4 ms·
We are constrained by electricity production and the cost of materials needed to make batteries. Electric cars ain't happening anytime soon.
by holydude 9y ago
We are constrained by electricity production and the cost of materials needed to make batteries.
Electric cars ain't happening anytime soon.
- anovikov 9y agoNot at all. There are about 250M cars in the U.S., each drives about 12K miles per year. Tesla makes 400 miles on a 100kwh charge, add 86% charger efficiency, 115kwh. That makes 860 TWh per year to replace all U.S. cars and light trucks with electric cars. U.S. produces 4060 TWh per year, so that's just about 21%. Sizeable increase, but that's fine: most of the charging will be by night when the car is parked at home, and by night, there is a big drop in electricity consumption so grid won't be overloaded at all. It will be the cheapest electricity in the world - just adding the variable cost. Same thing now, with about 24 average mpg an existing car makes, eats 10 million barrels of oil per day (counting 81.5% average oil refining efficiency), or more than 20% of entire U.S. energy use - all kinds of energy, that is 7x more energy (ok, about 3.5x more given average efficiency of electricity production). Even if that electricity was produced from oil on old-style single-stage thermal plants (a crazy idea - that would be the most expensive electricity in the world and no one is going to do that for sure), it would mean 2.7x savings. In reality, because most of that will be cheap coal and natural gas and renewables, there will be more than 10x savings.