Tag: electric vehicles

  • What Do Online Dating And Electric Cars Have in Common?

    What Do Online Dating And Electric Cars Have in Common?

    I’m trying to find my way through downtown when a policeman jumps in front of my car holding up a stop sign. I stop, slightly shocked. What’s happening? A film crew passes by in a car, filming another car doing a U-turn. You guessed it, this week’s climate story brings us to Hollywood and Los Angeles.

    A few weeks ago I attended the Veloz forum in Los Angeles. Veloz is a nonprofit organization for electric cars. The conference had an engaging mix of speakers from electric car companies, electric charging companies and utilities.

    What’s all that buzz about electric cars? Transportation accounts for 14% of greenhouse gas emissions. By switching to electric cars, we cut greenhouse gas emission in half and when the cars are charged with renewable power we reduce emissions even more. For more details read my post on how electric cars tackle climate change.

    Why are only 2.1% of Americans driving electric cars? Why are there still so few electric car models out there? Why are electric cars still not mainstream? During the conference I learned that some of the concerns car buyers have with electric vehicles are range, charge time, and cost.

    Matt Nelson from Electrify America gave an overview of their “Normal Now” campaign, a digital campaign to raise awareness for electric cars.

    The campaign aims to introduce zero-emission vehicles for the vast majority of Americans who have never considered switching to a zero-emission vehicle.

    https://media.electrifyamerica.com/en-us/releases/73

    The campaign is a set of commercials, comparing electric cars to technologies that seemed strange at first, too, like email or online dating.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=02nyL5Vecys&feature=youtu.be

    So, what does online dating have to do with electric cars? They are both normal now. What I like most about the campaign is that’s its effective and funny at the same time. Let’s hope campaigns like this help more buyers to switch to electric cars. (Photo by bruce mars from Pexels)

  • How Electric Cars Help  Tackle Climate Change

    How Electric Cars Help Tackle Climate Change

    While I was visiting Germany this summer I talked to friends and family about electric vehicles. Several friends told me they read or heard electric cars were not cleaner than conventional cars. Mostly because of the battery. This made me curious, and I did some digging. I found vastly varying numbers and quite some drama. Here it goes…

    In a nutshell, over a 15 year timeframe electric cars emit half the emissions of conventional cars. Here is how project drawdown puts it: Transport emissions account for 23 % of all carbon dioxide emissions. Electric vehicles have half the emissions and if they are charged with renewable energy, they can have 5% of the emissions of a conventional car.

    If 16% of total passenger miles was done with electric cars by 2050, 10 gigatons a of carbon dioxide could be avoided.

    https://www.drawdown.org/solutions/transport/electric-vehicles

    On average, electric vehicles emit half of the emissions of conventional cars over a lifecycle of 15 years. That includes manufacture, fuel and charge cycles, and tailpipe emissions. Let’s take a look at how the numbers break down.

    The picture compares the lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions. The top row shows a conventional car, the bottom row an electric one. The numbers assume the cars are driven 150.00 kilometers.

    Batteries for electric vehicles are a challenge. They produce a lot of emissions and use rare earth minerals such as cobalt. Their mining is dangerous, often exploits miners, and destroys habitat for already endangered animals (yes, I dressed up as Okapi last Halloween).

    The hope is to advance battery technologies so they need no or less rare earth minerals and to extract and recycle the ones already on the market.

    Now we get to the drama part. The numbers vary vastly depending on what cars you compare, where the electric battery is produced, and what energy you use to recharge your car.

    A recent report from researchers in Munich claimed electric vehicles were worse for the environment than diesel cars. What? I nearly fell off my chair when I read that. The article was debunked immediately from media outlets and bloggers such as Wirtschaftswoche (german), CarbonBrief or electrek. But articles like that don’t help public perception or electric vehicles. What a drama…

    So, next time I talk to people about electric vehicles I have my numbers straight. Electric cars are at least half as clean as conventional cars. And let’s hope all these amazing teams working on sustainable batteries succeed soon!

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