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Aren’t coal-powered EVs more harmful than gas-powered vehicles?

Strangely, the answer is no. Even if all the electricity produced for electric cars came from coal-burning processes, electric vehicles are less wasteful than ICE vehicles.

MotorTrend provides an in-depth study to show that only 16 to 25 percent of the energy from burning gasoline goes to the wheels. This is a massive loss due to the inefficiencies of burning gasoline.

On the other hand, electric cars send between 87 and 91 percent of the energy from the battery to the wheels. Some of that energy is recaptured through regenerative braking. This recapturing of energy reduces the amount of loss for EVs.

If we replaced all gasoline burning with coal burning, the energy usage reduction would reach 31 percent. Currently, Americans use nearly 9 million barrels of oil every day but switching to EVs charged only with electricity produced through coal-burning processes only requires the equivalent of 6 million barrels of oil. This is a huge difference.


https://www.msn.com/en-us/autos/news/are-we-being-lied-to-about-electric-cars/ar-AA15dEtX?ocid=entnewsntp&cvid=625305b42da24baabc904afdee2d6f0a

The greatest change we need is in the power grid. Instead of blaming EVs for changing the name of the game, the power grid should be upgraded to be more environmentally friendly. Currently, the makeup of the grid is:

38 percent natural gas
22 percent coal
20 percent renewables
19 percent nuclear
1 percent other
Using these numbers, we see that 39 percent (adding renewables and nuclear together) of the grid is entirely emissions-free. We also see that only 22 percent of the entire grid is coal, which doesn’t support the argument to blame electric cars for coal burning in the grid.

they didn't address the trains and ships that haul coal, the supertankers that haul oil or the mining and shipping of lithium either

they didn't address the trains and ships that haul coal, the supertankers that haul oil or the mining and shipping of lithium either

Sure, and they should.  For a truly holistic analysis, you'd have to take all of that into account.

But an IC engine burns gasoline to generate electricity.  That's the inefficiency they're addressing.

Then they just completely ignore the fact that the EV battery can't just charge itself, and that the coal-burning plant has its own inefficiencies.  They're not even close to comparing apples-to-apples here.  

The closest you can get to direct apples-to-apples attempting the simplicity of their analysis, is to compare efficiency of the gas ICE, to the efficiency of coal-burning electrical power generation, PLUS electrical line losses, PLUS losses from the battery to the wheels of the EV.

I've seen the analyses in detail before and the EV still tends to come out ahead, but it's not the same picture as the one they're painting.

It's really about how much CO2 is generated per mile.  Transmission losses were taken into account and are surprisingly small (to me anyway).  If you burn coal to generate electricity, I think the thermal efficiency is near 40%, but that comes out when you compute how much CO2 is generated per kWhr.

I once did a back of the envelop calculation on this and got about the same answer, a question was asked whether EVs really generate less CO2.  There also is a factor of how much CO2 is generated in making an EV in the first place.  It's pretty large, but comes out after a year or so of driving.

Line losses are 4-6%.  I'm not sure I'd call that "small" when added to the thermal inefficiency of the coal burning plant, and then the losses from the EV battery to the wheels of the EV.  There's really not as much difference as the EV industry attempts to portray.

But still, there is a difference.

It's really just about CO2 per mile. 

That's not what the article FF posted is addressing.

It is addressing energy usage, not environmental impact.

YSE Study Finds Electric Vehicles Provide Lower Carbon Emissions Through Additional Channels | Yale School of the Environment

This describes the Yale study in more detail.

Are electric cars worse for the environment than gasoline-powered cars?

That is the question asked at the beginning of the article. 

They only addressed the energy efficiency/usage question and did not address emissions at all.  Not one mention of CO2 per mile.

But you already know that, because you read the same thing I did.  Right?

There is pretty common criticism of EVs that they are worse for the environment than ICE cars, meaning they generate more CO2 over their lifetimes (or per mile).  This is meant to rebut that.  Whether it does or not is a separate issue.  We all know these "studies" can be contrived by rebalancing a few coefficients.  My GUESS is the study is decent from what I can tell, and having done a BOE study myself using made up figures.