At Hollywood Goes Green: GM vs. electric cars

Upside to having a GM dude on the same panel as electric car advocates: The ensuing smackdown's kinda fun to watch. Downside to having such a panel at a conference titled Hollywood Goes Green: So many enviros are mad at GM that the bulk of the questions get aimed at Dave Barthmuss of GM -- meaning GM gets the lion's share of the  panel time.

Still, the car panel -- "Easy Rider: Fuel Usage, Energy Efficient Vehicles and Freight Options" -- ended up being an entertaining one, with Dave getting attacked for everything from GM's lack of more fuel-efficient vehicles at the LA Auto Show (the photo above's part of GM's display at that show) to GM's lobbying against tougher fuel economy standards to -- of course -- Hummers. Dave maneuvered around the questions pretty well, but his response about how GM's coming out with a baby baby hummer drew some gags from the audience.

A big chunk of the discussion settled around the whole hydrogen fuel cell vs. electric car debate, which Ken Bensinger of the LA Times recently dissected. Basically, fuel cells use hydrogen to make electricity, which in turn powers the car. Electric cars charge up on electricity, then power the car with it.

At the panel, Chris Paine, director of "Who Killed the Electric Car?", called the push behind hydrogen fuel cell technology a boondoggle. Greg Abbot, founder of ElectricMotors jumped on Chris' side. Their argument against fuel cells: Why use electricity to make fuel cells that'll then be used to create electricity to run the car, when you can just directly use electricity to run the car? Dave of GM responded by saying that GM's "in the process of chasing as many innovations and technologies ... that we can."

I'm inclined to side with the electric cars -- or at least plug-in hybrids, at this point. The biggest argument against electric cars and plug-in hybrids seems to be that a lot of our electricity in the US comes from burning coal, which is even worse than burning gas. But in addition to the fact that many are working to replace coal  with renewable energy, hydrogen fuel cells are also made using power from the grid -- and use several times the electricity required by electric cars. Moreover, we already have an electric grid all set up, but we'll have to set up a whole new infrastructure to make hydrogen fuel cells work. As Andrew C. Revkin of Dot Earth notes, hydrogen cars may be here, but the hydrogen economy is not:

It’s one thing to have a few hydrogen cars, and another thing entirely to transform an energy and transportation system built on fossil fuels into one built on hydrogen generated without producing carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse-gas emission linked to recent global warming. In a 2004 report, the National Academy of Sciences said such a transition was probably decades away.

The bottom line? Transforming the energy source that makes a car run is relatively easy compared with rebuilding a multitrillion-dollar transportation and energy grid that took more than a century to create (no matter what we think of it now).

The panel did agree on one thing: To do your own research about these technologies to make your own decisions. To that end, try the links above as well as this primer on biofuels at Grist.

As a sidenote: Even if we magically converted all the cars to the cleanest tech overnight, it's not actually going to get rid of the gridlock on the 405. Do like Ed Begley, Jr. and I and consider the Metro. For those who flew into LAX for the conference, ogle these best 5 airport to city rail connections. The LAX connection may not be as simple, but Ryanne says the Metro got her from the airport to downtown LA in a hour during rush hour. Total cost: $1.25.

Photos by Siel

Comments

[Dan]

A lot of electricity is generated from coal, but even in this worst case scenario an electric car running on coal power still emits less CO2 than a gasoline car. You have to make some assumptions, but it's easy enough to calculate.

Burning one gallon of gasoline releases 20 lbs of CO2. One kWh of electricity from coal releases 2.1 lbs of CO2. The Tesla Roadster has a 53kWh battery pack and a 220 mi range. Assume a 90% efficiency on the battery charger, and that gives you 0.56 lbs of CO2 per mi for the Tesla Roadster. That's better than a 23MPG Lotus Elise (0.87 lbs CO2 per mi) but worse than a 40MPG Prius (0.5 lbs CO2 per mi).

As far as hydrogen, it's a huge boondoggle. The most economical way to make hydrogen is to reform it from natural gas, but that releases more CO2 than just burning the gas in a CNG car. The clean way to make hydrogen is with electrolysis using electricity, but then hydrogen just becomes a (very inefficient) storage battery for electricity. You'd be better off charging a battery or selling the power to the grid.

[Siel]

Interesting numbers, Dan -- though the Tesla still isn't market ready :P Hopefully we'll see more electric cars manufactured (vs. hacked together individually) soon --