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 about
http://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 CO
2?
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.