Question by jaredbiunno: How would the environment change if everyone drove electric cars?
Just having fun speculating and such, how much better would the environment get if the world drove electric cars.. would we physically see a noticeable change?.... I mean, this is obviously not possible in the near future, the whole word driving and being comfortable with electric cars won't be reached at least for another 50-100 years, but just to satisfy my curiosity.. how much will this benefit our planet?
Best answer:
Answer by chasvanblom
Given enough time, the world could potentially return to it's EDEN-state.
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it will only help about the 5 %, but the main thing is what to do with the damage already done to earth.??
They say if every one of the 110 million US households replaced just one regular light bulb with a compact fluorescent, it would be like taking 1.3 to 6 million cars off the road (depending on where you get the info).
With that in mind, what if every US household replaced their gasoline powered car with an electric car, how many cars would that be like putting ON the road
ELECTRIC cars are unlikely ever to replace conventional cars and could even be worse for the environment, experts have warned.
Millions of pounds are currently being pumped into developing battery-operated vehicles as a greener alternative to petrol or diesel cars.
But engineering magazine E&T for members of the Institute of Engineering and Technology claims the switch to electric cars would not be viable because of the limited life of batteries and the need for frequent recharging.
An investigation found electric cars could be restricted to less than 100 miles while batteries would only last two years.
Peter Miller, director of electrical and electronic engineering at vehicle consultants Ricardo, said: “You could drive and then find it takes a day to recharge with a domestic electric socket.
“To get a vehicle that behaves the same way as a petrol or diesel model is not viable for the foreseeable future.”
The magazine said a battery capable of the same level of driving as a standard Ford Focus or Volkswagen Golf would cost £100,000 and would weigh 1.5 tonnes.
Experts at E&T also suggested relying on electricity from non-renewable sources would even mean a greater carbon footprint than a high efficiency diesel car.
Dickson Ross, editor in chief of E&T, said: “Some of the performance improvement claims being suggested are likely to stay pure fantasy for the foreseeable future.
“While we believe electric cars overall are a good idea, particularly for short-range commutes, there’s a need for more honesty on whether they can really be the solution to our transport and environmental needs in the mid- to long-term.
Unless you got the power from hydroelectric it wouldn’t change the carbon print much.
Hydrogen on demand cars would be my choice. Water in – water vapor out and no pollution = a healthier environment.
Initially, it would be worse due to the carbon footprint of manufacturing all those electric vehicles to replace existing gasoline powered vehicles and of upgrading the electricity infrastructure and the fact that most of our electricity is produced from coal especially during the overnight period when the cars would be recharged. Also the fact that it takes double the amount of energy to charge a battery then it holds immediately means we’ll be using twice the amount of energy. In the long run, electric cars are at best carbon neutral which means that they will slow down but not stop the greenhouse effect.
Ironically, continuing to use existing gasoline and diesel vehicles can be carbon negative if the fuel is synthesized from syngas produced by gasification of biomass such as trash and dried sewage with the charcoal byproduct sequestered as biochar. This means that unlike the electric car, your existing car is actually our best chance at reducing the greenhouse gases that we have in our atmosphere but only if we change how we make our fuel to an unfortunately more expensive and lower profit margin method.
How would you describe the change? It would be hard to fix an actual percentage. You might listen to the inspirational beginning of an EV world podcast: http://www.evworld.com/evworld_audio/gpastor_shanghai-to-paris1.mp3 You could read a nonfiction book on the subject: http://www.amazon.com/Future-Drive-Electric-Sustainable-Transportation/dp/155963328X or you might see a movie that featured electric cars or watch a youtube video interview:
Minority Report
http://www.youtube.com/siemens
But if you wanted to fix a percentage it would have to start with the pollution given out by the vehicles of today. How much does auto pollution presently damage our planet? You would have to look at each element of pollution separately. Also, are we counting all harmful substances or only those that will be metabolized in a fixed or variable amount of time? How do we determine how much time.
We can say with some certainty that approximately 60 to 70% of crude oil’s refined products are used in transportation. The pollution will be found in the air, our water and our soils. Oil pollutes during its production1, exploration (the BP well was an exploratory well), transportation (tanker spills), refining (energy usage and byproducts, transportation and storage again (road and pipeline spills ) pumping (ground and water contamination at gas stations, and use (air pollution, water and soil pollution from “lost” oil 2) Of this we can probably attributed 50% to ground transportation that would be replaced by electric cars and trucks. (I would assume you may include trucks in you overall assessment.) This source determines the tonage per vehicle of greenhouse gas emissions: There are over 200 million vehicles on the roads in the US alone producing 1 billion tons of CO2. Refineries would add to this amount.