The Contradictions of Battery Operated Vehicles | Graham Conway | TEDxSanAntonio

climate change is a hoax and the electric vehicle is an abomination someone once told me that to get the public's attention you have to offend them and what better way to offend people than by denouncing climate change because if there is something in which the world can unanimously agree is that we don't like you being here in the future, so now that I have your attention, let me review those initial comments. I really believe in climate change, but I have a problem with the way we define electric

vehicles

, so this talk will still offend some people.

I can almost see the YouTube comments on this video. Now it's not pretty, but this talk is not about unfairly demonizing the electric vehicle. I absolutely believe they are the future of personal transportation. They do a fantastic job of removing pollution. Our identity is populated cities, they are fun to drive and sometimes you can get free parking too, and I know because I had an EV for three years and it was a great car, they will definitely be a place for EV in our future. but not today, let me start with a question: today there are a billion passenger cars in the ranks of the world.

If I gave you a button that would turn everyone into electric

vehicles

, would you press it? The problem of climate change is believed to be global. be caused by increasing CO2 concentrations in our atmosphere, if you place a box around the Earth and measure the gas trapped inside that box, you will certainly find CO2 and that CO2 levels are increasing, which is causing the CO2 levels increase, one source is the The cars and trucks we drive emit CO2 from the tailpipe and the way the industry currently measures this CO2 is like putting a special box around the vehicle and measuring what is inside the box.

Society's solution to the problem is the electric vehicle because if you put a box around the electric vehicle and try to measure CO2, it will not find anything, so based on this way of measuring CO2, we have decided to call them zero emissions or we call them dirty , but let me show you why this is wrong, consider that instead of Changing all vehicles to electric vehicles, we turn them into horses instead. Now a horse breathes air and exhales CO2, so if you put a box around the horse, you would measure the CO2 if you rode that horse the same distance you drove the car. would find something quite shocking: the horse emits as much CO2 as a Corvette, so you can see that based on this way of measuring CO2, our only possible conclusion is that if we converted all cars into horses, we would emit as much CO2 as a billion Corvettes. and that doesn't sound very good for the environment, right?

But as you sit there, I'm sure something deep inside you says that doesn't sound right, and you'd be right, of course, if we traded all cars for horses. our climate would be better and here's why it would be better. Even though the horse exhales CO2 into the atmosphere, the CO2 is absorbed by the plants and converted back into oxygen, which the horse inhales again, so you see that the CO2 is in a cycle and since it is in a cycle it does not increase in contrast the car is different because with the car we dig everything out of the ground we burn it and produce co2 and it is not in a cycle so it is increasing So you were right to be skeptical, but based on how we currently measure CO2, you could not have come to this conclusion without doing this type of analysis.

Let's go back to the electric vehicle. Remember that the way we quantify CO2 is by measuring it from the exhaust pipe. but the electric car does not burn fuel but it does use electricity, so we have to see where it comes from. A large proportion of our electricity comes from coal. We now extract coal from the ground in large quantities and then burn it to generate energy. stations that produce co2, you can see that there is an arrow at the top of this diagram that indicates that co2 is not in a cycle and is increasing, but it is not possible to know this by measuring only the exhaust of the vehicle, which we must do is expand our imaginary box to include everything and coal is not the only way we generate electricity, we also burn natural gas and we burn oil to produce co2 now you could be sitting there and say wait a minute, I charge my electric vehicle with solar panels on my roof, so that's okay for you, maybe and many developed nations are moving away from coal and natural gas towards renewable energy sources.

CO2 is a global problem, so let's look at things on a global scale. How much of the world's electricity is it? produced by burning fuel that creates co2, it's about two thirds, so you can see when you plug in your electric vehicle it's probably producing co2, it's just not being measured, you'll see the auto industry has cleverly found a way to fix the problem. solve the problem, but is the electric vehicle really worse? To understand if it is worse, we must look at how many emissions are produced over the life of the vehicle. The average age of a vehicle before being scrapped is around 180k miles, you can see.

The conventional vehicle produces around 30 tons of CO2 during its useful life. How does the electric vehicle look pretty good? Because some of that electricity comes from renewable sources and because the electric motor is much more efficient than the internal combustion engine, it produces less CO2, but there is a problem with this graph. This graph says that at zero miles zero CO2 has been produced and you think about that for a second, it means that the two cars have magically appeared in the showroom out of nowhere, a lot of CO2 is actually produced. simply manufacturing a vehicle because raw materials have to be extracted from the ground, transported to factories where they can be transformed into car parts before finally being assembled into vehicles.

Each step requires energy, so we create CO2 so you can see how the conventional vehicle emerges. to the showroom having generated around six tonnes of CO2 and now this is the critical part. Making a

battery

is not easy, the necessary materials are harder to find and the coupling into the

battery

cell requires a large amount of energy, which is why the battery-powered vehicle reaches the showroom. having generated around 12 tons of CO2 and you can see that you would have to drive it around 80 or 90 thousand miles before making up for that CO2 penalty, but in the end it is better, so the electric vehicle still looks good here too.

This row gets interesting. You see, the conventional vehicle has a range of 400 miles. Well, the electric vehicle in this example has a range of 125 miles. Now, 125 miles might be enough for some of you, but most of us want more and wish we could. drive long distances across states or if you're here in Texas you might want to get to the next city so we really need to compare an electric vehicle with a 400 mile range and as you may have guessed a longer range long requires a larger battery. which means a bigger CO2 penalty and now you start to see the problem over its expected lifespan.

It has emitted more CO2 than the conventional vehicle. It has contributed more to climate change in the conventional vehicle and that is the heart of the problem. He has produced more. CO2, but we haven't measured any, so society is happy to continue calling it zero emissions, but that is dangerous and unproductive, but there is something we can do today using the technology we have today that will make a difference today and that is to look Hybrids Hybrids are much more efficient than conventional vehicles because at low speeds where the engine is inefficient, the electric motor compensates and says: don't worry engine, I've got this, you stay off until we need you and, critically, a hybrid It has a small battery.

Therefore, the initial CO2 penalty is similar to that of the conventional vehicle, while the emissions at the end of its useful life are much lower. In fact, to offset the CO2 of the EV I would need to drive it about 450,000 miles before offsetting that CO2, but again, I don't. I want to demonize the electric vehicle. I just don't think we should adopt them today based on the way we generate our electricity, the way we make our batteries, but how can we help the electric vehicle reach its potential? We need to invest in making our electricity generation from renewable sources around the world so that when we plug in our electric cars we know that no CO2 is being generated.

We can do this by building solar and wind farms. If we did then you can see the difference we can make to the emissions created over the life of the vehicle we can go further we can invest in new battery technologies battery production techniques to help offset that initial CO2 penalty and you, so you can see the potential of the electric vehicle, you can see what it could look like in the future, it's just that as a society we are trillions of dollars and decades away from getting there, but one day we will get there, but what we don't want to do today is tricking people into buying electric vehicles by falsely calling them zero emissions.

What we need to do instead is that, as we continue to invest in the internal combustion engine, it has not yet reached its full potential and we can look to renewable fuels. This is where we combine water with waste CO2 to create fuels for our vehicles now. There's a good reason we don't do this today: it requires a lot of energy to do it, but if all that energy comes from renewable sources then it's not a problem for the climate, so you see, we've created a new CO2. cycle and you can see how fantastic the hybrid vehicle looks throughout its life.

Even without renewable fuels, we should still consider purchasing hybrids today if we want to impact climate change. Now in the future there will be conventional vehicles, hybrid vehicles and electric vehicles where they make sense the future is not just electric the future is eclectic so let me leave you with this if I gave you that button based on what you know now you would press it thank you