3 ms·
They're very high especially if power is coming from solar panels on your roof or excess power from neighbors because there are virtually no transmission losses
by KennyBlanken 2y ago
They're very high especially if power is coming from solar panels on your roof or excess power from neighbors because there are virtually no transmission losses. Also, most power plants aren't that much better than car engines.
Coal plants are about 33% efficient and natural gas plants are about 45%.
- akoboldfrying 2y agoCommercially available solar panels are below 30% in efficiency. If the energy going into the EV battery instead came from a gas turbine, the efficiency drop would be similar, I expect. If you want to say that this factor doesn't count: In what sense should the oft-quoted factor in the final step count? (That is, the loss in converting from petrol to rotational motion in an ICE, or from electric potential to rotational motion in an EV.) I think the only real utility that number has is in estimating the total amount of stored energy in a typical car of each type -- this could be used to estimate the amount of damage that would be caused by the vehicle catching on fire. Other claims strike me as meaningless.
- 698969 2y agoIt's fair game to compare if you include the conversion efficiency of the organisms that made the fossil fuels :P We care about the efficiency of converting resources we have a limited amount of, sunlight is unlimited on humanity's scale, so is wind, but how much solar or wind power we can extract from them and transmit has constraints and that is the step where we should start caring about efficiency
- akoboldfrying 2y agoThis is indeed a good argument to burn our limited petrol supplies for heat (closer to 100% efficient) instead of using it in today's inefficient ICE cars.