Contact DWS 06 model for the Toyota Prius stock, which is a particularly high-performance all-season. It's not as high-performance as the Goodyear Assurance TripleTred, which performs almost as well in wet/dry as high-performance summer tires when loaded onto a non-performance passenger vehicle (don't put TripleTreds on your Pontiac GTO and expect PolePosition performance; don't put PolePositions on your Mazda 3 and expect race car performance and a huge improvement in ha
Re:Brakes? Tires? (Score:5, Insightful)
Articles like this are almost as popular with news sites as "chocolate/beer/wine/cheese/bacon cures cancer!". From what I can tell, the publication was written by a summer intern who is about a junior in college, by reviewing other publications and making some guesses from the data contained therein. It's a good thought piece, i.e. "Hey guys, there's a lot of stuff that we haven't really done much to improve yet, maybe we should look into that." The publication doesn't make an argument that "electric cars are evil." It doesn't even have any real data of its own. And well over half of the particulate matter that they attribute is just stuff that was lying on the ground and the cars kicked up into the air; and because they claim that an EV is 24% heavier, it will kick up 24% more PM in its wake, which is probably not true. I'd be willing to bet that even if EVs average 24% heavier, they are probably not also 24% larger and 24% less aerodynamic; and the size and shape of the vehicle matter at least as much as the weight in creating a wake, if not more.
On top of that, I don't know that reduction of particulate matter has ever been a huge concern for the EV market. Generally, the concerns are more along the lines of reducing CO2 (/CO/NOx/HCHO/NMOG/NMHC) emissions, oil consumption, monetary support to unfriendly OPEC nations, required maintenance, or fuel costs; or increasing support of new technology, renewable energy, etc. But, PM is certainly a health concern, so maybe the article's best use is just to point out that, as long as we're making a lot of other changes in our transportation system, maybe we should consider how we can change it to reduce PM emissions as well.
TL;DR: Science reporting fails again.
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Did you happen to watch last Sunday's Last Week Tonight with John Oliver [youtube.com]? He talked about this very type of bullshit reporting of not very meaningful studies.
Re: Brakes? Tires? (Score:3)
If the article really claims that diesel has lower PM emissions than petrol, I think it's safe to say the entire article is bollocks and can be ignored.
So if it's all about weight... (Score:5, Insightful)
According to this, we should obviously ban trucks from city streets. How many cars would it take to equal the weight of an 18-wheel rolling warehouse loaded with plates, cutlery and mini-fridges for Walmart?
Re:So if it's all about weight... (Score:4, Insightful)
What about SUVs and light duty trucks?
According to the WSJ (http://online.wsj.com/mdc/public/page/2_3022-autosales.html) more light duty trucks are sold than cars.
FUD!! (Score:2)
Electric and hybrid cars use regenerative breaking, such that when the driver brakes lightly the car will use the electric motor as a generator and recharge the battery, hence the braking emissions would be largely reduced. Heavy breaking will use the disc brakes as well as regenerative braking at the same time, so there will be some emissions then, but still less than classical vehicles.
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Thanks for pointing out the typos. My spelin is bahd at the best of tymes.
except for Tesla they aren't that heavy (Score:5, Insightful)
And they also cut down on brake dust by using regenerative braking as much as possible.
I think there's some room to move here, to ensure EVs are better on particulates.
Maybe we have to discourage the purchase of 6,000lb Teslas and instead encourage the purchase of 3600lb LEAFs and Bolts.
This thing that particulates being widely considered the most harmful form of air pollution is also new to me. They're a serious problem for sure, but I think other trace emissions like NOx are still quite significant. And that's all ignoring CO2.
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And they also cut down on brake dust by using regenerative braking as much as possible.
I think there's some room to move here, to ensure EVs are better on particulates.
Maybe we have to discourage the purchase of 6,000lb Teslas and instead encourage the purchase of 3600lb LEAFs and Bolts.
This thing that particulates being widely considered the most harmful form of air pollution is also new to me. They're a serious problem for sure, but I think other trace emissions like NOx are still quite significant. And that's all ignoring CO2.
The paper takes this into account and lists brake emissions as 0 mg/vkm for EVs.
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If particulates are now such a huge problem,
Not just now. They always have been, especially the smallest particles. This fact is NOT NEWS. (The study is crap, but particulates are real, and I am talking about them.)
why isn't even redneck moron with a purposefully black-cloud beltching Cummin's not sitting in jail for environmental terrorism.
They should be, and it is in fact illegal to tune your vehicle to "roll coal". However, it's not actually about the particulates. What is in fact the worst automotive emission is not particulates but unburned hydrocarbons, AKA "raw fuel". How do you roll coal? By making your vehicle inject excessive fuel for the incoming air. Not only do y
Missing the point (Score:5, Insightful)
Obviously driving has environmental impacts. This is not news. Bringing this up reminds me of this essay:
http://www.abstractconcretewor... [abstractco...eworks.com]
But when comparing the two classes of vehicles, the entire supply chain needs to be considered. You can use existing electrical infrastructure (and possibly renewable energy) to charge an electric vehicle. For a traditionally-fueled vehicle, you need to consider exploration, extraction, refinery, transportation, and disaster mitigation.
I think the lesser of two evils is clear.
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Correct - except don't forget to factor in the manufacturing of the batteries, which will probably also need replacing after 10 years (though many will probably replace the entire car within that timeframe).
Re:Missing the point (Score:4, Informative)
When those batteries get replaced they still have a lot of life left in them. What's the standard for replacing EV batteries? When they're down to 80% of the original range? With all that life left in them they can be moved to stationary installations where weight and volume don't matter so much and be useful for years to come.
Re:Missing the point (Score:5, Interesting)
10 years is a ridiculously low estimate for an automotive battery pack. Nissan Leafs with 150k on them have barely any degradation, and Tesla tested their packs up to 750,000 miles with 14% capacity loss. It's basically a non-issue.
Panasonic rate the cells in the Tesla packs for 900,000 miles to 80% capacity. The tests suggest that is about right. So to EOL the pack in 10 years you should need to do 90,000 miles/year, which is quite unusual (most people do less than 20k/year). Even then, an 80% pack still gets you over 200 miles in a Model S, so it would make more sense to either carry on driving it or reuse the pack in some other application (e.g. PowerWall). You certainly wouldn't want to toss something so valuable and useful away.
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I don't think there are many LEAFs that "have barely any degradation" after 150k miles. The original battery chemistry in the 2011 and 2012 models (when it was first introduced) have had terrible battery capacity losses, especially in hot climates. It's reported all over at MNL. A typical one: http://mynissanleaf.com/viewto... [mynissanleaf.com] Many folks with LEAFs that are 4+ years old have been getting warranty replacements of the battery pack.
(In fact, I don't think there are that many LEAFs at 150k miles total yet)
What's the standard for replacing EV batteries?
I
From the same people who brought you... (Score:3, Insightful)
How do you eat an elephant? (Score:4, Insightful)
Gotta start somewhere. Sorry petroleum industry, but it looks like the focus of your products will have to change. Trying to forestall it with claims so transparent even auto enthusiasts are embarrassed by them won't help.
Whatever remaining aspects of pollution from electric cars can be addressed in-time.
Toxins != carbon (Score:2)
This is talking about particulate matter and toxic substances released into the air during operation. Modern ICEs are really incredibly clean when it comes to these emissions.
It is NOT talking about carbon emissions. ICE vehicles emit carbon as they burn fuel, and electric vehicles do not. Electric vehicles can be 100% carbon-neutral in operation if they are charged by appropriate technologies (solar, wind, etc).
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Conflict of interest? (Score:2)
I could not read the Elsevier (almost synonymous for low impact factor) article [sciencedirect.com], since it's behind a paywall. So I could not see whether the authors had declared conflict of interest in the acknowledgements section of the paper, or by what money the study was funded.
However, I did find the following: Peter A.J. Achten works at INNAS BV, Breda, the Netherlands, a company that manufactures hydraulic systems for hybrids and fuel-efficient cars and free-piston diesel engines [innas.com].
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If you know about Evilsevier you should know about http://sci-hub.cc/ [sci-hub.cc]
Here's the direct link to the paper. [sci-hub.cc]
delete $car{spare_tire} if $car{commuter}; (Score:2)
Spare tires are 12 Kg of unnecessary extra weight that every single car carries around all the time, wasting gas and releasing more toxins to the environment.
How about getting rid of the spare tire for commuting cars, and rely on some service to bring a spare tire to you when you need it?
The service should be provided for free by all cities as a measure to reduce pollution.
And thinking on a global scale, it would add up to a save us from a lot of CO2 emissions.
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Manufacturers are already doing this. Replacing the spare tyre with a tyre sealer and inflation kit.
I wish I could mod down stories.... (Score:5, Informative)
Not to pull an ad-hominem here, but I'd take the paper with lots of grains of salt.
Re:I wish I could mod down stories.... (Score:4, Informative)
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Also it should be pointed out that the sensationalist title about "producing as many toxins as dirty diesels" (copied from the sensationalist newspaper article, for pete's sake) isn't even supported by the paper. There point of comparison, misleading as it is, are modern extremely clean diesels (and assuming the claims of the diesel vehicle manufacturers are even accurate, which have learned recently often are not).
Never got how Electric Cars Made Sence (Score:2)
We are not supposed to use electric heating because it is inefficient, how are cars supposed to be any different? What does it matter if the fuel is burned in a car or a power plant. If it reduces the weight of the car, how it is not more efficient to burn it on site?
Re:Never got how Electric Cars Made Sence (Score:4, Insightful)
2) As for efficiency goes, in a car about only 15% of the fuel energy is converted into motion. The rest is wasted as heat. Power plants are more efficient at using that heat and turn it into electricity, making again electric cars get more efficiency per unit of fuel burned.
3) Gasoline must be carried to gas stations. Think of it as a hidden energy cost: The cost of running you car = the fuel it burns + the energy it took to get it to your car.
On the opposite side, batteries are not as efficient storing energy as gasoline is, and there is also loss of power on transmission lines. I haven't done the math myself, but overall electric should be more efficient than gasoline cars.
Re:Never got how Electric Cars Made Sence (Score:4, Informative)
4) Scrub Towers can be as tall, heavy, and complex as necessary to meet emissions guidelines since they're not driving down the road.
Since line loss is estimated 8%-15% and AC-to-DC happens at a charge station and (if it's like my PC power brick) should be 97% efficient. Battery efficiency is a measure of storage, so it's uninteresting unless considering vehicle weight. There is some loss in charging, but I'd imagine it compares to the evaporation losses in gasoline. This about-20% loss (slightly-more weight-considered) turns-out to be much less loss than gasoline's 85% loss in just its final step. And considering the electric motor doesn't need to "keep up" when not providing force (instant torque), it's even better.
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Making heat (for your home) is a heck of a lot simpler and more efficient than turning burning fuel into something that can power an engine.
TANSTAAFL? (Score:2)
OH NOEZ!
Say it ain't so Joe! Say it ain't so!
Link to the paper - More info here (Score:5, Informative)
http://31.184.194.81/10.1016/j... [31.184.194.81] = Sci-hub link.
It's absolute garbage "research". Speculation layered upon speculation. It has the quality of a rant.
Victor Timmers is still getting his BEng. He was a research intern. Yay!
https://www.linkedin.com/in/vi... [linkedin.com]
Peter A.J. Achten is a hydraulics engineer for INNAS.
http://www.innas.com/ [innas.com]
Some gems from their trash:
"Despite the lack of direct research, there is significant indirect evidence..."
"Many studies and emission inventories suggest..."
But here's my favorite:
"It can be hypothesised that..."
WTF?
I don't believe this for a second (Score:2)
* Research funded by the petroleum industry cooperative.
Blatant Hit-piece from Murdoch (Score:5, Insightful)
Why is The Daily Mail, a lowest-rung tabloid, being linked on the /. main page?
The paper itself is so full of faults that I would have to write more than the paper's authors in order to describe them all. Others in this thread are doing that. I will take the time to make two counter-points, though:
(1) Heavier cars, eh? You mean, like SUVs? The logical conclusion here is to promote sub-compact cars, public transport, and cargo transport by rail, rather than big-rig transport, of goods around the country. I don't think Rupert Murdoch would be in favor any of this, considering his investments in the fossil fuel industry.
(2) Electric cars rely primarily on regenerative braking. Essentially, the motors work in reverse to produce electricity when reducing speed (momentum, but ultimately kinetic energy) of the car – transforming that back into potential energy that is stored in the car's batteries. These motors are brush-less, meaning that there is no frictional contact, and thus no particulates produced. Compare this to regular car brakes, which are entirely frictional and heat-dissipating. Do we still use asbestos in car brake drums? Regardless, 'regular' brakes are two surfaces grinding against each other, creating micro-particulates. Drum brakes are going away, so it's all 4-wheel disk brakes. Usually made of metal.
But on my high-end sports car, which requires ceramic brake pads, braking creates micro-particulates of ceramic materials that are not soluble in the human lung, which is the kind of thing that causes mesothelioma (blacklung, asbestosis, silicosis, and the many others yet to be named... until enough people exhibit direct signs of a specific material causing the mesothelioma). It's not hard to know which materials will be in this class, but my managers tended to 'shush' me when I brought up the topic years ago – but it has since-then become a major area of research. It is not hard to create a definitive list, but NSF only likes to fund incremental research, rather than fundamentals-based studies. Thus, I will simply keep my mouth (and my windows) shut.
Re: Occam's razor (Score:3, Funny)
Sounds pretty sciency
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Re:Occam's razor (Score:5, Insightful)
You probably live among cars smell, so you probably filter it out. I remember coming from the nearby mountains and getting out of the car in the city, appalling.
Anyway as you say smell is subjective.
Let us talk about the volume of vaporized stuff, this study says basically that modern cars let out less fuel fumes in 50000 km than the volume differential between new and used braking pads and tires.
I say somebody has misplaced a decimal point somewhere or is still using the fuel consumption data of volkswagen.
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Roads get water in cracks, which freezes and expands, damaging the road surface by prying it open. Cracks form by hot and cold expansion during day/night cycles from the sun shining on them and from patterns in driving. Enough small cracks without a freeze-thaw cycle will leave bits of road unsupported, meaning your road is made up of protruding pencil-eraser-sized platforms instead of one flat sheet, and the stress of a moving or braking vehicle wiggles these until they break apart (and the edges chip e
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Most hydrogen comes from steam acting on hydrocarbon fuel, the electricity for making the steam also from burning hydrocarbon fuel. Glad you like to keep big petro in business, Trump is your man
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He was talking about elemental hydrogen, IE H2. H2 isn't a naturally occurring thing on earth, not in any significant quantities that is. There are no hydrogen mines.
Ergo, the basic ways we get it are by electrolysis(minor source) and from hydrocarbons, of which the biggest is steam reformation [wikipedia.org] from natural gas. However, this process takes up enough energy that in most applications it's just better to burn the natural gas directly.
Re: Once again, hydrogen looks to be the future (Score:3, Insightful)
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Don't tell me, tell Toyota.
Hmm, I wonder if Toyota knows more about engineering cars, or you?
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What's a reasonable time? It takes only a few seconds after arriving home to plug in an electric car. Is a few seconds reasonable?
For longer journeys, there are fast DC chargers which will charge Teslas or other brands to 80% charge in about 30 minutes. Unfortunately, there are 3 incompatible standards for the DC chargers.
Pray tell, how long again? (Score:4, Insightful)
What's a reasonable time? It takes only a few seconds after arriving home to plug in an electric car.
For how many apartment dwellers is that true for again?
Oh what's that, you were only considering people who had homes instead of everyone? A replacement transportation system works only if it works for EVERYONE.
Also that 30 minutes is about ten hours if you increased the number of Teslas on the road substantially. A 30 minute fill-up time, even if reduced to fifteen minutes, simple cannot scale to ALL CARS.
If you take ten seconds to actually think about the implications of what happens when ALL CARS are electric the mass-market solution is dictated to you and requires no skill to predict.
Re:Once again, hydrogen looks to be the future (Score:5, Informative)
The nice thing with my Tesla is I can charge virtually anywhere there's electricity. Granted, the superchargers take some time, but it's not a huge amount of time. Now, take the amount of time saved by charging every night. It takes only a few seconds to plug in and unplug vs the amount of time spent driving to one of a limited number of hydrogen refueling stations, waiting in line (if they're popular) and filling up. On top of that, the electricity is far cheaper than the hydrogen. Currently virtually all hydrogen is heavily subsidized since the actual price would not be cheap. Currently EVs are over twice as efficient compared to a hydrogen fuel cell car when once considers well to wheel. HFC vehicles aren't much better than hybrid vehicles when it comes to efficiency but they're still a lot more expensive to build. They have a very long way to go. Durability of the fuel cell stacks is currently about half that of a gasoline engine. A fuel cell stack as of the end of 2015 will need to be replaced at 75K miles. I did the math and the batteries in my Tesla will be good for at least double this. See this [energy.gov].
The 2016 Toyota Mirai, a subcompact, is only rated at 66MPG. A Prius is 58 city, 53 highway and costs less than half the price of the Mirai. BEVs are typically over 100 for a similarly sized car. For example, a 2013 Leaf is the equivalent of 115MPG, almost twice as efficient. My 3-year old Tesla, a much larger vehicle with a lot more passenger and storage room, is 89MPGe. The newer ones are even higher. The Model 3 should be considerably higher than that. Long term, I don't see HFC vehicles competing much against pure electric cars. The complexity alone means that they will always be more expensive, especially as the cost of batteries drops. The cost today of a Toyota Mirai is $58,335. This is for a car with 0-60 of 9.4 seconds and a top speed of 108MPH, not much better than a Prius. The Mirai will suffer the same problems as a Prius as well. The Mirai depends on a battery pack for acceleration and regenerative braking, just like a Prius. My last car was a Prius. It does poorly going up mountain grades and the Mirai will suffer the same problem. Unlike a Prius, the power output of the PEM stack will be considerably lower by 75K miles. A BEV car can put out considerably more power for a longer time since it isn't restricted to the limited output of the PEM stack. I've taken my Tesla up a number of steep mountain grades where my Prius would struggle without breaking a sweat. The Tesla Model 3 and other long range BEVs will cost considerably less than the Mirai. The Model 3 will also have considerably more room inside and storage space. The ONLY advantage the Mirai has is that it can be filled relatively quickly. In just about every other metric it falls short. Today I can take my Tesla most places in the country with the number of places I can't drive to without superchargers rapidly diminishing. By the time the model 3 rolls out the entire country will be pretty much covered. As it is, in California where most of them are sold, even out of the way places are getting covered. There's a charging station going in right near the entrance to Yosemite, for example and even highway 395 along the eastern Sierra Nevada mountains is covered.
Let's compare:
Hydrogen filling stations [cafcp.org]
vs
Plugshare chargers [plugshare.com]
Tesla Superchargers [supercharge.info]
Tesla Superchargers by the end of 2016 [teslamotors.com] (click on 2016). This number should double by 2017.
The closest hydrogen fueling station to my house is 15 miles away from my house. My EV charging station is in my garage. This covers over 90% of my driving needs. I pay $50/month for the electricity and drive around 1000 miles/month. According to this article [caranddriver.com], the Mirai
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In order to scale hydrogen vehicles to the point of being attractive to consumers you need lots of local filling stations converting natural gas to hydrogen.
"Natural gas" is terribly short-sighted, but otherwise yes, exactly, and that is the BENEFT of the technology. You have can have much shorter distribution networks for most areas than you have with gasoline, with many more stations spread all over.
That is ALSO a vastly better system in times of crisis, rather than a few electric plants scattered here a
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"Never going to happen" (Score:2)
Boy, does Toyota have a video for you! [toyota.com]
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The paper is bullshit.
Re:Don’t forget the batteries (Score:4, Insightful)
After all when someone is done with a Prius they just dump it in a landfill, where all the nickel in the battery will eventually leak out and contaminate ground water. What? No one does this?
Well then, when someone is done with a Prius they BURN it! And all that nickel goes into the air! Wait, no one does that either.
What does happen to a Prius once it exceeds its service life? People sell it to scrap dealers, who take the batteries out and ship them to reclaiming facilities where the valuable nickel is recovered and reused.
Just more anti-environmental BS. Nothing to see here.