"Leftie" <No@Thanks.net> wrote in message
news:ioU4m.10421$Il.4190@newsfe16.iad...
> Isaiah wrote:
>> "jolly" <freedatingsites@gmail.com> wrote in message
>> news:4026449f-b8ec-49d0-a4cf-cf561ad13031@f33g2000vbm.googlegroups.com...
>>> BMW Mini to Sell Electric Cars in U.S. From Summer 2009...
>>> http://www.techespot.com/2009/06/bmw...ars-in-us.html
>>
>> Hmm...try recharging that thing in CT, where the KW per hour charge
>> is $0.23. I wonder which would have larger carbon footprint, a gas
>> powered vehicle or the fossil fuel needed to recharge an all
>> electric vehicle.....
>
> The gasoline powered vehicle. In fact, even where the electricity
> comes from coal, it still pollutes less using an EV than an IC
> vehicle. But don't let inconvenient reality intrude on your rant!

It's not a rant, it is quite the contrary. One was an observation,
the other is a viable question. Many proponents of electric cars talk
about no emissions, yet there are emissions from the power generation
that is required to charge the vehicle, but I never have looked into
it, and thought someone may have the information readily available, so
I guess I'll do a little digging for a few minutes to try and get some
facts to answer my own question.....

http://www.gm-volt.com/index.php?s=r...hp?s=recharged

At the bottom of this page from the above link, it it shows a rating
of 26-38 KWH per 100 miles, and an average of 32.5. At the electric
rates in CT, the cost would be about $7.47 to operate per 100 miles.
A gas vehicle that gets 35 MPG would take almost 3 gallons to to
operate, so even at the rate of electricity in CT, at the current cost
of fuel, this electric car would be an operational winner in that
respect.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electri...t/co2emiss.pdf
has some information on carbon footprint for for differing types of
power generation (for most recent year 2000).

Type Lbs/KWH Grams/KWH
Coal 2.117 961
Petroleum 1.915 869
Gas 1.314 596

According to http://www.terrapass.com/carbon-footprint-calculator/ a
Ford focus emits just about 318K grams per 1,000 miles driven (can't
validate the numbers, I just found it and used the Focus and reduced
what I got to a per 1k miles)

Using electricity, an all electric vehicle like the one shown above in
the first link would need about 325 KWH to drive 1000 miles, coal CO2
emissions would be about 312K grams, while petroleum generation would
be 282k grams and gas generation would be 194k, and improvement of 2%,
11,5%, and 39% respectively.

So in this comparison, if your power generation is mainly coal, there
is marginal benefit, while the others get progressively better.
Unfortunately in the DOE document, it shows that about 50% of our
power generation is based on coal, so that will minimize the gains on
the CO2 emissions. For us to really take advantage of electric cars,
it seems what we really need to do is revamp how we produce
electricity (though in general, an average CO2 savings of somewhere
around 16%-18% if all vehicles were electric is nothing to sneeze at).

I wonder how many KWH per 100 miles it would take for an all electric
Hummer?

(a more up to date document would be more helpful, but I don't have
anymore time to invest in it right now).

That seems to be a little more realistic.