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No its not overlooked, its called wheel to well efficiency and EV's are more efficient than ICE even if run off fossil fuels at a power plant, which it won't co
by SigmundA 4y ago
No its not overlooked, its called wheel to well efficiency and EV's are more efficient than ICE even if run off fossil fuels at a power plant, which it won't completely since even the US has a renewable/carbon free mix of about 20% currently on the grid.
Multi-stage heat recovery power plants are more efficient than even the best ICE engines in cars, there is no need to worry about space or weight so you can have very complicated heat recovery and emissions gear maintained by dedicated staff rather than being in my vehicle.
Power plants can run off less refined or even unrefined fuel, the efficiency of refining is often overlooked along with physically shipping refined fuel to fueling stations.
Finally it decouples the power source from the vehicle. Even if it where no more efficient to run EV's off fossil fuels burned at power plants, your vehicle can get upgraded to run off solar or nuclear or wind or whatever in the future while you get to keep the same vehicle. Any programmer should recognize the value of separating concerns for easier migration.
Where I am we have a garbage incinerator power plant with an elaborated scrubber system, EV around here are technically running partially off garbage. This is not carbon free by any means, but effective at reducing landfill use and getting power out of it.
- pfdietz 4y agoIn the US, even the power plants that run on fossil fuels tend to run on natural gas, which produces roughly half the CO2 of a coal fired plant.
- SigmundA 4y agoTrue and we have a lot of natural gas and in a pinch we can run our vehicles off coal if needed even if not ideal. The flexibility of the power source due to decoupling seems so often overlooked especially when thinking about energy independence and protecting national interest.