The "longer tailpipe" myth

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fooljoe

Well-known member
Joined
Jun 15, 2011
Messages
646
Location
Seal Beach, CA
The next time somebody tries to tell you that EVs are just as dirty as ICEs once you account for their "longer tailpipe", point out that ICEs have a longer tailpipe too!

According to some easily verifiable numbers available on fueleconomy.gov, the LEAF in California emits 120g CO2/mile from its long tailpipe (i.e. upstream emissions.)

From the same source, an 18 MPG car like the Dodge Charger emits more CO2 (128g/mile - make sure you choose to show tailpipe & upstream GHG) just from its long tailpipe. Never mind the other 487g/mile from its "short" tailpipe!

Think about that... Just by not making gas we can free up enough energy to drive EVs almost as far as the gas would drive ICEs!
 
So riddle me this one batman...what difference does the kwh pack on an EV make when discussing grams of CO2 per mile? The smokestack is the same stack and you should actually be better with a larger pack holding more energy because you loose less on the overhead when charging. So a Tesla should actually have fewer emissions than my Leaf. But according to the site, not only are they higher, they're significantly higher.

Example
zip - 66219
year - 2013
model - tesla s 85 kwh
results - 250 g/mile us avg.
my region - 350 g/mile

zip - 66219
year - 2013
model - leaf
results - 190 g/mile us avg
my region - 270 g/mile
 
ksnogas2112 said:
So a Tesla should actually have fewer emissions than my Leaf. But according to the site, not only are they higher, they're significantly higher.
Click to expand...
Any benefit of greater charging efficiency* is easily dwarfed by the lower efficiency caused by the Model S's much greater weight and more powerful drivetrain.

*If anything the Leaf is more efficient at charging than the Model S, at least from my experience charging both my Leaf and Rav4-EV (same charger as a Model S.) This is probably due mostly to the Tesla having active battery temperature management during charging. Also note that any efficiency benefit gained from having a bigger pack is probably only realized if your comparison assumes the Leaf has to be charged to 100% while the Tesla would only go to 80%. There could be something to that, but it's probably a trivial difference.
 
ksnogas2112 said:
So riddle me this one batman...what difference does the kwh pack on an EV make when discussing grams of CO2 per mile? The smokestack is the same stack and you should actually be better with a larger pack holding more energy because you loose less on the overhead when charging. So a Tesla should actually have fewer emissions than my Leaf.
Click to expand...
A substantial portion of lifetime emissions from a BEV come from manufacturing the battery pack. That is going to be over 3 times as much for the 85 kwh model S as it is for a Leaf.
 
fooljoe said:
The next time somebody tries to tell you that EVs are just as dirty as ICEs once you account for their "longer tailpipe"....
Click to expand...

I'm so tired of hearing "Where do you think electricity comes from?" I mean, seriously. I'm a reasonably intelligent, reasonably well-educated adult. And they want to come at me with that? Oh! No, Mr. Wizard I never thunk of that!

bullwinkle.jpg


Now I just tell them I don't give a damn about the environment. Kinda' takes the fight out of 'em.
 
Stoaty said:
A substantial portion of lifetime emissions from a BEV come from manufacturing the battery pack. That is going to be over 3 times as much for the 85 kwh model S as it is for a Leaf.
Click to expand...
Some emissions come from manufacturing the battery pack (and the rest of the car) but I'm not so sure it's substantial. Most well done life cycle assessments I've seen show the emissions created from fuel consumption during the useful life of any car (EV or ICE) quickly dwarf the emissions from production. And I'm also not at all convinced that the production emissions for an EV are necessarily greater than for an ICE car. Everybody just seems to assume this, but I've yet to see a reliable source backing it up.

Also I'd caution against making the simple assumption that the Model S battery will be 3x as costly to produce just because it's 3x larger. A lot of other things go into each battery aside from just the cells, and the cells themselves are completely different in the two batteries.

In either case, the numbers I quoted from fueleconomy.gov are completely separate from the production question - they're only talking about energy consumed during the car's useful life.
 
fooljoe said:
emissions come from manufacturing the battery pack (and the rest of the car) but I'm not so sure it's substantial. Most well done life cycle assessments I've seen show the emissions created from fuel consumption during the useful life of any car (EV or ICE) quickly dwarf the emissions from production. And I'm also not at all convinced that the production emissions for an EV are necessarily greater than for an ICE car.
Click to expand...
Look at the study UCLA did for the California Air Resources Board:

http://www.environment.ucla.edu/media_IOE/files/BatteryElectricVehicleLCA2012-rh-ptd.pdf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

CO2 emissions for manufacture of BEV are quite a bit more than an ICE vehicle (but of course the BEV wins in the whole life cycle analysis by quite a bit).
 
Stoaty said:
A substantial portion of lifetime emissions from a BEV come from manufacturing the battery pack. That is going to be over 3 times as much for the 85 kwh model S as it is for a Leaf.
Click to expand...
Yes, but the battery pack in the 85 kWh Model S will likely last much longer and deliver many more miles of driving, including long trips. It's perfect for some families, and overkill for others.
 
abasile said:
Yes, but the battery pack in the 85 kWh Model S will likely last much longer and deliver many more miles of driving, including long trips. It's perfect for some families, and overkill for others.
Click to expand...
No argument there, just wanted to point out that BEV are less harmful to the environment, but not free of harm. The longer term solution (many decades) is probably going to be to change our living arrangements so that we don't need to drive as much.
 
Stoaty said:
Look at the study UCLA did for the California Air Resources Board:
Click to expand...
Yes, I'm familiar with the UCLA LCA, but I don't find it convincing. Actually the UCLA study itself says nothing about battery manufacturing, it only cites this Argonne study from 2010. And that study, in turn, simply admits "there is considerable missing information on battery-materials production" and makes guesses of production impacts based on weights of various materials found in batteries.

Next the UCLA LCA cites a separate study for engine manufacturing numbers, and seems to just assume aside from the battery and engine an EV and ICE vehicle are the same. What about removing the need for transmission (more likely two over the 180,000 mile lifetime studied)? And what about the steady stream of broken parts and used oil and so on that are simply discarded during an ICE vehicle's lifetime with no analogue on the EV side? And, perhaps most significantly, what about the platinum-containing catalytic converter required by ICEs?

Anyway, the deeper you dive into these things the more you see that they're just assumption piled upon assumption, each of which represents loads of added uncertainty. And all of them were done before a single EV or its battery was ever mass-produced. They certainly could be right that EV production is more costly, but my point is nothing contained within really proves it - it's all a lot of guesswork at this point.

The way I see it, the best way to approach the problem is to look at vehicle cost. The cost of a vehicle more or less predicts the energy cost of its production. EVs are a bit more costly now, but with fully scaled up production I expect that to change.
 
TickTock said:
Yup, it is estimated it takes ~ 8kWh of energy to produce each gallon of gasoline (6kWh + guess on transport costs) (Surprise:Gas cars use more electricity than EVs).
So at 5mpkWh, I am getting 40 miles per negative gallon. That is, 40 miles for every gallon of gas we don't produce.
Click to expand...
Yup, I've been familiar with this stat for a long, long time, but have never been able to find a very good source for it until I stumbled upon the upstream emissions calculator at fueleconomy.gov. The link you cited is great, but good luck gaining any traction with the doubters when you point them to "solarchargeddriving.com." :lol:
 
Stoaty said:
abasile said:
Yes, but the battery pack in the 85 kWh Model S will likely last much longer and deliver many more miles of driving, including long trips. It's perfect for some families, and overkill for others.
Click to expand...
No argument there, just wanted to point out that BEV are less harmful to the environment, but not free of harm.
Click to expand...
I'm with you. I don't think it makes sense to purchase an EV, especially one with a big battery, if the owner is not going to get a good amount of use out of it. In other words, if you are only going to drive a couple thousand miles per year, then you might as well stick with an ICE. That said, I'm optimistic that the manufacturing footprint for EV battery packs will improve with time, at least per kWh. I don't think gasoline gets better with time...

Stoaty said:
The longer term solution (many decades) is probably going to be to change our living arrangements so that we don't need to drive as much.
Click to expand...
That's a hard one for me, because my family and I truly enjoy living in a beautiful area away from the city (though not a huge distance away). More telecommuting also seems to be a good solution. With technology improvements, my hope is that we can do better at protecting our environment while maintaining a high quality of life. At the same time, I do feel that a great deal of suburban sprawl is poorly planned and contributes little or nothing to quality of life.
 
abasile said:
Stoaty said:
The longer term solution (many decades) is probably going to be to change our living arrangements so that we don't need to drive as much.
Click to expand...
That's a hard one for me, because my family and I truly enjoy living in a beautiful area away from the city (though not a huge distance away). More telecommuting also seems to be a good solution. With technology improvements, my hope is that we can do better at protecting our environment while maintaining a high quality of life. At the same time, I do feel that a great deal of suburban sprawl is poorly planned and contributes little or nothing to quality of life.
Click to expand...
I plead guilty to that one too. I couldn't wait to get out of cities and suburbia and move to the mountains as soon as I retired. I was keenly aware that rural living is the least efficient from a resources point of view. The tradeoff is the higher quality of life versus living in a rabbit-warren city with all its vaunted public transportation and shopping at walking or bicycle distance ... plus congestion, pollution, crime, noise, and on and on.

After spending pretty much my entire career bicycle commuting I figured that when I moved out to the boondocks I was "cashing-in my green chips" from all those tens of thousands of bicycle miles. But early on I realized that the best solution to car-dependent rural living was an electric car powered by solar panels. Now that I have the sunpowered EV, those 60 mile grocery runs don't bother me as much from an efficient use of resources point of view. I get to enjoy the mountain vistas, wildlife, and quiet without having to burn oil every time I leave home.

Given where you choose to live, I'm guessing that you and your wife have similar quality of life views as I do.
 
dgpcolorado said:
abasile said:
That's a hard one for me, because my family and I truly enjoy living in a beautiful area away from the city (though not a huge distance away). More telecommuting also seems to be a good solution. With technology improvements, my hope is that we can do better at protecting our environment while maintaining a high quality of life. At the same time, I do feel that a great deal of suburban sprawl is poorly planned and contributes little or nothing to quality of life.
Click to expand...
I plead guilty to that one too. I couldn't wait to get out of cities and suburbia and move to the mountains as soon as I retired. I was keenly aware that rural living is the least efficient from a resources point of view.
Click to expand...
In no way do I think every individual has to move to a large city (a lot of them are not set up to be very pleasant places to live as things stand). I am talking broadly about changes that will probably be necessary for society as the decades roll by. Many of the changes will be due to resource limits (which will affect prices), or a rising price on carbon and thus ultimately be due to financial concerns (e.g., long commutes with a high price for gas will cause people to either move closer to work, buy a fuel efficient vehicle like a Prius, or buy an EV). That assumes that things don't get so bad that governments have to implement harsh regulations for the common good, i.e. a world war II approach to the problem where all available resources are marshaled to make sweeping changes at lightning speed.

I'm not saying this is a good thing, only that it is likely to be necessary in the future. Of course, it's difficult making accurate predictions, especially about the future. ;)
 
Stoaty said:
In no way do I think every individual has to move to a large city (a lot of them are not set up to be very pleasant places to live as things stand). I am talking broadly about changes that will probably be necessary for society as the decades roll by...
Click to expand...
Point taken. I will mention, however, that the urban/suburban areas I've lived in were among the nicest of the genre — list below — but I still value my privacy and wilderness...

Code: 
residence            metro area

Kailua               Honolulu
Tiburon              San Francisco
Pacific Palisades    Los Angeles
La Jolla             San Diego
Mission Valley       San Diego
Mira Mesa            San Diego
Gunbarrel            Boulder
western Colorado     none, the entire county has a population of about 4300
 
dgpcolorado said:
I will mention, however, that the urban/suburban areas I've lived in were among the nicest of the genre — list below — but I still value my privacy and wilderness...
Click to expand...
Indeed, those are all very nice areas! Like you, however, I would stick with the mountains any day. It is a privilege to live here, and to daily appreciate the design of the Creator who "spoke" the very universe into existence from a singularity ~13.7 billion years ago. I believe we are meant to enjoy natural areas and to translate at least part of the resulting sense of awe into a resolve to care for these gifts.

In the majority of cases (certainly not all), I think the "longer tailpipe" arguments come from folks looking for an excuse to preserve the status quo...
 
abasile said:
dgpcolorado said:
I will mention, however, that the urban/suburban areas I've lived in were among the nicest of the genre — list below — but I still value my privacy and wilderness...
Click to expand...
Indeed, those are all very nice areas! Like you, however, I would stick with the mountains any day. It is a privilege to live here, and to daily appreciate the design of the Creator who "spoke" the very universe into existence from a singularity ~13.7 billion years ago. I believe we are meant to enjoy natural areas and to translate at least part of the resulting sense of awe into a resolve to care for these gifts.

In the majority of cases (certainly not all), I think the "longer tailpipe" arguments come from folks looking for an excuse to preserve the status quo...
Click to expand...

While I enjoy your banter, it also breaks my heart. When people realize how wonderful it is to live in such a place, more people move it and destroy it. You simply cannot support our levels of population living like this. Sadly, this story has played itself out where I grew up, and I see it destroying what few open spaces we have left in the northeast.

Part of me hopes that long range EVs don't make these places more accessible, because they will inevitably be destroyed.

abasile said:
Yes, but the battery pack in the 85 kWh Model S will likely last much longer and deliver many more miles of driving, including long trips. It's perfect for some families, and overkill for others.
Click to expand...

For my family, the 85 kWh Model S would be overkill for one car, and perfect for the other. Basically, we already do quite well with a Leaf and an Insight. The Model S could definitely replace the Insight. But for the foreseeable future, we could probably always do with a shorter range EV. As batteries improve, I hope they continue to offer ~100 mile EVs, just at a dramatically lower price.
 
GetOffYourGas said:
While I enjoy your banter, it also breaks my heart. When people realize how wonderful it is to live in such a place, more people move it and destroy it. You simply cannot support our levels of population living like this. Sadly, this story has played itself out where I grew up, and I see it destroying what few open spaces we have left in the northeast.

Part of me hopes that long range EVs don't make these places more accessible, because they will inevitably be destroyed.
Click to expand...
While I can't speak for abasile's mountains, given how close to urbanity he is, I will note that in remote places like where I live there isn't enough of an economy to support much of a population. My neighborhood has a lot of retirees, for example, because they don't need jobs — but they have to be pretty tough because this isn't an easy place to live in. And most people simply aren't attracted to rural living. I've often had visitors say that while my area is lovely they couldn't live here. Most of them want more cultural options and don't like the thought of being so far away from everything. Others don't want to deal with real winters (whereas I don't like very hot areas — I've never lived in a place that needed air conditioning and don't plan to start now). And many are tethered to urban areas by jobs and careers.

So, I'm not too worried about my remote area getting overcrowded any time soon. Other attractive areas, such as most coastal zones, have long been priced out of reach for anyone of modest means, so the trend you mention is a problem in many places. But one nice thing about Colorado is just how empty most of the state is. The population is all crammed together along the Front Range, a large metro area stretching from Fort Collins in the north to Pueblo in the south. The rest of the state? Not so much.

I would guess that your upstate New York may have more impacts from development because of the truly gigantic populations in the neighboring metro areas. It is much that way for abasile in Southern California. Even though few are willing to tackle four or five thousand feet of elevation on a regular or daily basis, there are so many people in the megalopolis to draw from that even those few add up.

My impression is that most people find the quality of life they want in urban/suburban areas. Which is fine by me.
 

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