https://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/15/au...n.html?_r=2&hp

You guys may already know this but here's an interesting article on green cars using energy.

"The California part of the story is upbeat: a hypothetical Los Angeles Leaf would be accountable for the release of an admirably low level of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, about the same as a gasoline car getting 79 miles per gallon. But the Denver car would cause as large a load of greenhouse gases to enter the atmosphere as some versions of the gasoline-powered Mazda 3, a compact sedan rated at 33 m.p.g. in combined city and highway driving by the Environmental Protection Agency."

Bicycles are still the greenest vehicle!

There will probably never be a green car. It's just a ridiculous concept, using a vehicle that weighs a ton and a half to shlepp a single human being around. It really is stupid, if you stop to think about it.

Context, context, context!
My wife and I carpool - i.e she drops me off with my bicycle on her way to work (drives right by my office). We don't own a "second" car. I do have a Honda motorcycle, but obviously if I'm riding the bicycle I'm not burning gasoline!!
We do need our SUV, it's our primary travel vehicle and hauls our trailer and my bbq cooker...it used to tow our travel trailer. Could we do with less? Probably.
Will we do with less? Not likely. Bicycles don't give me the flexibility to visit my son in South Carolina or Colorado or DC.
Electric is not an option at this time. But, a Natural Gas station just opened up near the house...now that gets my attention!!
Driving when you need to is not stupid...but there are lots of times when walking or biking would be the best option for fitness and the planet.

I think battery powered cars will be a big part of our future. Last year it was announced that some university in the USA was creating batteries made of paper with some type of coating on it. They were very light and would recharge quickly. Two years ago Toshiba announced it had created a battery technology that could recharge 80% in one minute and fully recharge in ten minutes. I have yet to hear more about that technology.

When those technologies are available to the public the idea of gasoline powered vehicles will fade quickly.

I haven't been in an electric car but I have operated electric golf carts. I love the quiet power and smoothness. Having a real car that would operate that quietly would be wonderful.

A $35,000 Nissan LEAF that costs double the price of a mid-priced Nissan Sentra costs only $1089 more than the less luxurious Sentra after five years, according to Edmunds.com's True Cost To Own calculations.

https://www.edmunds.com/nissan/sentra...tyle=101392324

https://www.edmunds.com/nissan/leaf/2...tyle=101397754

If I lived in a warmer climate where batteries wouldn't be rendered less efficient by the extreme cold, I would prefer paying more up front for a LEAF than to own a Sentra or other similar car. I'm not one to drive long distances (back when I owned a car). Having an electric car would make sense for me.

A decision to hang on to your current car situation with a notion of reducing your miles... I think that's closer to being "green" than selling your current vehicle and buying another just because it burns less gas.

There are several things about a Nissan Leaf that are distinctly not "green":

1. It encourages people to put more miles on their cars because they perceive the car is very energy-efficient, as well as cheaper to operate. A large SUV might end up user fewer resource because the cost of operation is enormous and should make the owner think twice about needless trips...
2. People forget that there are probably as many resources tied up in vehicle manufacture as the owner would put on in 5 years. The "embedded" energey, ie, what it take to manufacture, has been cited as equal to about 60k miles of operation.
3. Most people who purchase an electric vehicle have no idea where their community is going to obtain the energy to fuel the vehicle. A lot of that electricity is coming from coal. In principle, having an central source of energy should be more efficient and "cleaner". But it really depends on the source of the energy.

For those living close to San Onofre and the San Gorgonio Pass wind farms it doesn't seem like such a bad deal. The problem will be early aceptance by the consumers. All it would take for me is a reasonable price for the vehicle and a range of 100 miles. Some private companies are working on vehicles made from recycled plastic and bamboo. Yes there will be some metal parts and rubber I am sure but they will weigh less and take less energy. People are never going to stop looking for a way to move around with power assisted vehicles so all we can hope for is a better energy source to provide the transportation future generations are looking for.

People will not give up flying because it is dirty even car free advocates fly today knowing how wasteful and dirty it is. Mankind will have to find an alternative fuel source. Humans will not stop international shipping even as dirty as bunker oil is, they will find an alternative. What we need is a mindset that moves us towards cleaner energy sources for the things we have become accustomed to.

To be honest I don't know what will replace ICE but I can only hope it is cleaner and more affordable for the average consumer.

Question: I don't understand the difference in where you get your electricity to charge a car. I thought all the electricity went into one big power grid. AFAIK, there's no way to really know where those electrons originated, is there?

^ The "grid" is connected, and power can be exchanged (Enron), but you mostly use locally-generated power. If a Leaf owner lives in an area with mostly dirty power (electricity) generation (coal, oil), then he is using dirty electricity, and he doesn't get as many pats on the back. If he lives in an area w/ relatively clean power generation (nuclear [I know, I know], wind), his electricity is cleaner, more pats on the back. The overall theory is that it is more efficient to "mass produce" power versus generating your own power in a small power plant like a gasoline engine, therefore electric cars make more sense. My reading of the data is that this is true. It is not yet a no-brainer to buy an electric car, but as gas prices go up and electric car prices go down, it won't be long.

Left out Hydropower, though that has it's own set of issues. We have a friend that lives on a farm along a small river here in NC, there used to be a grist mill on that site many years ago. They have taken the old mill races and set up as small hydro plant that provides their farmstead with electricity, they also have a couple of electric cars that they can recharge, they aren't commercial models but conversions that they did several years ago.

Aaron

Well, they can try to make cars greener, but they will never take the place of bikes IMO.

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You are correct, but that isn't the point. For places where the energy is cleaner EVs can be greener. They would be greener than Busses, Planes, Taxi, Trucks and ICE cars and motorcycles. Because while they will never replace bicycles people will "always" be looking for a power assisted vehicle once they have been invented. even in early America once horses became available tribes that had them had an advantage over tribes that didn't. People are looking for easirer. Remote control TV, Cell Phones, Micro waves and some way to get from point A to Point B with a minimum of effort and discomfort. Shoot from what I have been reading electric and small motor Bicycles aer one of the fastest selling modes of transportation even in China where bikes were the king at one time. So fate will have it that most people want the vehicle to do the work and only a few of us will ever willingly do the work of transporting ourselves.

I rode about five miles today next to a lady in a golf cart riding down a main street in a city just to the west of us. we talked about what a nice day it was and she said she was sorry if she slowed us down but her top speed was 15. I told her it was fine she would more than likely drop me on the first big hill. But she turned before we did and we didn't get to test my opinion. Here power comes from Nuclear or wind as well and a full charge happens over night and uses the same power as a 90 watt bulb.

A while back I did a lot of research into electric vehicles and battery technology to decide whether to go electric or not. What I came to learn is that if you live in a very flat area with little to no stop-and-go traffic, than electric performs well as long as you maintain the most efficient RPM/load for the motor. However, once you start climbing hills, you lose a lot of efficiency, and wear out the battery a lost faster due to the higher discharge rates. When you start modeling this out, you learn that if you try and off-set the wear on the battery with a bigger pack, you don't solve anything as you then still have to get that bigger pack up the hill (hence why EVs tend to have short ranges, as large packs just wind up being large liabilities). Also, you will never get it back going down the hills, as most regens are about 10% efficient.

The other factor is that all motors have a peak efficiency at a very specific RPM. Below that, you are discharging lots of current to make torque, above that you're fighting counter EMF. However, roads have a wide array of speed limits, meaning you're not going to be at that optimal load/RPM except for only some stretches.

This is why I eventually decided to go with an electric assist bicycle, as I can take a chunk of the load on the hills, and keep the bike at it's peak efficiency speed on the flats.

I guess the point I'm trying to make is that as far as I can tell, a car hauling a giant battery is not the most efficient way to get around, and with the current technology out there, there's not much of a way around this. Things like busses, other mass transit, and efficient town planning will likely do much more than electric cars. Electric cars are to gas what nicotine patches are to smoking; better, but far from ideal.

But if Oil and ICE are bad they are just as bad in Busses, sit behind one on your bike and you will agree, and every other mass transit. But the real issue is sooner or later we will run out of oil or we will not. If we are running out we need an alternative, Nuclear, Hydro, wind, Solor, hydrogen something. If we are not why bother? If we say we bother because it is greener then shouldn't mass transit be greener as well? And even by today's standards flying is just as bad as driving per person. And if it is a short hop in is worse.

I did like your smoking anology. But to the same extent ICE powered mass transit would be like Methadone to relieve a drug problem. It is still a drug.

Best post in this thread! Perhaps the electric car is a half-assed response that could be better solved by putting our thinking caps on.

And your analogy to nicotine patches and smoking... that's exactly how it is! We've discovered that this technology is slowly killing us, so we switch to smoking cigars instead of cigarettes. But how much of a solution is it?

We are discussing the solution to a problem that isn't a problem recognized by everybody. Until that happens we're all just preachers. Of course the stop gap solutions aren't being created nor are they being adopted. Cycling is a good solution and so is mass transit. The only problems with both are that most people don't see them as part of the solution to pollution.

Perhaps if automobile companies were allowed to be creative and market single seat slender short electric cars then individuals might buy them by the millions. They could be tricycles or things like that weird four wheel electric car that has tandem seating. Of course that company charges nearly $200,000.00 per copy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8VPz38Xkgsc

The only thing holding back electric cars is battery technology. Solutions exist for their problems. The thing is can those solutions be manufactured cheaply enough to put into practice on a global scale?

All of the new buses where I live are Diesel-electric hybrids that get passenger-mile equivalence far superior to any any electirc car. They are quiet, and you do not smell emissions when you're behind them due to emission controls and low-sulfur diesel fuel.

There is no way to make any one-person vehicle (other than the bicycle) efficient, frugal, and clean.

And nuclear? Give me a break. After Fukushima nuclear is off the table. If electric cars are a nicotine patch, nuclear power is snuff: No smokey emissions, but bad health problems and a lot of toxic waste downstream.

Wouldn't a one passenger electric car be more efficient than a four passenger electric car with just one person in it?

https://www.myersmotors.com/index.html

Many people buy hybrids and tout the efficiency of their vehicles without realizing how much energy goes into producing that hyper efficient vehicle or where the source of their electricity comes from... the air may be cleaner where you are driving but it may be different at the power plant where that electricity is produced.

Current batteries also pose a disposal issue and are extremely costly to replace.

I think the problems can be solved but it is a two edged sword. We have government regulations that make it hard for car companies to drift too far from what we already have. So it almost seems as if future solutions have to come from private companies. The three wheeled solution avoids some of the NHTSA problems 4 wheel vehicles have and like Europe after World War Two small vehicles like the old Messerschmitt car with only one in front and one in the rear would work well as an EV. On Catalina Island off the coast of California hardly any ice powered vehicles aer allowed. It has become a bedroom city of people that work in the LA area or from home, maybe retired or retail sales. Gas cost a fortune because it all has to be shipped over by boat. But there are EVs everywhere. But the real issue is nothing that uses gas, jet fuel, bunker oil or diesel is green. We have to start looking at some alternative even if it is some renewable fuel for an ICE type of vehicle it would be better than what we have now. But that may be easier for someone to say when they live where they don't rely on coal fired powere plants.

But how can we as a group come to a consensus when our goals are different? Some are looking for a low carbin foot print as the goal and others are looking for less technology and a return to a simpler time. Some just want fewer cars and some want cleaner vehicles. Some see a world full of cyclists and some believe that world will never come to pass. So all that ever happens is we nix each other's ideas and someone else like the government makes all of the decissions as to what we all need or want.