Nice thread, as an amateur with composites (I only work with finished products, tubes both bidirectional and unidirectional, boards, etc.) I love reading this technical discussions
Cold Fussion wrote:Tommy Cookers wrote:there's little point in having EVs (whether of metal or CFC structure) until electricity all comes from low-carbon sources
That depends on it's primary mode of operation really. If it's primary an ICE car, with harvesting the waste for electricity, then it's probably worth it (I imagine the added efficiency makes up for the increased mass). Fully electric vehicles I would tend to agree, however
a full electric vehicle with it's power from coal fired power stations is still probably a lower CO2/km figure than a conventional ICE car?
Yes it is
This is one of the few fair comparisons I´ve seen
http://www.vancouverobserver.com/blogs/ ... k?page=0,0
When you compare petrol cars with EVs whose energy comes only from coal plants, EVs are still greener
And that´s not a fair comparison obviously, only the argument used by people who don´t like EV´s, who conveniently ignore two things
- Real world is not based on coal plants, maybe in India, but at any other country we also use nuclear plants and renewable energies, so for a fair comparison we must take the average, not only worse case scenario
- Petrol also pollute before burning. Oil wells, refineries, oil tanker and oil trucks are not inocuous obviously
So comparing only with coal plants, EV´s are greener, if you take the average (coal, gas, nuclear, hydro, solar....) the difference is obviously much higher, and if you live in a country like Spain where we´ve achieved more than 50% renewable energy use some months, the difference is huge
Edit: And if you live in El Hierro (Canary Islands) where they´re
first island to be self-suficient with 100% renewable energy, EV´s literally produce no emissions at all