Electric cars vs Gas cars, pollution?

The idea behind electric vehicles is that the energy can come from a number of sources without having to modify the vehicles. It is mostly from coal now but could as easily be from wind, solar, hydro or nuclear.

However, this argument also holds true for gasoline and diesel cars, ultimately gasoline and diesel are just chemical stores of energy just as a battery is a chemical store of energy except gasoline and diesel does it much better and was stored by nature. Fossil fuels are in fact chemically stored solar energy collected by photosynthesis millions of years ago. We've actually known how to synthesize hydrocarbon fuels from carbon monoxide and hydrogen gases ( syngas ) on industrial scales since the 1920's, WWII Germany fueled their planes with it, embargoed South Africa made diesel with it, and the US currently dilutes it's high sulfur diesel with synthetic diesel to meet federal ultra low sulfur diesel requirements. The syngas is typically made from coal or natural gas but it can also be made from biomass such as trash and dried sewage. We can also make syngas directly from CO2 and H2O as Sandia Labs has demonstrated. If made from biomass, the charcoal byproduct can be used as biochar effectively sequestering the carbon, the fuel can be carbon negative. We could actually make existing cars green just by changing how we make the fuel.

However, the electric car approach sells new cars, developing the economy and employing more people.

Note that with electric vehicles, you are not paying the road tax. Eventually that will somehow change.

"I understand there are other means to generate electricity, yet those means are, unfortunately, not used in America."

Whoa, lets start with this.

Electricity whether for an electric car or to power an oil refinery can come from many different sources therefore many times discussion has focused around averages. Those who are against the EV claim that "electricity is made from coal" While this is not untrue, some electricity is made from coal, it is misleading. In California less than 8% of the electricity is made from Coal. http://energyalmanac.ca.gov/electricity/total_syst... While the national average is now less than 42%. http://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/annual/pdf/sec... Only in some midwestern states is the percentage around 80 to 90%. Nowhere in any broad area of the US is it 100%. The fastest growing new supply of electricity is being generated from Wind energy while much of the natural gas fired generation is being used more due to the current low prices of natural gas.

A great deal of coal is used to make electricity for oil refineries to produce gasoline that is put in a petrol vehicle. Here pollution exists at every stage of the process. When we use an electric car we eliminate not only the polluting petrol vehicle but the polluting refinery. The energy required to produce a gallon of gasoline could drive an electric vehicle further than the refined product could take an average petrol vehicle. http://www.plugincars.com/refining-oil-requires-mo...

Electric cars are much cleaner for several reasons. Here's why coal doesn't matter:

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Electricity is NOT made mostly from coal, no matter how many times you might read this. Only about a third of electricity is still made from coal in the US (see sources below.) The proportion has been steadily decreasing for years. The rest of the electrical capacity comes from natural gas, hydro, wind, solar, nuclear etc (oil isn't used anymore to make electricity, it's too expensive.) All of these other sources are much, much cleaner than petroleum.

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Coal power is "baseload". Coal electricity plants can't adjust quickly enough to track changing loads, so they are designed to run at 100% output all the time. As electric demand changes throughout the day, other types of plants start and stop - the coal electricity stays steady. So plugging in electric cars doesn't change the amount of coal pollution - because you can't run a plant harder than 100%.

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Gasoline needs electricity, too. Huge amounts of electricity, and other fossil fuel, is used during the very energy-intensive refining process that turns oil into gasoline. It takes more energy just to MAKE gasoline, mile for mile, than electric cars use. Electric cars just need electricity - gas cars need BOTH electricity and petroleum.

The optimum would be to power electric cars using sustainable energy sources. However, there is still a big advantage to using an electric car even if coal is used to make electricity. Electric engines are about 90% percent efficient. The thermodynamic efficiency of a coal-fired power plant is around 30%, and considering transmission and charging losses, the fuel to wheel efficiency is somewhere around 20-25% for electric car .

The thermodynamic efficiency of an internal combustion engine is around 18%, but adding in the inefficiency of the reciprocating engine, most gasoline powered cars are around 10 -12% efficient. Considering the fuel to wheel efficiencies, an electric car is about twice as efficient even if coal is used to produce electricity. The reference below explains, near the end, theadvantage of an electric car in more detail.

Other countries besides US use other means for electricity and have cut down a lot of pollution since gas prices have risen so high in those countries over the years. A lot of people in EU uses bikes to get around. We would be a laughing stock of the neighborhood to do that esp. to go grocery shopping!

Europe gets the same gas as we do but they jack up the prices to force people to not use cars.

As far as cars go- definitely electric cars are way more pollution free! We use water, renewable energy, steam engines, and mainly geothermal for our source of electricity in Las Vegas. The city is trying to shift to all renewable energy like wind, geothermal and solar power- it's on the right track.

India would be a good example of a more healthy country. They rarely have street lights for their cities! I don't think they even have lines or concrete put down in most of it's country (use to watch ice road truckers)! They still pick and grow their own food- but we don't want to live like that because they are a "poor" country. Their water is tainted and so is their food, their sewage is unclean, all because they don't have polluted factorys cleaning all that for them.

So I doubt we'll ever go back to that way of living again. They want to be lazy.

5th link is about coal use in china- china has 16 of the most polluted cities in the world.

The last links about EU burning coal.

Your dad is right. In order to create the electricity coal will most likely be burned. However about 20% of our electricity is made from renewable energy sources like wind, thermal, etc. and nuclear power plants are create electricity in a more efficient way than coal, but it is very dangerous if released and takes up large amounts of space. Electric cars are somewhat better, but a new form of healthy transportation is needed.

When coal is burnt in the furnace the efficiency of performance is varied according to the design of the boiler. Whether it is a single, double or triple pass but any how it is an external combustion system though the coal may be fired in pulverized form , the efficiency is still very low when compare to the Gas being burn in the four strokes engine of internal combustion system which is consider to be complete combustion ,control its firing system by computer box .Moreover the exhaust gas system being pass through catalytic converter to minimise its polution.

To conclude burning of gas as mentioned above is much more efficiency than burning of coal in the furnace or boiler as explain

The point at which the pollution is generated is different between the two.

gas= generates it at the vehicle.

electric= generates it at a power plant.

BUT there are transmission losses from the plant to the car, so OVERALL it is close to the same.

Electricity can be made from wind, water or solar power... Electric cars pollute less.

Prefer a CNG vehicle