Sustainability Impact Assessments for Plug-In Hybrid Electric Vehicles

[NNadir]

The paper I will reference in this brief post is an expansion on the title of the post: "Design, demonstrations and sustainability impact assessments for plug-in hybrid electric vehicles."

The abstract of the paper is here: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6VMY-4P9T8GG-2&_user=10&_coverDate=01%2F31%2F2009&_alid=1043779576&_rdoc=1&_fmt=high&_orig=search&_cdi=6163&_sort=r&_docanchor=&view=c&_ct=167&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=cc8bfe9777bba88d3776fa18c7597178">Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews 13 (2009) 115–128

I am not here to truck with the car CULTure, by the way, which I do not regard as sustainable in any way, shape or form, but simply to report on a piece from the scientific literature that deigns to discuss this issue as if it could or should be taken seriously, which, I argue it should not be.

According to the EPA, the average American vehicle is driven abouthttp://www.epa.gov/OMS/climate/420f05004.htm#step3">12,000 miles a year which in real units used by everybody on the planet except the United States (we're, um, special) translates roughly into 19,000 km per year.

Now some excerpts from the paper:

The personal transportation energy sector has been particularly resistant to diversification of its energy inputs toward more sustainable energy sources. In 2005, less than 1% of the 28 quads of energy in the US transportation energy sector came from renewable sources, primarily alcohol biofuels <1>. The dearth of non-petroleum energy sources for transportation is due, in part, to technical challenges, consumer requirements and the high-cost infrastructure dedicated to conventional petroleum fuels <2>. Forces that could move the personal transportation energy sector to diversify its energy inputs in the near future include increasing demand and relatively static supply for petroleum <3>, criteria pollutant regulations <4>, regulations regarding global climate change <5>, fuel price instability <6>, and consumer demand for protection against fuel shortages <7>.

No shit, Sherlock.

Fueling transportation using the electricity from the electric grid allows the transportation energy sector to access the lower-cost, cleaner, and higher renewable fraction energy that is present on the electric grid <1>. Battery electric vehicles store electrical energy from the grid electrochemically to provide the vehicle with its only source of energy. The weaknesses of electrochemical energy storage relative to conventional petroleum-based fuels includes low specific energy, low energy density and low refueling/recharging rate <8>. Plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) use both electrochemical energy storage and a conventional fuel to overcome these weaknesses and to provide additional benefits to the consumer and society. PHEVs are a type of hybrid electric vehicle where some portion of the energy for propulsion of the vehicle comes from the electric grid.

This paragraph is a little disingenuous, since excepting hydroelectricity, the proportion of so called "renewable electricity" in the United States is trivial and is likely to remain so.

Anyway...

The review encompasses historical and ongoing research into the design and performance of light-duty PHEVs. The emphasis will be on developments in the past 10 years, although these developments will be placed within historical context. The impacts of PHEVs on petroleum consumption, the electric grid, criteria and carbon emissions are summarized. The state of the art of PHEV production and demonstration vehicles is described, and finally a set of research needs for PHEVs is proposed.

Developments in the last 10 years include talk followed by talk and then talking about having more talk when we talk about how great it is to talk about how great PHEV's will be.

But let's let the authors talk...

There's a lot of talk about batteries and all kinds of gushy technical stuff and then this remark:

Technology demonstrator vehicles are key components in the development and assessment of new automotive technologies. Demonstrator vehicles allow the low-level problems associated with any new technology to be discovered and understood. They are also excellent tools for communication of new technologies to funding sources and the public. Table 1 provides a listing with references of all of the PHEV vehicles built to the authors’ knowledge since 1997. A summary of the performance and characteristics of a few research and original equipment manufactured PHEVs is presented in the following sections.

Car companies who have built plug-in hybrid demonstrators include Toyota, GM, Daimler-Chrysler, Renault, Citroen, Fiat and Audi. Twenty five demonstrators are listed, including many conversions built at UC Davis before Governor Hydrogen Hummer's destruction of higher education in California.

Let's cut to the chase, I'm exhausted by this shit. Table 3 gives the dangerous fossil fuel waste dumped per 100 km for various types of PHEV's after study of their "sustainability," based on the assumed use of dangerous natural gas generated electricity, even though much of US electricity is far worse than dangerous natural gas and dumps far more dangerous fossil fuel waste into the preferred dump, Earth's atmosphere.

Compact car PHEV 53% (200 g/km)

Mid-sized PHEV 57% (257 g/km)

Mid-sized SUV PHEV 60% (338 g/km)

Full-sized SUV PHEV GM 67% (514 g/km)

It follows that a plug in compact hybrid driven for 19,000 km per year would release about 3.8 metric tons of dangerous fossil fuel waste into the atmosphere each year, ignoring the fact that huge amounts of electricity are not generated by dangerous natural gas burning, but by dangerous coal burning which produces about 3 times as much dangerous fossil fuel waste as dangerous natural gas.

This means that even if the 200 million cars were all magically displaced by plug in hybrids, ignoring the huge external cost of manufacturing these toxic hunks of shit, the United States would still be dumping 760,000,000 million tons of dangerous fossil fuel waste into the atmosphere to drive them around, never mind the heavy metal and related waste.

How much is 3.8 metric tons of CO₂?

It is about the same that the average citizen of Mexico produces for everything, food, water, shelter, electricity, industry, work and transportation. It is 175 times as much as a citizen of Chad produces for everything, more than 4 and half times more than what a citizen of Kenya produces for everything, 18 times more than a citizen of Honduras produces for everything, 0.8 times as much as a citizen of China produces for everything and more than 3 times as much as a citizen of India uses for everything.

(It's why I want to throw up when I hear bourgeois brats complaining about India and China's dangerous fossil fuel waste dumping.)

http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/international/iealf/tableh1cco2.xls">Per Capita Dangerous Fossil Fuel Waste Dumping Around the World.

Have a nice evening.

[excess_3]

1. better than oil from the middle east

you have to start somewhere, and
energy security is a good start

[NNadir]

2. But not better than not driving in the first place. You know, heroin was invented as a cure

for morphine addiction.

[excess_3]

3. I have a different take on that

Bayer, wanted to stretch the supply of Opium,
(which heroin does)
as there was a war coming.
(in those days, there was always a war coming)

so they end up finding something that
is arguably, bad for society.

...............................
their story becomes,
we didn't do it to save money,
we wanted to help.
..............................

just my opinion and speculation,
their story looks to me like historical back-fill.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

4. Not possible

As seen in other threads, here and elsewhere people are finally thinking about industry again. That takes collocated people to produce things. That means transportation, private or public. Large cities have public transportation (after a fashion), but realistically are unsustainable in the long run since they require too high an energy density and produce more effluent than can be reasonably handled.

I fairly radical colleague of mine is recommending that all new industries be built in the sunbelt and that the rotting cities in the rust belt and northeast be mined of their resources. He makes an interesting case.

[excess_3]

5. big (and populous) cities, or rural sprawl, pick one .nt

[JDPriestly]

7. If the Sunbelt means the Southwest, we have very limited water resources.

Most industry takes water.

If by Sunbelt you mean the Southwest, the humid heat is unbearable in the summer. If you want to work at any kind of physical labor in southern Alabama, air conditioning in just as necessary as heat in the northeast. No matter where humans live, they need a comfortable temperature to work efficiently. Energy is as necessary for temperature control as for transportation.

We have to develop alternative, renewable energy sources and soon.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

8. I believe you meant the southeast

[NNadir]

14. Really? It seems to me that people in the Southwest lived for thosands of years

without air conditioning and cars on "renewable" energy, and, in fact, in the Southeast as well.

In fact, the maximal supportable number of people lived there before the advent of air conditioning and the car CULTure as recently as 1940.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't there people who live there now who can't afford air conditioning and a swell car, or am I just imagining things?

[JDPriestly]

17. We live in the southwest -- southern California -- next to no water

I lived in southern Alabama. Yes, we lived without air conditioning, but you can't work very well in the humid heat in the summer --at least not indoors. I remember lying in a pool of sweat on my bed --and all I was doing was reading a book. (I'm not one to sweat much. It was just unbearably hot.) Why do you think southerners used slaves? Because they didn't want to work in that humid heat, that's why. Neither did the slaves, I'm sure. But the slaves were given no choice.

I hope I am not offending anyone by posting this. My point is that the southeast is miserable in much of the summer without air conditioning. By the time I left, air conditioning was more and more common, especially in public places. There is no way for a society to continue to require people to work as hard as ours does and live without either heat or air conditioning or water for part of the year.

[jpak]

9. What kind of car do you drive?

Oh yeah - what a stupid post...

:rofl:

[NNadir]

13. I drive a giant hydrogen/solar/wind powered Hummer with a tidal powered boost. I drive

it to giant locally growth Thanksgiving dinners for 30 bourgeios brats named "Buffy" and "Hamden" where we all get so shit faced drunk on cheap Maine liquor that we actually believe that our continuous use of smileys doesn't reveal how incredibly vapid and intellectually incompetent we are.

Following my stupid drive to the home of my stupid friend's "locally grown in Maine in the middle of giant family owned gas heated inherited greenhouses," I muse that people who actually are familiar with the contents of the scientific literature are "stooooooopiiiiiiid"

Have another Allen's coffee brandy fundie boy, post lots of "World's largest wind powered freeway cruiser," and yuk it up while your fucking planet dies from obliviousness:

Have a yuck it up solar powered evening fundie boy:

[jpak]

15. So I'm guessing it's an SUV - right?

Mr. slave to Car CULTure....

:rofl:

[jpak]

16. I forgot - you heat your home with natural gas - right?

Just to clarify where you stand on the dangerous fossil fuel issue...

:rofl:

[JDPriestly]

6. The plan is to fuel the electric cars by converting water into hydrogen fuel

using solar power.

[kristopher]

12. Using hydrogen for storage is a waste of energy

The preferred technology is battery storage. We'd have to build a lot more renewable generating infrastructure if we use hydrogen than if we use batteries.

[tinrobot]

10. You're right in that the automobile is energy inefficient.

But you weren't around to make this point 100 years ago.

Right now, we have 100 years worth of infrastructure that is built around the car. That's not going to change overnight. I would propose making cars significantly more efficient in the short term, but also rearranging cities over the next few decades to make them mass-transit friendly.

I'd also suggest some sort of PR campaign designed to break Americans of their addiction to bigger and faster cars. A campaign that makes muscle cars uncool, kind of like what they did to smoking a few decades back. Additionally, you could restrict cars over a certain size/weight from roads within cities, similar to what is happening within London today.

[kristopher]

11. Reading one of Nnad's posts is like reading the Unibomber Manifesto

Really, you can almost see the jumble and swirl of cluttered thoughts; each clamoring and screaming against another for its moment to burst into the author's consciousness.

This is the conclusion to the article posted in the OP. It should be noted that events have dated this paper's relevancy since it is now clear that all automakers are turning to battery electric drive.

6. Conclusions

PHEVs were developed by researchers, automakers, utilities and government as a utilitarian answer to the deficiencies of conventional and electric vehicles. The resurgent interest in reducing the energy consumption and improving the sustainability of the personal transportation sector has provided the motivation for advancing the PHEV state of the art. Recent advancements in automotive electric drive systems and battery technologies have made PHEVs technically and commercially possible. This has resulted in a number of demonstration research vehicles and limited production of PHEVs from OEM automobile manufacturers.

A number of recent studies and research vehicle demonstrations have defined the basic design considerations for PHEVs. Optimized energy management strategies are key to the improved performance of PHEVs and characterization of the PHEV requires a detailed understanding of the energy management modes in which a particular vehicle operates. The component performance and system design requirements of PHEVs are demanding because they exhibit many of the same driving modes as both electric and hybrid-electric vehicles. Technological advancements in the energy density, power density and lifetime of electrochemical energy storage batteries have improved the performance and life cycle cost prospects of PHEVs.

With paper studies regarding the design and optimization of PHEVs have come a number of vehicle demonstrations from both academic researchers and commercial manufacturers. Practical research findings regarding the real-world performance, driveability, consumer acceptability and low-level control of PHEVs have been accomplished using these demonstration vehicles. A few original equipment manufacturers have designed and built PHEVs for limited production.

The body of research on PHEVs shows that PHEVs have significant benefits for the pollution output, energy efficiency and sustainability of the transportation energy sector. All cited studies have shown that PHEVs decrease petroleum consumption relative to conventionally fueled vehicles and hybrid vehicles. PHEVs also reduce criteria emissions under nearly all circumstances by reducing the startups and hours of operation of internal combustion engines. Carbon emissions are significantly reduced for all of the studies cited. A number of studies have shown that the electrical power requirements of PHEVs can be met by the grid for even a very large infiltration of PHEVs.

Ongoing research for PHEVs is addressing their move toward series production. Optimization of real-world performance, cost, component lifetime and consumer acceptability is the newer front of PHEV research.

PHEVs are a promising technology for improving the sustainability of the transportation energy sector. PHEVs achieve this effect by displacing petroleum energy with electrical energy. With PHEVs, the lower emissions, higher efficiency, more sustainable energy from the electrical grid can be used for transportation. As the sources of energy for PHEVs are largely centralized at the electric grid, improvements to the environmental performance, cost or sustainability of the transportation fleet can come from improvements to the grid. Using PHEVs, citizens, municipalities, states or nations can largely determine the emissions output and sustainability of their personal transportation by choosing the sources of their electricity. Given the rising pace of global climate change, petroleum supply pressures, and increasing worldwide vehicle ownership, PHEVs are a means to lower the impact of the transportation energy sector and preserve personal transportation for the future.

From Bradley nd Frank's "Design, demonstrations and sustainability impact assessments for plug-in hybrid electric vehicles".