Charlie Rose interview - GM's Robert Lutz and Tesla Motor's Elon Musk

[Dover]

An interesting juxtaposition of old-think vs. new. Charlie first interviewed Robert Lutz former
Vice Chairman at GM (there to promote his new book). Then he continues the conversation by including
Musk. Both interviews are very revealing about where the car industry has been
and where it's going. You might want to begin with the Lutz interview first and then listen to the
interview with both him and Musk that followed.

Click on picture of Musk to listen to him and Lutz together:
http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/11984

Interview with just Lutz:
http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/11986


The question that was NOT asked is how electric cars will improve environmental conditions if they will be dependent on a fossil fuel-driven electric grid?

[wtmusic]

1. Even on a dirty grid, EVs are cleaner than gasoline-powered vehicles.

"In a study conducted by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, EVs are significantly cleaner over the course of 100,000 miles than ICE cars. The electricity generation process produces less then 100 pounds of pollutants for EVs compared to 3000 pounds for ICE vehicles. See Table 3.
CO2 emissions are also significantly lower. Over the course of 100,000 miles, CO2 emissions from EVs are projected to be 10 tons versus 35 tons for ICE vehicles.15
Many EV critics remain skeptical of such findings because California’s mix of power plants is relatively clean compared to that in the rest of the country. However, in Arizona where 67 percent of power plants are coal-fired, a study concluded that EVs would reduce greenhouse gases such as CO2 by 71 percent.16"

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CCUQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.evdl.org%2Fdocs%2Fpowerplant.pdf&ei=WDzATrCyGqOUiQLR282NAw&usg=AFQjCNFsENQXgRFK_vjCQX7s-90vJkB90g

[Dover]

2. Yes, definitely an improvement, but not the ultimate answer imo.

I fear that if we continue this dependence it will delay any real change away from fossil fuels.
We'll get lulled into thinking we can live with that dependence.

[wtmusic]

3. Agreed

The important thing is to keep the focus on lowering net carbon production. Battery-electric vehicles powered by safe 4th-gen nuclear would go a long way toward achieving that.

I realize I'm in a minority with that opinion, however.

[Dover]

4. Well, at best it just buys us time...assuming there is serious research being done on

'something' more sustainable. It just seems that once an industry, be it oil/gas or any other
starts accumulating wealth they inevitably are unwilling to transition away from their money pot.

[bananas]

5. Review of solutions to global warming, air pollution, and energy security

Here's a very comprehensive analysis,
wind + battery electric vehicles comes out on top:
http://www.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/Articles/I/revsolglobwarmairpol.htm

Energy Environ. Sci., 2009, 2, 148 - 173, DOI: 10.1039/b809990c

Review of solutions to global warming, air pollution, and energy security

Mark Z. Jacobson

Abstract
This paper reviews and ranks major proposed energy-related solutions to global warming, air pollution mortality, and energy security while considering other impacts of the proposed solutions, such as on water supply, land use, wildlife, resource availability, thermal pollution, water chemical pollution, nuclear proliferation, and undernutrition.

Nine electric power sources and two liquid fuel options are considered. The electricity sources include solar-photovoltaics (PV), concentrated solar power (CSP), wind, geothermal, hydroelectric, wave, tidal, nuclear, and coal with carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology. The liquid fuel options include corn-ethanol (E85) and cellulosic-E85. To place the electric and liquid fuel sources on an equal footing, we examine their comparative abilities to address the problems mentioned by powering new-technology vehicles, including battery-electric vehicles (BEVs), hydrogen fuel cell vehicles (HFCVs), and flex-fuel vehicles run on E85.

Twelve combinations of energy source-vehicle type are considered. Upon ranking and weighting each combination with respect to each of 11 impact categories, four clear divisions of ranking, or tiers, emerge.

Tier 1 (highest-ranked) includes wind-BEVs and wind-HFCVs.
Tier 2 includes CSP-BEVs, geothermal-BEVs, PV-BEVs, tidal-BEVs, and wave-BEVs.
Tier 3 includes hydro-BEVs, nuclear-BEVs, and CCS-BEVs.
Tier 4 includes corn- and cellulosic-E85.

Wind-BEVs ranked first in seven out of 11 categories, including the two most important, mortality and climate damage reduction. Although HFCVs are much less efficient than BEVs, wind-HFCVs are still very clean and were ranked second among all combinations.

Tier 2 options provide significant benefits and are recommended.

Tier 3 options are less desirable. However, hydroelectricity, which was ranked ahead of coal-CCS and nuclear with respect to climate and health, is an excellent load balancer, thus recommended.

The Tier 4 combinations (cellulosic- and corn-E85) were ranked lowest overall and with respect to climate, air pollution, land use, wildlife damage, and chemical waste. Cellulosic-E85 ranked lower than corn-E85 overall, primarily due to its potentially larger land footprint based on new data and its higher upstream air pollution emissions than corn-E85.

Whereas cellulosic-E85 may cause the greatest average human mortality, nuclear-BEVs cause the greatest upper-limit mortality risk due to the expansion of plutonium separation and uranium enrichment in nuclear energy facilities worldwide. Wind-BEVs and CSP-BEVs cause the least mortality.

The footprint area of wind-BEVs is 2–6 orders of magnitude less than that of any other option. Because of their low footprint and pollution, wind-BEVs cause the least wildlife loss.

The largest consumer of water is corn-E85. The smallest are wind-, tidal-, and wave-BEVs.

The US could theoretically replace all 2007 onroad vehicles with BEVs powered by 73000–144000 5 MW wind turbines, less than the 300000 airplanes the US produced during World War II, reducing US CO2 by 32.5–32.7% and nearly eliminating 15000/yr vehicle-related air pollution deaths in 2020.

In sum, use of wind, CSP, geothermal, tidal, PV, wave, and hydro to provide electricity for BEVs and HFCVs and, by extension, electricity for the residential, industrial, and commercial sectors, will result in the most benefit among the options considered. The combination of these technologies should be advanced as a solution to global warming, air pollution, and energy security. Coal-CCS and nuclear offer less benefit thus represent an opportunity cost loss, and the biofuel options provide no certain benefit and the greatest negative impacts.

[Nihil]

6. Oh joy ... more spam ...

I'd thought that the only benefit of a certain person demanding
that the administrators put us on "mutual" ignore was that at least
I'd be spared seeing Mark Z. Jacobson's arbitrary & misleading tripe
splattered everywhere.

Hopefully, this is just a passing aberration ...

:-(