Wednesday, 10 Jul 2002

CALGARY, Alberta, Canada

I was going to begin this diary by discussing what I call “topographical driving,” which involves planning a trip according to the obstacles you are likely to encounter, for the purpose of minimizing energy use. But the last two diary entries seem to have touched a nerve with a few readers out there, so for all of those interested parties, we’ll look at the politics of the electric vehicle.

Amy, a Grist reader from the Pacific Northwest, rightfully points out that although my vehicle produces no tailpipe emissions, the electricity used to power it may be produced by other than renewable sources. Coal-fired or natural gas powered plants have their own emissions to deal with. Driving a zero-emissions vehicle (ZEV) such as my battery-powered Saturn simply shifts the burden of pollution/emissions to another location.

And there the fight begins! Advocates on both sides of any issue can (and will) throw out statistics to support their point of view. As individuals, we can pick and choose from a myriad of products and services, each with their own kind of environmental impact. Most, if not all, human activities have some impact on the world we live in. The trick is to tread as lightly as you can during your relatively short stay on Earth. It is important to note that we are all in this together, and it is the sum of all of our activities that really matters.

Let’s get back to driving an electric vehicle and how this relates to power generation, so that we can shed some light on the issues. Shifting the burden is an important concept for residents of the Los Angeles basin, for example. Driving environmentally appropriate vehicles such as electric vehicles would drastically reduce the local air pollution at the point where people actually live. True, this is just an example of shifting the emissions, but consider the effects:

  • Electric motors are two to three times as efficient as their internal combustion cousins. This means that more of each unit of energy is translated into useful motion, rather than into wasted heat and noise. After I race around town in my EV, the motor is barely warm to the touch. It only has a small internal fan blade mounted on the end of the output shaft for cooling. This tells me that the energy used to drive the vehicle down the road was used for just that, mostly, and not to produce more noise and heat pollution.
  • When it comes to climate change, it is not simply the emissions from vehicles that must be considered. Local “heat islands” around major urban centers create microclimates with significant effects as well.
  • Electric vehicles can consume power for charging during off-peak hours, when the power plant’s is not being used to capacity. Studies have shown that a small increase in the use of electric vehicles would have little impact on power generation if charging occurred during off-peak hours when no one is using the power anyway. Legislation and pricing structures can be designed to elicit these behaviors from the human animal.
  • Electricity plants can be placed away from population centers and are federally inspected and regulated. Power generation at a plant generally occurs at the most efficient level as possible, while individual vehicle engines operate across a broad efficiency spectrum as they are stopped and started, left idling, or jack-rabbitted away from a stoplight.
  • My electric vehicle does not have power steering or air conditioning. The energy used to get the perfect climate inside our vehicles comes with a tremendous environmental and energy cost. Learn to live with less.
  • Petroleum use comes with its own demons as well. To extract, process, transport, and place gasoline at the pumps for vehicle use has its own effect on the environment.
  • I can only add that conventional cars and trucks stink when going down the road. Whenever I am driving my EV and following a gasoline-powered vehicle down the road, I am acutely aware of the awful smells emanating from the tailpipe.

    • We know that environmental problems exist, that we are all contributors, and that something must be done — and done soon — to reverse the damage to our planet. My EV solves some problems, but creates others. (For example, an increase in electric vehicle use would bring the issue of spent battery pack recycling to the forefront.) Studying the issues and educating others is one way that we can all help out.

    The issues are not black and white, but a mixture of grays. You can around in an old VW bus (even with a perfectly tuned motor) getting 45 miles per gallon and snubbing your environmental nose at the fellow in the 8-mpg SUV, but you may be the big negative on the balance sheet of life: It would probably take 10 to 20 of those sport utility vehicles with their advanced emissions controls to match the crap coming out of the VW’s tailpipe!

    Have a nice day and be sure to visit my website and send your comments in an email. Judging by last night’s email response to the daily diary entry, I’m sure that if I’ve neglected to say something, I’ll be corrected tonight by all of the Grist readers out there!