Peak Petrol

[Anomalocaris]

A little trivia.   china built over half of the world’s extent high speed rail, all on new tracks, in less than 20 years.   how is that possible and what incentivized it?


The need to prevent passenger rail traffic from interfering with rail transport of coal.  


 In early 2000s china experienced an unusual cold and snow spell that spiked electricity demand, and with it the immediate demand to transport coal.   the cold spell so happen to occur during chinese spring festival, which is otherwise known as largest human migration on the planet.   most of the passenger travel occurs by rail.   passenger rail transport had priority over freight transport, so coal train waited, power stations idled, while passenger trains moved.    that single resulting nation wide blackout resulting from interruption of coal supply cost chinese economy half the total cost of chinese high speed ra network.

preventing similar coal supply interruption was the reason the chinese suddenly pivoted to building a separate high speed passenger rail network.

so chinese HSR exists to protect coal delivery

[Deesse23]

Please provide your calculation/estimation.

coal emits roughly 220 lbs of CO2 per MMBTU,   motor grade gasoline emits about 150 lbs per MMBTU.  typical modern coal plants are about 40% thermal efficiency at bus bar, which means roughly 550 lbs of CO2 per MMBTU equivalent of energy delivered to the grid.    Typical road legal car drive train are about 30% thermal efficient, which means about 450 lbs of CO2 per MMBTU equivalent of kenetic energy delivered to the wheel. 

This is without considering transmission, distribution and battery charging loss, which amounts to more than 15%

You forgot the losses due to mining, processing and transportation of gasoline (otherwise its coal apples vs gasoline oranges). The overall efficiency of gasoline is ca. 20% from the oil field until the rubber hits the road. I guess coal is having an edge transportation wise, because of the "bundling" of transportation to the power plants.
Otoh, electric motors have an efficiency <100% which also should be factored in.
Fuel for gasoline engines also has to be on board of the vehicle driven. Same problem Rockets have according to the rocket equation. However the weight of the fuel vs vehicle is rather small.
If you look at the typical driving profile, electric motors have some advantage. They provide good power and efficiency even at low power. Gasoline engines are terrible at low RPM. I would suspect that with a city-like profile, electric motors have an edge. On highways....idk.

The reality, overall, is probably more complex than we know, hence so many opinions.

What bugs me much more than the gasoline vs elektro discussion is this: How heavy is the typical car today, compared to .....30y ago? Weight eats up energy, and ultimately is the main contributor of co2 emissons. Todays cars are incredibly fat (*cough* SUVs *cough*) compared to what we had and i am having serious doubts if everything we have (particularly in terms of ECUs, and copper-wiring) in our modern cars is really necessary.

[Anomalocaris]

Electric motor’s efficiency is all down stream of power generation, transmission, distribution, and conversion into battery chemical energy.    At best electric motor will not lose any appreciable percentage of what energy that can be extracted back out of the battery, it will not make up for any inefficiency and losses upstream.

Increase in vehicle weight is a natural result of periods when gas prices at the pump remains below overall long term average economic incremental cost of procuring more gas,  which in turn result from the failure to implement policies that make full incremental cost of gas consumptions tangible and buffer out price swings due to short and medium term gas supply and demand volatility.

[The Grand Nudger]

A hatchback ev and an ice suv weigh about the same. A full sized sedan ev weighs more than just about any ice type. You'd be looking at quad cab dualies with a tow package to match it.

Threw me for a loop on a google crawl recently. Cars have been getting denser. You'd think they were bigger and lighter, but that's just clever design. The interior space has been going up while the overall size has gone down and even though we have all kinds of lighter construction material they're heavier than they were when they were all steel. Much more powerful and efficient as well, ofc.

[Ravenshire]

From the perspective of CO2 emission,   Burning coal to generate electricity to power EV is worse then burning gasoline in internal combustion engined cars by about 10-20%

No, it's not!

I really wish people would quit perpetuating this myth. It's based on disinformation from the usual sources in service of protecting their profit margins.

[The Grand Nudger]

If you clink on that link and follow their sources you'll find that on coal, an ev and a corolla are roughly equivalent around 80k miles driven (or 100k there are two studies referenced). Before that, the corolla is actually cleaner. It's more a function of how dirty coal is, and how dirty ev production is, than the performance of the vehicles themselves. After that 80-100k miles, then the ev is basically equivalent to an ice vehicle getting 100 miles to the gallon.

[Ravenshire]

If you clink on that link and follow their sources you'll find that on coal, an ev and a corolla are roughly equivalent around 80k miles driven (or 100k there are two studies referenced).  Before that, the corolla is actually cleaner.  It's more a function of how dirty coal is, and how dirty ev production is, than the performance of the vehicles themselves.  After that 80-100k miles, then the ev is basically equivalent to an ice vehicle getting 100 miles to the gallon.

So, worst case, the EV is still cleaner over the lifetime of the vehicle.That's a far cry from a blanket statement that internal combustion is 10%-20% cleaner. And, coal only generation is rare, and getting more so, making EVs look even better.

I'm not claiming (and I never have) that EVs are some silver bullet that will magically reverse climate change all on their own, but they're an important arrow in the quiver and it's stupid to perpetuate the petroleum industry's myths about them.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Apres moi, le propane.

[The Grand Nudger]

So, worst case, the EV is still cleaner over the lifetime of the vehicle.That's a far cry from a blanket statement that internal combustion is 10%-20% cleaner. And, coal only generation is rare, and getting more so, making EVs look even better.

I'm not claiming (and I never have) that EVs are some silver bullet that will magically reverse climate change all on their own, but they're an important arrow in the quiver and it's stupid to perpetuate the petroleum industry's myths about them.

 
It depends on the assumptions made, but for the most part a new ev should be greener than a new ice and your existing ice is greener than both.  If you add in a rebuild for the ev then the ev would probably still break even on coal at worst.  Oil companies tell myths about evs, but so do car companies.  Between market protection and greenwashing I honestly wouldn't take anyone's carbon accounting for gospel.  Creative and convenient assumptions are the norm, not the exception.  The higher numbers in that source, for example, came from a study that was much more critical of manufacturers claims, and was revised down multiple times in response to objections from them. 

There's a distinct possibility that oil companies can credibly sell whatever myths they do because car companies aren't being completely honest about their products (and vv).  Both industries, regardless of their territorial disputes, are running the recycling con on us.  We're being told that their pollution is our problem, and that we are going to have to pay for it, and pay for their newer product as well.  If you got really deep into carbon you could probably come away with the impression that due to intentionally faulty reporting at every level that the replacement use cases for evs doesn't even amount to as much carbon savings as we'd get from just doing away with the coal plants.

It's pretty much heresy to say this in environmental circles, but, honestly, our cars aren't our problem. Our problem is that it's real damned profitable convincing us it's our cars.

[Anomalocaris]

It appears china has decided to put policy brakes on speed of EV adoption.   government incentives and subsidies for consumer purchase of EVs are being cut,  and government production license for new entrants into EV production are being withheld according to bloomberg.

This is not necessarily a policy decision to turn its back on EV, it could be a policy decision to force a highly fragmented domestic EV industry that has a lot of marginal manufacturers who can’t survive without subsidies to consolidate.

The sudden flood of Chinese EV manufacturers in European car shows is probably related to these manufacturers anticipating less friendly subsidy environment in China and hoping to make up the difference abroad.