How does the Chevy Volt work? If you have to plug it in isn’t it still being fueled by carbon fuels (coal) ?
elgüero asked:
Assuming your power grid is powered by a coal fired power plant. Is the overall carbon footprint still significantly greater? Would the 80 cents per mile in gasoline be offset by a noticeably higher utility bill at home or do you still end up way ahead?
Sorry, not 80 cents per mile, they are saying that with the Volt it’d be like driving a conventional car but paying 80 cents per gallon.
Assuming your power grid is powered by a coal fired power plant. Is the overall carbon footprint still significantly greater? Would the 80 cents per mile in gasoline be offset by a noticeably higher utility bill at home or do you still end up way ahead?
Sorry, not 80 cents per mile, they are saying that with the Volt it’d be like driving a conventional car but paying 80 cents per gallon.
The Chevy Volt isn’t out yet, so no one really knows.
Yes, plugging it in would cause your electric bill to go up. However, I think the idea is that it would generally be plugged in over night, a time which the electrical demand is lower. Depending on your billing plan, many electrical companies will charge you less per kilowatt hour for this off peak electrical usage.
As far as the carbon footprint, yes, if your electricity is coal generated, your carbon footprint would still be substantial. however, many of us live near nuclear plants or hydro plants, so this would not be the case.
Also, efficiency tends to be larger in larger power plants of any kind, as opposed to the small engine in vehicles. In other words, the power plant produces power more efficiently than than you use it in you gas powered car.
Finally, this entire carbon footprint thing is fairly new and there is a lot of bad information being passed around as fact.
Yes, your utility bill would go up, equivalent to paying 80 cents per gallon of gas. So if you use 10 gallons of gas a week, then your electric bill would go up $8.00 a week. Of course, those numbers depend heavily on what kind of car they are comparing the Volt too and how much your electric costs per kWh.
As far as pollution goes, not all electricity is supplied by fossil fuels. It is true that currently most of it is, but it won’t necessarily remain that way. The advantage of an electric car is if they find a way to harness nuclear fusion next week, your car can be indirectly powered by fusion. A gas powered car can only ever be powered by gas.
Yes your bill goes up, but compare that to filling up once a week, not that bad. The main positives in electric cars that I see is that the fumes and pollution from the tailpipe are eliminated. So regardless of it being plugged in, it still takes more pollution off the road.
yes, you’re burning coal, but it’s a start, because as cleaner sources of energy are created like nuclear, wind, solar, your Volt will be cleaner too.
1 we are working toward cleaner coal [80% of elect is made from coal]
2. the first 40 miles is from batterys..after that a small engine charges it
3 most will charge at night requiring few new plants…
4
I don’t think you can make the assumption that the electricity would be coming from coal. I live in CA and we have a mandate for clean energy. I signed up for Green Energy and all of my electricity is sourced from clean energy. I also have my own solar panels. I think we could assume that most people who would be willing to pay $35-40K for a small vehicle is probably doing it for the environment and they are more likely to use renewable energy.
I don’t know the details of how much energy it takes to charge the vehicle, I saw them on one of the morning shows and they said it would be significantly less to run on electricity than a conventional car.
In a situation like mine I would rarely use the gas engine, if they volt can go 40 miles on the electric charge. Since my electricity is free, from my solar panels I wouldn’t be spending any money on fuel. I also wouldn’t be creating any emissions with the exception of the manufacture of the car and the panels.
For starters, on average 50% of the US power grid is coal. In places like California, it’s much less (but in some places obviously it’s more).
As for carbon footprints, studies have shown that even when most of the electricity comes from coal, EVs and plug-in hybrids still produce lower emissions than gas cars because they’re just more efficient (see the link below). So at 50% coal on average, they’re significantly cleaner.
For the Volt, the 80 cents is how much it costs to recharge after driving in all-electric mode (the first 40 miles). That’s 2 cents per mile. Once it’s running in hybrid mode after that, it’s supposed to get 50 mpg, in which case it would cost 8 cents per mile if gas costs $4/gallon. That’s also how much a Prius costs. A standard 30 mpg car costs 13 cents per mile. So while your electric bill will go up, your gasoline bill will go down by much more and you end up ahead.