EVs and coal power don't mix: BMW

Dirty powered countries like Australia will not benefit from electric cars, startling research from BMW and the Technical University of Munich has revealed.

While the study found that electric cars in countries with wind-powered or hydro electricity emitted virtually no emissions, it also found that using electric cars in fossil-fuel countries often produced more emissions than using conventional cars.

Electric car advocates consistently point to them as zero-emission vehicles, but the Munich research investigated their CO2 emissions from the stations where their charging electricity is generated. It used a formula to divide the total power-station emissions of each country, then calculated the electric vehicle emissions by the kilowatts of charge they needed.

While the research was focused on Europe, it found that in coal-dependent nations like Poland and Russia, the environmental cost of electric cars was more than 130 grams of CO2 per kilometre -- and could even spike to 150 grams.

With its high reliance on coal, BMW insisted any electric car in Australia would make its source power station emit similar or worse CO2 numbers than Poland.

"Australia would be somewhere between 130 and 150 grams of CO2, because of the heavy use of coal with no real prospects of any other fuel in the future," Andreas Welter, of BMW's electrified drive system strategy team, said [Ed: Mitsubishi Australia has said in the past that the i-MiEV's well to wheel emissions in Victoria would be roughly the same as the Toyota Prius's -- 89g/km].

"Poland is probably the worst in Europe and Norway is the best, because it's all hydro-electricity."

The data will come as a slap in the face for those pushing for publicly funded electric charging stations because even a luxury brand like BMW already has 1- and 3-Series petrol- and diesel-powered models with combined city/highway emissions below 130 grams and Fiat's entire fleet average is just 127.8 grams.

"It highlights that we need to get away from fossil fuels, not just for cars but for all energy production," Welter argued.

"The energy producers have to deal with how they want to fuel their power and nuclear is not the overall solution for everybody in the long term because it still has a byproduct.

"All the regions that use their own coal for electrical production will be the worst. The USA will be more or less on par with Europe's total value, but Australia will be poor and China will be poor.

It comes as a second blow for electric-car lobbyists, following revelations from smart that the Lithium-ion batteries in its second-generation electric fortwo should not be regularly drained below 20 percent, nor charged beyond 80 percent, due to the accelerated deterioration of the battery's performance (see our separate story on lithium-ion batteries).

BMW is, nevertheless, putting plenty of its corporate eggs into the electric-car basket, and has confirmed its all-electric MegaCity concept car, with its breakthrough carbon-fibre body, will be on sale in 2013.

"We will have to reduce by 25 percent by 2020 and we won't stop working, even if electric cars don't solve emissions from electricity production," Welter said.

"Local emissions were not tremendously important after catalytic converters and diesel particulate filters became widespread but hotspots are gaining in significance in mega-cities, with particulates and oxides of nitrogen.

"The big gains in individual vehicles are offset by the large number of vehicles these cities have in certain areas and the local emissions from vehicles have greater influence in megacities because they use shorter trips.

Acknowledging that electric cars have less on-board energy efficiency than conventional cars, Welter suggested that while electric cars would be very expensive initially, their costs would come down over time to one day be on par with their internal-combustion cousins.

"At the beginning electric vehicles will be very expensive to have and to use. A garage of your own will be indispensible in the beginning, but there will be other infrastructure after time.

"In the foreseeable future there will be a break-even point where electric vehicles will become even cheaper for customers than conventional cars.

"Internal combustion engine sales will continue to grow until 2020-30, but by 2020 the proportion of electric registrations will be between 5-15 percent."

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