watervole | Electric transport

Today COP 26 themed post is about electric transport. the12daysofcop.wordpress.com/drive-electric/

It's a big gain carbon-wise, but this one - unlike many other climate saving actions which can cost virtually nothing - is an expensive step.

Electric cars are wonderful - we've just bought a second-hand Renault Zoe - and for the first time in my life, I actually enjoy driving. It's incredibly smooth, quiet and responsive. (It has a 200 mile range in Eco mode)

It's not a step we'd expected to take for several years. With nearly everything, the best item carbon-wise is the one you already own. Cost of manufacture is never trivial. But, when the garage investigated why our car was behaving in a manner that made it dangerous to drive, they finally (after several weeks trying to trace a transient fault) told us that the cost to repair it was a lot more than the value of the car.

So, we bit the bullet and went electric.

Not everyone is going to be able to afford to do this in the short term. It will be a while before electric cars trickle down to the bottom of the second-hand market, but it will be increasingly viable as time passes.

Charging networks should also improve - I know people who are concerned that they won't have a charging point where they normally park at home - I suspect the likely solution will be available charging points where people work and shop. A lot of car parks and supermarkets are already introducing chargers.

BUT - and it's a big but - the best environmental options will still be walking, cycling and public transport. (yes, guilty here - it turned out that getting our granddaughter to school was the killer - there's no bus service from here. She can get the school bus from where her parents live, but not from here, and it's only walkable when the weather in fine and we have an hour for the walk there and back again.)

Electric cars are lower carbon, but not zero carbon. It's important to remember that.

With any new energy saving technology comes what is known as the 'rebound effect'. If it gets cheaper, people do more of it, and thus wipe out much of the carbon-savings.

If you start driving further because your electric car is cheap and green to run, then it isn't as green as you intended.

Electric bikes are so efficient that they're actually more carbon-friendly than walking the same distance. (The carbon cost of the food you burn is higher.)

I went out this morning on mine and came back with two charity shop curtains (in the panniers) that will hang in our office. They have linings, so will keep in more heat than our existing curtains.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

You left out the most important thing - that electric cars are only carbon-friendly if the electricity isn't from fossil fuels.

Actually, no. Even with power generated from fossil fuels, they still come out ahead, though the margin is clearly much smaller.

But that's part of the reason why you should never think of them as zero-carbon.

Does that estimate take account of efficiency losses in the power station and the transmission of the current to the charger?

Yes. Electric cars are just a lot more efficient. That's partly due to things like regenerative braking, and partly the ability to charge at times when power stations have spare capacity.

There's fewer moving parts overall, so that reduces friction. Also no loss with gears.

Petrol is very inefficient. A car uses less then half the energy in it.

Efficiency losses in the power station are much lower, because there's no particular restriction on the mass of the plant. To pick a direct comparison, if you're going to run a railway on coal, transmission losses are more than made up for by the way a coal-fired power plant can have superb insulation and send steam through a vast series of descending-pressure turbines - far more of the energy from the coal is extracted than would be true if you burned it in a locomotive firebox, even if the locomotive was operating under optimal conditions (which often they were not).

(Of course, we hope we're not running the railway on coal at all, but it's easier to make a comparison because we're using the same fuel in both cases).

I know people who are concerned that they won't have a charging point where they normally park at home

This is why I bought a hybrid rather than an electric car. You just can't get my car close enough to my house to be able to charge it at home and there's one charging point in this town. But by the time my current car needs replacing there should be a lot more charging points. (And the buses here might as well be non-existent given how infrequently they run)

Interestingly, this weekend I had a wander around the new estate near here. Every house has a car port next to it, and on the wall is an electric charging point. So at least whoever built them is thinking ahead.

I'm glad people are planning ahead, though, sadly, I bet those same houses still had gas boilers.

Judging by the photos on RightMove, they do. I thought when my sister bought a new house and it had a heat pump that that was how they were doing it with all new houses. Apparently not.

Our beloved government, in it's infinite wisdom, has decided that it will be acceptable to install new gas boilers for several years yet.

A form of stupidity that can only happen when you put lobbying from the building industry ahead of everyone else's lives.

Climate change 'only' kills hundreds of thousands of people per year at present...

A pedal cycle is already theoretically more efficient than walking the same distance (you can cover a far larger distance for the same amount of food consumed, thanks to the miracles of wheels, gearing, and a massive overhead in tarmacked roads -- travelling by foot is a much more suitable way to traverse uneven terrain!)

Unless walking is likely to increase the world's appetites to the degree that they require more food (most people in this country already eat sufficient food and move their bodies little enough that what they require is more exercise, not less), I'm not sure that 'use less muscle power -- save the planet' is a healthy argument...

Absolutely, a pedal cycle will also beat walking - as long as it isn't uneven terrain. I should have remembered that!

That one wasn't intended as a 'save the planet' point - more as a point of general interest.

As you say, we all eat more than we need in developed countries.

It occurs to me belatedly that a tagalong bike conversion/attachment might have been a practical solution to the school journey; they're not cheap, but neither are electric cars. And a journey that's half an hour on foot is only ten minutes by bike.
Or even one of those little front-wheel scooters, which allow small children to travel as fast as or faster than a walking adult rather than being limited by their own short legs...

We did consider bike options, including tagalong - Oswin can cycle if she has an adult with her.

But the road leading up to the school is a narrow country lane with no pavement and lots of bends. It's simply isn't safe for a cyclist, even an adult, during the school run.

A pavement for the last part of the journey might well have changed the decision.

When I eventually get an electric car I want to be sure to have enough solar set up to charge it. I know there is a cost to making solar panels. All of the solar panels I have bought over the years (except a couple that got broken) are still working (if less efficiently); even the ones I bought 25 years ago.
Donald has a electric assist bike for getting around, but then he doesn't drive and never has.

As long as you're with a supplier who only produces renewable energy (do you have any in the USA?), I wouldn't worry too much about getting more of your own solar panels.

Then again, you're probably more vulnerable to power outages than we are, so I guess it does make sense.

Electric transport

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