JeffS,
Not to start a pi**ing match, just for questions sake, but have you factored in the "extra" cost for the electric vehicle up front vs. gas only? The cost of replacement batteries (what's life span?) The cost to dig the coal to produce that electric (fuel for loaders,diggers,dump trucks) ,refine it (plant machinery/employees),ship it (train), burn it(plant production, maintenance), and not to mention the disposal of flyash. OR, the cost to build & maintain a nuclear reactor plant. (I live near TMI)
These are the "hidden cost" both financial and environmental that should be factored in to the $1.45 ...... it may not come directly from your pocket, but it comes from someones pocket.
Just questions to ponder ....... and openly discuss......
I live near a coal power plant, and I see the mountain of ash piling up bigger & bigger. I actually believe they are trying to figure out how to use it mixed into blacktop for highway paving, and also concrete block production, so there is a possible benefit to the waste, but it's still there as of now.
It's never a pissing match from me ever. No worries there.
Part 1 - extra cost to buy the vehicle. I bought a $30,000 car. Lots of cars cost $30,000. So it wasn't extra at all to get electric. Had I not picked the Volt, I probably would have picked an IS250. But the Volt is a better car. It's a common straw-man argument saying the Volt is a Chevy Cruz with an electric motor. Sure, the underpinnings are the same - but the Volt is no more the same car as a Cruz, than a Lexus ES350 is the same car as the Camry. No one criticizes a Lexus driver for buying a Lexus. It's the same with the Volt. The luxuries that I opted to pass on included woodgrain colored plastics, some more deluxe dash styling, sitting on dead cows and cameras on the mirrors to show what I can see over my shoulder, on a screen in the center console. The luxury I opted for instead - stopping at the gas station every 2,000 - 3,000 miles and filling with only 8 gallons. I chose how to spend my $30k. I would have spent that amount...the Chevy Volt was just the absolute best car I could buy with the money I had to spend.
Part 2. Coal. I live in coal country. If you include the cost to mine the coal, you have to also include the cost to explore, find, drill, pump, store, transport, store, transport, store, refine, store, transport, store, truck, dump into a holding tank, and finally pump into your car...gasoline. It's another common strawman argument to say it's less catastrophic to the environment to pump gasoline into your car than it is to mine coal. That is strawman because it compares gasoline at the point of delivery to coal-fired-electricity at the point of extraction. Same with a nuclear power plant. How much does it cost to build a refinery? How much did it cost to "clean up" Deep Water Horizon?
But my favorite argument for burning coal is simple. Go to a coal field in PA (where the midwest gets most of it's power-generating coal) and count the US Soldiers. There are somewhere right around none. Give or take a couple...it's pretty close to zero soldiers. Now do the same thing for the parts of the world that control the world's supply of oil. It's slightly more than none. US military casualties in the coal fields of PA (we might even call them sons and daughters for fun) is similarly right around zero. The US controls its own sources of coal. No other country has anything to say about our coal. That's not the case for oil. Trillions have been spent on oil wars. And that frustrates me. Thousands of died. That infuriates me. The technology exists right now, and is ready to go. It's way cheaper to subsidize the adoption of electric vehicles than it is to fight oil wars. Way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way cheaper. Plus there's that 'death' part. The total cost to the environment to drive an electric car is far lower than the cost to drive an ICE car (Internal Combustion Engine). Efficiency alone will prove this out. Plus most electric cars are charging on base load at night when power plants are spinning excess supply to the grid with no place to go. (it's worth noting...I'm not an environmentalist. I have a big Benny and my tow vehicle is a Ford Expedition. Assuming I have a small carbon footprint would be false. I'm anti big-oil, anti-opec, anti-politician-who-has-sold-out-to-big-oil-etc).
Final thought on point 2 - it's easy to follow the money. There are politicians that are beholden to big oil. They oppose the Chevy Volt at every turn. There are "news" networks that are beholden to politicians that are beholden to big oil. They oppose the Chevy Volt at every possible turn. Big oil treats the Chevy Volt like it is the plague. Because for them...it is. They pay big money on public relations campaigns that criticize electric cars. For them, it's life or death.
Point 3. Replacement batteries. Replacing the battery costs about $3,500 today. But I know of no Volts that have had to have the battery replaced. There are Volts on the road with 200,000 miles on them...running perfectly happily on their original battery. The engineering that went in to the battery systems of the Chevy Volt are no less than astounding. I can go into it if you are interested. But it gets pretty wonky. It's an amazing battery. And my whole plan includes driving the car for 150,000 miles, then parting it out but keeping the battery as storage for a solar array. I estimate I'll have about 13kWH capacity left on the 16kWh battery, and can install a solar array that charges that battery full during the day and runs the house (completely) at night. I'll decide when the time comes, if I want to back up my house with a NG Generator, or from the grid. Depends on legislation that is puttering through congress regarding penalizing homes that install solar (sponsored by none other than the utility companies that view solar as the plague...because for them...it is).
Coal is going to slowly get phased out. By charging at night, I add nothing to the ash pile. There's a lot wrong with coal fired plants in that they can not be tapered below a specific base load. But as the years go by, new technology is coming on line and electricity is getting cleaner by default. That's the opposite of what happens as more and more ICE cars hit the road.
Point 4. Maintenance. This is fun so I left it for last. There really isn't much maintenance. I have 33,000 miles on my car today. Of those 33,000 miles, only 6,800 have been with the generator running. So from a gas engine standpoint, I have less than 7,000 miles on my car. I had the oil changed once. I have to change it every 2 years. The car has no transmission. It has no alternator. No power steering pump. No belts. The moving parts in an electric motor are...wait for it...it's a long list...rotor. That's it. A rotor spins around a stator in a field of current. That's the whole mechanism. Now...there are 2 electric motors in the car, with a pretty cool system of clutches that can make them run opposite (regenerative braking), one at a time, or together depending on load. So there are some moving parts there. But in all, it's super simple compared to a traditional ICE car and transmission. I figure my chances of having to replace a battery or electric motor in 150,000 miles is far less than an ICE car's chance of having to do a major engine or transmission repair.
Some of the funner maintenance items...brakes. I don't know of a Volt anywhere that has had brake work done. The car has friction brakes like any other car, but I only use the friction brakes for about the last 8 feet of a stop. The rest is done with magnets - regenerating electricity to dump back in the battery when I slow or stop. The friction brakes are incredibly well engineered to last the life of the car without being used very much. Exhaust. Yeah...that system doesn't get used very much. Engine...over 80% of my driving is done with the engine off. So by the time my car has 150,000 miles on it, the engine will be up to 30,000 miles. We'll all probably agree that's a pretty young engine these days.
I'm very glad you asked the questions. This particular car is very possibly one of the greatest feats of American engineering in a really long time. It was thunked up by MURICA, it's built in MURICA and it's powered by fuel controlled by MURICANS! Doesn't get much better than that. In my opinion.
