this post was submitted on 26 Dec 2023
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It's worth noting that this is not being done for environmental reasons (more half of all coal pollution comes from China), but for strategic reasons as China has limited access to oil near it's borders.
I mean, that's a pretty good reason. I'm not too concerned why they do a good thing, as long as it's done.
Not to mention that they are the world's biggest manufacturing power, so whatever they make for themselves will likely also benefit the rest of the world.
If they really wanna make me pro China, make ME energy independent!
Cheap solar panels Cheap batteries Cheap ebikes Cheap ecars
That would cover half my yearly expenses!!
Electric cars aren't a "good thing" though.
You might get up votes if you accompanied a controversial opinion with a reasoned argument. However, making only broad, unsubstantiated statements is a waste of bandwidth and everyone's time.
Ultimately I agree that they should include the argument, but adding a reasoned argument has very little affect on the use of the vote buttons as "agree/disagree."
China is also the world leader in sustainable public transportation solutions
They're a "better than ICE cars" thing. I'll take whatever improvements I can get
I assume you mean that they're not a positive for our environment, even so they're much better for our local environment, which is still one better than petrol and diesel cars imo.
Why not? This has been researched many times, and the results are consistently that it is a good thing already, and getting better, in regards to overall co2 produced
They're also far more efficient than fuel cell too
When coupled with electric buses and high speed trains, they’re plenty fine. We’re not going to reach a level of infrastructure anytime soon where all travel can be accomplished through public infrastructure, even in China where they have ten times the public transport infrastructure of the US.
Electric cars by themselves aren’t a good thing, as in, the USian belief in “an electric car for every person” is insane and if they convince even half the world of it we’re going to destroy the other half mining minerals, but using electric cars to supplement sustainable infrastructure and support areas yet without access to public transit is a necessary step on the path towards sustainability.
An EV running on a coal fired grid still has less emissions that a prius. Facts dont care about your feelings.
Could you please run us through your maths? I'm legit curious.
An ICE is only, at most, 35% efficient. In contrast to lithium batteries and electric motors, which is more like 90% efficient. Electricity produced from the dirtiest coal plants that exist, used in an EV, is more efficient and, thus, more environmentally conscious, than burning gasoline in an ICE.
Coal power plant efficiency is less than 40%. You'd also not get 90% of the outlet on the wheels. There is also a lot of loss on the grid, but there is also on the production of fuel. The two pollute almost the same.
Burning coal however is a lot worse for the air quality.
It's the put the pollution somewhere else policy so that cities are more liveable. It was hurting China's reputation and too many rich Chinese were going overseas and siphoning away the economy (and still are).
I'd like to prefix this all by pointing out that coal is absolutely terrible to use in several ways.
However: most thermal plants get about 45% efficiency, based on using very high steam temperatures. We all know that the theoretical max efficiency for a thermal process is limited by the Carnot cycle, which explicitly depends on the difference in temperature between the working fluid and the surroundings.
I'd also like to point out an important point: carbon plants are not constricted by the need to keep the engine lightweight, we can capture most fly ash and other process exhaust.
I again, do not care to bring such an arcane tech back online, it's terrible to mine, process and use. Just remember there's a bit more to all of this that engineers have indeed thought of.
E: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0196890415007657
The coal plants are not 100% efficient though. In fact they're probably in the realm of 40%
Yup, and that's ignoring the loss in transforming and transporting the energy across the grid, and in the chemistry of the battery itself through charges and discharges. Energy density of batteries is also a fraction of that of petrol, so every EV is also carrying around a lot of extra weight.
What about the billions of cells that must be produced and replaced as the scale grown unto millions and millions of cars? And all the mining of rare earth elements it requires?
It turns out that the lithium is very recyclable. The process of disassembly is what's tricky, but one of Tesla's pre-musk founders is working specifically on this problem.
We can already do it. Mining is (for now) cheaper. Something legislation, applied carefully, can resolve.
I don't know if their statement is universally true, but the EPA's fuel economy / total emissions calculator seems to show it for what I've put in. You can put in a Prius or random EV and see how they compare.
https://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/electric-vehicle-myths#Myth1
https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/Find.do?action=bt2
My guess would be the efficiency of coal power plants (35%) and electricity transmission (90%) + battery charging of an EV (80%) would be more than efficiency of transporting oil in ships (50%) , then in an ICE truck (40%) to fuel pumps and then finally the efficiency of the ICE car (40%).
I picked the numbers from internet, but they seem plausible.
A Prius will definitely pollute less than the typical SUV electric cars on a coal grid.
Cause:
Efficiency of coal power plant and all losses are as bad as ICE cars. The EVs do thermal->mechanical->electrical->grid->battery->wheels and if you count them all up, is not better than an EV
Prius is designed for low drag unlike an SUV
Prius had regenerative braking like an EV
But just the numbers:
Prius is rated at 94g/kg
Coal 950g/kwh
Volvo c40 0.2kwh/km or 190g/km even without losses
I took Volvo cause they published a report with a good compare ev and ICE https://www.volvocars.com/images/v/-/media/market-assets/intl/applications/dotcom/pdf/c40/volvo-c40-recharge-lca-report.pdf
Even with the current EU energy mix, it takes 77'000 km to be better than ICE, so arguably better. On coal electricity, they are worse. And this is comparing equally sized cars, a Prius will do better.
Regardless of the accuracy of your numbers - If you fix the ICE cars as they wear out, replacing them with BEV as the energy grid retires coal plants or goes to a higher percentage of renewables, they get cleaner. ICE cars will be as dirty tomorrow as they are today.
That is true. I do think we should retire pure ICE cars as soon as possible. If you need to do long distances, a hybrid that could be converted might be a good intermediate solution. If you only need a car sporadically, a car sharing platform with electric cars is a good solution. These already exist in big eu cities. Ofc good and adorable public transport is nr 1.
Decreasing the amount of cars would decrease emissions short and long term more than the current shift to EV and would make shifting easier as there are just fewer to replace.
Sorry sorry. Where are you getting the "all losses are equivalent to ice engine inefficiency"?
I don't expect you to be an ME/EE, but there's a lot of variables in that calculation, I'd just like to clarify for everyone here what you mean.
I put very minimal calculation which at least puts it around the same order and linked a report by Volvo where they try to count the whole cycle of a car with the emissions of the production and transport of used parts and fuels.
On current electricity mix, an electric car is only slightly better on a CO2 emissions. With only renewables, it can be 2x better.
But the statement that in China it's at least better than a Prius is just wrong. Until renewables take a serious share of the grid, a smaller well engineered hybrid is not worse.
What a ridiculous distinction. Do you really think this narrative difference in motivation is noteworthy? What is scarcity if not an environmental consideration? What is lack of sustainability if not an environmental consideration?
It's being done because it leads to a sustainable equilibrium of their social system. Whether that meets your standards of rhetorical "intentionality" to meet the criteria for "environmentalism" is meaningless.
Is it worth mentioning? Why?
Just wanted to add some perspective. There's a narrative lately that China is a champion of the green movement, which is absurd
It's no less absurd than the opposite narrative, that China is some kind of climate villain.
The reality is China is on the right track, but not there yet. I'm somewhat optimistic.
Pretty reasonable narrative tbh. China's CO2 emmissions plateleued last month and have even started to fall, and they're targeting zero emissions by 2060. They've also started spearheading cleaner energy this month with the first 4th gen nuclear reactor.
And of course the news in this post.
Car engines are immensely inefficient and car charging is a load that's easy to load-balance for renewables (dynamic pricing see: Tesla)
Yup! EVs and renewables are broadly good things. Just wanted to give some added perspective :)
Great argument for a green transition in many places, such as Europe, India and Japan. Dependence on fossil fuels is a big weakness.