I’ve been doing a bunch of research lately on electric vehicles to see what might make sense for us at Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage for our vehicle co-op. For 12 years we have been focusing on biodiesel and vegetable oil based fuels but things have not always been smooth. The main issues have been related to winter fuel gelling and fuel filters clogging in general. We’ve also never gotten a steady system for  collection of used oil and production going, so we have been using biodiesel made from new veggie oil which is only marginally better for the environment than petroleum.

We are now embarking on a major re-evaluation of vehicle technologies for our co-op, with a team researching things like electric vehicles, hybrids, ethanol (including home made, potentially from cellulose), bio-gas, wood-gas, human and animal powered, and any new technologies in the veggie oil world.

My interest in electric vehicles (EVs) has come out of my research into a village-wide electric power co-op with a largish wind turbine to power our whole village. With an abundant source of renewable electricity, EVs could be our most ecological option. There are ecological issues related to batteries of course, but my research shows that EVs are a net benefit over petro based vehicles and on par with other bio-fueled options currently or soon to be available (more on that in a post soon).

Of course the main issue with EVs is about range – how far you can drive on a single charge. Most all-electric vehicles (sometimes called Battery Electric Vehicles or BEVs to distinguish them from hybrids) still have ranges in the 80-100 mile range. That range is great for most folks daily commuting needs, but our rural location means many or even most of our trips are 80-150 miles.

A further complication, is that a 100 mile advertised range does not always mean you can drive 100 miles. Accessories like A/C, heat, lights, etc. can reduce your range. Higher speeds and hills also reduce range (and while we don’t have mountains we do have hills). Winter temps can also reduce battery capacity and range.  It also matters how you drive – fast acceleration and breaking are inefficient.

So what are our options?

In the All Electric Category I found the following vehicles available now or in the next 18 months.

The most appealing for us would be the Tesla Sedan because of the extended range it can provide. The price tag is pretty high though. The Nissan LEAF is definitely more affordable, but its unclear if it would really get us where we need to go (and back that is). The CODA is still limited in its availability.

For folks living in suburban or urban areas with shorter commutes I think a lot of these options would work great.

I also looked into Plug-in Hybrids such as the upcoming Chevy Volt and the 2011 Plug-in Prius as well as the various Prius Plug-in conversion kits.

The Volt is expected to have a 40 mile electric range and get 50 mpg once the gasoline (or E85) engine kicks in.  The 2011 Prius will have only a 15 mile electric range and also get around 50 mpg. With a Prius Plug in conversion you can get electric ranges of 25-50 miles before it goes back into hybrid modde and gets 46-50 mpg (depending on model year).

Its too bad the electric range on these hybrids is so short. If you could get something with an 80 mile range and a gasoline/diesel back up that would really work well for us and for a lot of people I would think. Obviously the cost and weight of having a big battery pack and a gas engine is probably the issue.

I’m expecting that once these EVs are available,  someone will come up with an aftermarket add on battery pack to increase the range, just like there are plug-in Prius kits. That could be just the ticket and demonstrate the demand for EVs with a bigger range.

People wanting to know how to reduce their footprint would like to have data so they know what changes to make to do it. Unfortunately the data available for a lot of choice is still incredibly hard to find or inaccurate and vague.

I personally don’t do a lot of footprinting because  I don’t feel the need for exact numbers to trust that doing a few key things will reduce my footprint:

• Eating primarily vegan
• Driving fewer miles in efficient vehicles
• Having a smaller home (or sharing it)
• Using less electricity, gas, and heating oil
• Reducing long distance travel

Once you’ve done all that then you can start talking about the details: local and organic food, flying vs driving vs trains, etc.

For those interested in calculators here’s some links that might help you find the one thats best for you or that has that bit of information you were looking for. Let us know if you have a favorite or find ones that are really good.

Top Five Footprint Calculators – Just some bloggers opinion but there are some good links

The 15 best carbon Calculators – If 5 isn’t enough for you try 15.

Michael Bluejay’s Calculator – This guy didn’t like the other calculators so he wrote his own. Its very simple and well laid out. Its worth reading his opinions on the other calculators. Its also worth reading about him. I feel like I met him somewhere before.

Food carbon Calculator – For those wanting a detailed look at food. You can compare the CO2 of tropical vs local fruit, cooked vs raw veggies, etc. This may not work in every browser.

If you find one that can tell you the footprint of a strawbale home vs a cob home or the different impacts of sugar vs sorghum, then I’m definitely interested.

A friend recently sent me a link to an article about the ecofootprint of pets. The article claimed that the footprint of owning a dog was greater than driving an SUV!

I was skeptical of this attention grabbing notion, and looked a little closer. Some of their assumptions are a bit sketchy – they use a very low miles per year figure for the SUV, they use human food figures when there should probably be some discount for animal food often being byproducts, they use a very large dog in their comparison, they do not include any of the other impact factors of driving (vehicle production, roads, etc.).

Regardless, of which is worse, they both have an impact. I get tired of the way people use these kind of comparisons.

If people were coming from the perspective of  “Each of us can use our fair share of the earth’s resources, how do I want to use mine?” then I don’t really care if they choose to have a pet or an SUV. As long as they are staying within a sustainable impact they can choose how to spend their eco-footprint budget.

Unfortunately, the average American uses over 4 times their fair share of the earth’s resources. So, it ends up feeling like the issue is presented as “Since destroying the planet with an SUV is not that much different than the destruction of a pet, they must both be minor so I might as well do both.”

So all of this got me looking at footprinting and I found some interesting stuff:

Human Welfare and Ecological Footprint

On wikipedia’s eco-footprint page this graph shows how the US impact is off the charts while its Human Development Index is no better than many countries that cause less than half the impact.

Cuba certainly occupies an interesting spot on that graph – as the top country in terms of development that is using less than its fair earth share.

Greenhous Gas Emissions From Food

Or this graph that shows the average American’s greenhouse gas emssions from food vs driving.

This does not mean its OK to drive!!!!!

It means you need to change your diet and your driving, if you want to have a reasonable footprint.

A vegan diet can reduce your food footprint by 72%. Thats 5.8 tons of CO2 equivalent.

Driving half as much can reduce your carbon footprint from vehicles by 45%.  What!?! Why not 50%? Because 10% of the lifecycle impact of a vehicle is in the manufacturing.

So get a car with twice the mileage and drive half as much and you will still be emitting 32% of the GHG from driving you were before.

Now if you sell your car and bike, walk, and take public transit – now we are talking. (And don’t give me that bullshit about how biking has a bigger impact because of the food you eat unless you have some real numbers that include all the externalities – roads, pollution, health, people living closer to work, etc.)