Apologies.No, I was not. If I was responding to your post, I would have quoted you. You will notice that I actually quoted EaglesPDX, because I was responding to him.
But thanks for the unnecessary snark, it was much appreciated.
Sadly, with the currently relatively low price of gasoline in America, I think the majority of American car buyers do not place fuel efficiency as a high priority when buying a car and have little interest in an EV. That said, I am optimistic that the Model 3 will start to change the average car buyers perception of an EV and increase interest.
I'm with you -- home PV is the way to go! Particularly for someone like me who lives in coal country.
Correct. This is one downside to ignoring users. You don't see their quoted text. At the bottom of the page, you'll see a link to "Show Ignored Content" (or similar) and this is the sign that something's hidden. But it can break the flow at times.
To be honest, I'm less concerned with fuel efficiency (price efficiency), than I am about driving through nasty inversion pollution that we get here in Utah in the winter. And even then, it's a combination of factors. I wouldn't buy a Tesla on emissions alone. I wouldn't buy a Tesla on fuel savings alone (I do not expect to make up the price differential between a Tesla and a comparable ICE, even after 5-8 years). I would not buy a Tesla for the cool technology alone. I would not buy a Tesla on the amazing performance alone (though after driving one for a month and a half now, I might). But the confluence of all of these - it's a home run. And back to pollution - even if I were using pure grid power (which has lots of coal here in Utah), I'm so glad that that "long tailpipe" is NOT near where I (or lots of other people) live. So it's a minor factor in that nasty inversion air.
This is one of the strengths of Tesla: even though you and I have quite different motivations, we end up with the same car.
No it doesn't. The new generations of the Volt and Prius were both introduced in model year 2016. The Volt gets an estimate of 160 g per mile and the mainstream Prius trim gets an estimate of 205 g per mile which is 28% higher.
There is academic debate about whether average emissions or marginal emissions are better to use. They are obviously not the same and each is a good choice in different circumstances. Marginal is useful for understanding the near-term emissions from adding discrete additional load on the grid. The EPA's FuelEconomy.gov website chooses to use average grid CO2 emissions instead.
For WECC the reference is fine since it basically says that marginal electricity generation is NG during the day and out of state coal at night which is true today.
And if an EV lasted 100 years I would agree with you.
For someone not up on this, can you clarify? I understand base and peak power production. Are you saying that a "marginal" use is something new and not widespread, so would not be covered by base load production (and thus by a more efficient production means?).
WECC is not actually representative of California grid use even though it represents a large region that is partially interconnected. For WECC to be representative it would require massive transmission interconnects that would equally allow power generated in Mexico (for example) to flow into Washington State or California. It doesn't work that way. In reality, the large majority of power consumed in Washinton or California is generated locally.
About 20% of CA electricity is imported from out of state and a large fraction of that energy is coal. That is why night-time charging emissions are some 20% higher than daytime.
Well, there's the massive Intermountain Power Plant in Delta, UT (Intermountain Power Plant - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia) that goes exclusively to LA area.
Huh? No. I'm talking about whether electricity use today is considered to be marginal emissions vs average emissions for charging a plugin car. That has nothing to do with whether I'm plugging in the same exact car 100 years later (I'll be dead by then...)
About 2/3rds of California grid is generated in the state. Of the remaining 3rd, 1/3rd of that comes from cleanish power in the northwest and 2/3rds comes from the less cleanish but getting better southwest.
Facts be damned. Like the actual emissions associated with a fleet of cars produced today, over their lifetime.
You forgot to mention that in the CA emissions inventory, 'unspecified' is counted as fossil fuel or coal -- I cannot remember which. And for good reason. I mis-spoke earlier when I said 20% of CA electricity is imported -- 20% of CA electricity is SW imports and about half of that is coal sourced.
No, that appears to be an invalid assumption today. You are assuming that all of the unspecified power in the SW import source is coal. This is unlikely.
Yes, I see that but the discrepancy amounts to less than 1% of the total so it doesn't matter. Maybe it's an internal rounding error of some kind inside a spreadsheet calculation? I dunno.
