Real environmental impact of electric car?

tbourner

The wife (and me if I'm honest) want an electric car, specifically a Renault Zoe. We're looking to get our front garden gravelled, have a plug in point installed and eventually looking to get solar tiles on both sides of the roof (E and W facing roof).
Now I know this is MSE and we won't actually be saving any money by doing this, in fact fitting the tiles will cost a ridiculous amount of money and not make us much back, plus I know the economics of an electric car and I know a little diesel will be cheaper blah blah etc. Ignoring the money for a minute, what are the real environmental costs of owning an electric car? Does anyone have any information on it? Real information I mean not second hand hearsay that you heard somewhere about batteries killing kittens!

Renault say their cars have to cover the following:

• Emits less than 120g/km of CO2 or operates on biofuels (in France), on E85 ethanol or on B30 biodiesel
• Is manufactured in a plant that has been certified ISO 14001
• Can be 95% recoverable at the end of its lifecycle (recyclable for other use or as a source of energy) and it includes at least 7% recycled plastics in its plastic mass.

Which to me sounds pretty reasonable. I know batteries are quite easily recycled nowadays but don't know the details. I also don't know the costs to produce them compared to a diesel car. Anyone involved in this kind of thing or know useful information about it? Or just have an opinion?

Guinness-Cat

I have a electric car (Leaf) and haven't noticed an increase in dead kittens yet.

Batteries can be recycled - or reused. If you think about it, a 24kWh battery pack, with only 75% remaining would easily power most households needs for over 1 day, so in combination with photo-voltaic cells \ wind turbine could allow for an off grid existence.

Don't forget that the statistics given for conventional vehicles don't include the environmental cost to extract oil from the ground, ship it half way around the world, refine it and then deliver to your local petrol station.

tbourner

Guinness-Cat wrote: »

Don't forget that the statistics given for conventional vehicles don't include the environmental cost to extract oil from the ground, ship it half way around the world, refine it and then deliver to your local petrol station.

Exactly. I'm still waiting for fusion power to take off but until then I'll look into PV tiles on the roof and going efficient in the home. We're getting a new kitchen fitted with induction hob, new boiler, new windows, Tassimo machine instead of kettle (although I'm dubious about the packaging waste!) and a few other little additions. I'd love to be fully islanded at some point; water butts etc. We were looking at a CHP boiler as well but I don't think the tech is really there yet, maybe in a few years.

Electric car just seems logical particularly for 99% of the journeys we do.

londonTiger

lithium ion batteries comes from conflict zones. Afghanistan is a huge source of it and a lot of people are saying that the main reason for the invasion was over it's lithium ion supply.

Lithium ion and a key component for manufacturing LCD screens for tablets and smartphones come from conflict zones. Lots of exploitation, polluting the environment etc to extract the stuff.

Unlike with gas where you just have to drill holes in the right places and it all comes out Lithium ion needs to be mined which is very expensive and dangerous to the environment.

MX5huggy

londonTiger wrote: »

lithium ion batteries comes from conflict zones. Afghanistan is a huge source of it and a lot of people are saying that the main reason for the invasion was over it's lithium ion supply.

Lithium ion and a key component for manufacturing LCD screens for tablets and smartphones come from conflict zones. Lots of exploitation, polluting the environment etc to extract the stuff.

Unlike with gas where you just have to drill holes in the right places and it all comes out Lithium ion needs to be mined which is very expensive and dangerous to the environment.

Where do you get this stuff from?

Most lithium is in Boliva

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium#Production

londonTiger

MX5huggy wrote: »

Where do you get this stuff from?

Most lithium is in Boliva

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium#Production

http://green.autoblog.com/2010/06/14/pentagon-says-afghanistan-might-have-worlds-largest-lithium-dep/

forgotmyname

Just checkout the number of electric cars with several owners and silly low mileages.

Its OK if you drive 5 miles a day and have a charger at each end. Do you have a backup car just in case you need to do 300 miles?

Take the manufacturers range with a huge pinch of salt. Checkout the magazines roadtests. Especially ones done in the winter with wipers and heaters going.

£70 - £90 a month hire charge for the batteries with 7500 miles/yr max? Thats more than my car costs to run. A 2L diesel estate.

Range 130miles using the NEDC which is done in a lab on rollers with no hills or wind etc?

TG review says Renault Admit that 90 miles is probably the limit. Or worse still 60 in the winter.

photome

forgotmyname wrote: »

Just checkout the number of electric cars with several owners and silly low mileages.

Its OK if you drive 5 miles a day and have a charger at each end. Do you have a backup car just in case you need to do 300 miles?

Take the manufacturers range with a huge pinch of salt. Checkout the magazines roadtests. Especially ones done in the winter with wipers and heaters going.

£70 - £90 a month hire charge for the batteries with 7500 miles/yr max? Thats more than my car costs to run. A 2L diesel estate.

Range 130miles using the NEDC which is done in a lab on rollers with no hills or wind etc?

TG review says Renault Admit that 90 miles is probably the limit. Or worse still 60 in the winter.

After reading that why would anyone consider an electric car :eek:

tbourner

forgotmyname wrote: »

Just checkout the number of electric cars with several owners and silly low mileages.

Good for me if I want to buy second hand.

forgotmyname wrote: »

Its OK if you drive 5 miles a day and have a charger at each end. Do you have a backup car just in case you need to do 300 miles?

We have a diesel Accord estate, it does journeys every day of around 10-20 miles. Electric car will sit outside the house every night on charge, plus there's a charging point about 200 yards from where I work.
The other 1% of our journeys are long motorway trips and towing a camper, but we're keeping the Accord.

forgotmyname wrote: »

Take the manufacturers range with a huge pinch of salt. Checkout the magazines roadtests. Especially ones done in the winter with wipers and heaters going.

forgotmyname wrote: »

Range 130miles using the NEDC which is done in a lab on rollers with no hills or wind etc?

forgotmyname wrote: »

TG review says Renault Admit that 90 miles is probably the limit. Or worse still 60 in the winter.

Claimed 130 miles on the Zoe but Renault state it's likely to do more like 60-70 in real life in winter. That's still way more than we'll ever need it to do.

forgotmyname wrote: »

£70 - £90 a month hire charge for the batteries with 7500 miles/yr max? Thats more than my car costs to run. A 2L diesel estate.

I don't care about the cost. We do less than 10k in the Accord at the moment, that will drop to about 2-3k with the Zoe, we just like the diesel for the way it drives. I spend money on what I want not go for something I don't want because it's cheaper.
The hire deal is great cos when the battery starts wearing out and only does 30-40 miles to a charge, I get it swapped out for nothing.

photome wrote: »

After reading that why would anyone consider an electric car :eek:

See above.

londonTiger

electric cars will pick up, but for the time being it's the preserve of 6 figure earning city executives who can afford to pay over the odds for an electric.

Make no mistake though it will come down in price, there are apparantly a lot of investments being done to allow for electricity to be stored in liquid form. So you can "fill up" your electric vehicle just like you would your gas by buying charged liquids at a pump and depositing your used liquids.

It's still in the league of "tomorrows world" but achievable. There just isn;'t even enough demand for electric because fuel is relatively cheap and free to produce if you consider that it's just extracted from the ground.

I think the first petrol cars never made economic sense, what you have to buy benzine that nobody sells? top speed is 7mph, less than a horse? Costs 20 times as much as a horse?

Get outta here, it would never catch on.

vaio

http://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/renewables/unclean-at-any-speed

is worth a read