Low Emission Cars vs. Electric / Hydrogen Powered Cars Are They Really Eco-Friendly?

We live in a time period where technological changes take place on a daily basis. On one hand there is the introduction of new technology and on the other hand there is an upgrade on existing technology. The changes take place at such a rapid pace that it’s easy to get distracted by the achievements of a certain sector while turning a blind eye to the other.

This post will highlight the environmental issues caused due to automobiles based on known facts, theories, and predictions, showing that sometimes what seems to be independent industrial sector actually needs the help of another in order to make this world more sustainable and pollution free.

Business as a whole is like an entity with many arms. Each arm is fully capable of working independently but certain tasks require the use of all the arms in order to efficiently execute it.

Automobile Industry:

The automobile industry has come a long way from steam powered engines to hybrid engines and now moving into a stage where electric powered and hydrogen powered vehicles will become a common place. Almost all vehicles seen today are all fueled by fossil fuels with a minor exception of the small percentage of electric powered cars. The reason why people have not switched to the electric powered cars yet is obviously the fact that with the technology today only prototypes and high end electric powered cars can actually perform as well as their fossil fuel burning cousins. The rest just don’t make the cut for the general population because they cannot perform nearly as well as their fuel burning counterparts. Therefore this leads to the segregation of three types of cars in production, two of which is most prevalent and the other has not caught the mass market as yet. For the purpose of keeping this article relevant to the emerging trends the reference to gas guzzlers and high emission vehicles will be ignored because of the fact that governments around the world have become more environmental conscious and have taken many steps to phase out the production of such vehicles and even the general public have become conscious of this issue due to various reasons, some being cost savings due to less gasoline consumption and some being genuinely conscious of the environment. Also the use of bio-fuels as an alternative will not be covered by this article. Getting back to the different segments of the automobile industry the two major segments include low cost low emission cars and the middle class low emission cars. The other segment is the electric powered and hydrogen powered cars which is either not yet in production stage or is not used by the mass public. This article will not be focusing on the benefits of each segment of the automobile industry but rather making the audience aware that at the current stage all cars that are produced no matter what their fuel source is let it be fossil fuels or hydrogen fuels or electric powered will cause pollution no matter the cost and at present and in the near future there is nothing the automobile industry can do to prevent this. The only observable difference is that certain segments of the market either produce more pollution or less pollution as compared to the other.

Low cost low emission cars:

Tata Nano image courtesy of wikimedia

Let’s start with the low cost low emission cars market. Consider the Nano a car produced by the Indian car company Tata Motors. It is considered to be the world’s cheapest car with price ranging from Rs. 100,000 (approximately 2,000 US$). It has passed the Bharat stage III and Euro stage IV emission standards and also has an average mileage of 5 liters per 100 kilometers (50 miles per gallon). The sheer cost factor has driven to general population to excitement which has also led to it being referred to as ‘The peoples’ car.’ The truth of the matter is that this car is going to be an environmental nightmare! The record low cost of this car will cause a large percentage of the population who before this could not even dream of owning a car to buy it. Apart from the fact that in countries like India where the car is said to be launched first the infrastructure is not quite adequate to support the huge traffic jams this would cause, the environmental impact of this car will be very high. Imagine millions of people sitting in their little Eco-friendly low emission cars contributing small amounts of green house gases each! That’s just unthinkable in the large scale. So is it really correct to consider these little cars as Eco-friendly? Upon release of these kinds of cars many environmentalists will agree on one common thing that there is going to be a huge impact on the environment.

image courtesy of skyscrapercity

Low emission middle/upper class cars:

Toyota Prius image courtesy of uwec

This sector consists of a wide range of cars that include anything between lead free low emission to hybrid cars and at least for the time being this segment can be considered as the second largest emitters of green house gases since in many countries low emission standards have not come into mainstream application yet and cars driven by majority of the middle class does not come under the low emission category which hopefully will be phased out of production by the governments around the world. Even after the world sees the release of the low cost low emission cars, assuming that a very large portion of the population will purchase it, this segment will still remain as the second largest emitter in the car industry.

Electric powered and hydrogen fueled cars:

Reva image courtesy of edmunds

We finally come down to the segment that offers so much hope for the sustainable future; a segment that would even bring smiles to school children who are studying about the environmental impacts of green house gases, global warming, and holes in the ozone layer. For those people who are not aware of the facts just yet, this would probably cause a big disappointment to them all. This segment of the car market is the most misunderstood by the general public. Zero emission cars (in the case of hydrogen fueled cars only water is exhausted) at present is nothing but a mere illusion. What did not happen in one place merely shifted to another. For those people who are thinking green power, it’s time to say hello to coal power! For those of you who are confused read on. A large percentage of the world’s electric power source comes from coal power plants. Coal is cheap and it’s available in abundance. Consider a country like India. There are approximately eighty nine coal power stations that supply over 100 megawatts of power each. Some even supply more than 1,000MW to 2,340MW of power. This number is not even considering the number of coal power plants that produce less than 100MW. There are approximately seven diesel fueled power stations that produce more than 100MW of power each and approximately thirty eight power stations that use natural gas or naphtha that produce more than 100MW of power each. All these together form the thermal-electric power plants in India. Even though there are sixty seven hydroelectric power plants that produce from 100MW to 1,920MW of power each, sixteen wind-power facilities that produce from 10MW to 259MW each, and 17 nuclear power plants generating 4,120MW with six more on the way, consider the amount of pollution caused by the thermal-electric facilities in India and in other countries. The amount of green house gases that are being pumped into the atmosphere does not justify Eco-friendly green power. All this to supply us with electricity, which means that the more electricity we use the more coal or diesel we are burning, so on that note, do you still think electric cars and hydrogen powered cars are Eco-friendly? Even to mass produce hydrogen a large amount of electricity must be applied to water in order to be able split the hydrogen and oxygen atoms. Where does that energy come from? For the most part in most countries it’s either from coal, diesel, natural gas, naphtha, or all the above. That is of course without taking into account the renewable energy sources like hydroelectric and wind power stations. Even nuclear power stations do not produce green house gases; at least the amount they produce is very minuscule, even though the radioactive waste seems to be another matter altogether.

Coal power plant image courtesy of coal-is-dirty

What can the car companies do about this?

Now going back on the previous statement, no matter what the sources of power are, cars will continue to be a source of pollution and no matter what the automobile industry does, no matter how efficient their products are or what technologies they use to reduce emission, there will continue to be large amounts of green house gases that are pumped into the atmosphere because of automobiles.

The necessary transformation:

The only solution as of now is that governments should replace all thermal electric power plants (Nuclear plant not being one of them) with renewable and clean sources of energy. If possible even the nuclear plants must be replaced by renewable sources of energy sometime in the distant future, but for our immediate future some of these goals must be achieved. For obvious reasons this is going to be a very expensive and very time consuming task that is bound to take many years to become a reality. There will definitely be countries that would be reluctant to make the transformation, but for the sake of sustaining this planet for the future generations, let’s hope that majority of the world’s governments will take steps to move towards a new hope.