Reducing Carbon Emissions — Hybrid Vs. Plug-In Hybrid Vs. Battery Electric - Normalised against emissions by battery capacity
Hybrids have been a bit sidelined due to the fact they still contain combustion engines and are not true zero-emission driving vehicles. Yet a case is being made for them from the standpoint that whilst current battery manufacturing technology is not yet efficient and causes pollution in its self, maybe hybrids blend the best of both worlds and emit lower overall emissions right now. Of course, this also depends on the overall lifetime usage of the battery packs (longer means less overall impact), but the point is hybrids have very small battery packs.
There is still no question that full electric's emit fewer emissions overall than normal combustion engine vehicles. And of course, hybrids still have all the complexity of combustion engines and transmissions (same or more maintenance costs).
Advantages with hybrids could be though less or no range anxiety, bigger short term benefits as lower cost means wider adoption, no short term economic collapse of maintenance businesses or petrol stations. It's not the long term solution needed but maybe we need to take a bigger picture view of the situation and see what is best for now?
What is not certain though with this picture and is important to note: If you include the upstream emissions for batteries you must do the same for petrol/gasoline such as extraction, bulk transporting, refining, further bulk transporting, and of course the same for electricity generation being used to charge BEVs. The period of the lifecycle being compared may not be equal.
Of course, alternative energy storage options are also all improving so in 5 years or more this picture will likely change again.
#EV #emissions #greentech
#^Reducing Carbon Emissions -- Hybrid Vs. Plug-In Hybrid Vs. Battery Electric
Emissions Analytics suggest building more hybrid cars and light trucks might be a better use of scarce resources than building a few battery electric cars. Do they have a point?
source https://gadgeteer.co.za/node/3276
Comments