6 ms·

The equivalent wattage of a gas pump is something like 1-2 megawatts, based on energy transfer per time. (Internalizing this fact is important for understanding

The equivalent wattage of a gas pump is something like 1-2 megawatts, based on energy transfer per time. (Internalizing this fact is important for understanding why gasoline is hard to displace!)

faitswulff 2y ago
It’s wild that Chinese automakers are getting to equivalent charging rates.
- sbelskie 2y ago
  By this do you mean that Chinese automakers are getting close to a charging rate that would be equivalent to the time it takes to pump gasoline for the equivalent energy? If so, do you have any sources on that?
  - badlibrarian 2y ago
    https://insideevs.com/news/755163/chinese-evs-1-megawatt-chargers/ https://insideevs.com/news/755163/chinese-evs-1-megawatt-cha...
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
rafram 2y ago
I just don’t buy this argument as a reason people don’t want EVs. The primary benefit of an EV is that you ~never need to stop and “refuel” it unless you’re making a long road trip. You can install a charger at home, even a very slow one that doesn’t need a special circuit, and always have a full battery in the morning. When you do need to stop on a road trip, you can use fast charging, which is ~250 kW, so somewhere around a quarter of the gas pump’s “wattage.” You’ll probably want to use the bathroom/buy a drink anyway, so charging taking four-ish times as long as pumping isn’t really a big deal.
- alephnerd 2y ago
  > You can install a charger at home, even a very slow one that doesn’t need a special circuit Lots of people rent, and might not have a parking space with charging available. That said, battery and charging technology is evolving, so it might be a solved problem 10 years from now - especially as Toyota and Idemetsu Kosan are on track for mass producing Solid State EV batteries by 2028 [0] [0] - https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/japans-idemitsu-build-lithium-sulphide-plant-help-support-toyotas-ev-plans-2025-02-27/ https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/japans-idemitsu-buil...
  - rafram 2y ago
    Yeah, of course. I’m a renter, I understand. Some states [1] have laws allowing tenants to install chargers, although obviously not all renters have designated parking spaces. Where I live (NYC), most people rent and the idea of a “tenant parking space” is fairly foreign, but there are a decent number of EV chargers on the street in my neighborhood, so people make it work. [1]: https://americanlandlord.com/california-landlord-tenant-laws/california-landlord-must-allow-electric-vehicle-charging-station/ https://americanlandlord.com/california-landlord-tenant-laws...
- dylanmulvaney 2y ago
  [flagged]
- hartator 2y ago
  > unless you’re making a long road trip Yes, but that’s enough to really make road tripping on an EV a chore.
- loloquwowndueo 2y ago
  I don’t want an EV because it’s too freaking expensive. That’s basically the only reason at this point.
  - tzs 2y ago
    In the US if you buy before the tax credits go away you can get a Chevy Equinox EV for around $27500.
abetusk 2y ago
To further expand on this with some back-of-the-envelope calculation, I've heard EVs are on the order of 30-40 kWh. Say the power storage of the gas tank in an ICE car and the battery storage of an EV are commensurate. Conservatively, say refueling your ICE car takes about 1 min, so 30,000 Wh / ((1/60)h) ~ 1.8 MW.
- vel0city 2y ago
  40kWh is a pretty small EV battery. Many are more like 70-90kWh.
- Calwestjobs 2y ago
  for home charging, figures are exact opposite - when i come home it "costs me" 3 seconds to plug it in, then i do literally literally nothing ( or something else rather), then it "costs me" another 3 seconds to unplug it in morning, so for 100kwh it is essentially 6 seconds. so electric car wastes 1/10 of my time compared to gasoline one. im good mathematician, but i like engineering more, because it has to take into account external factors, not "just" numbers. (intentionally not calculating travel time to and from gas station, queue, noise, smell of a gas station etc )
  - abetusk 2y ago
    The way you've described it, charging at your home takes 8+ hours. You can do other tasks in parallel, so the effective cost to you is 6 seconds but that doesn't change how long it takes to charge your vehicle. There are many use cases where charging at home is not an option, in which case understanding charging time becomes an important factor. I like mathematics and engineering, which is why I like to understand basic facts to better address an issue rather than contort facts to dismiss an issue.
    - Calwestjobs 2y ago
      you phone literally knows when you're going to sleep, when on toilet, what cake did you have on your birthday. so you can ask it to tell you exact trips you took, and you can calculate when and how you can charge and for how long, from that data.
wopwops 2y ago
"EVs convert over 77% of the electrical energy from the grid to power at the wheels. Conventional gasoline vehicles only convert about 12%–30% of the energy stored in gasoline to power at the wheels." https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/evtech.shtml https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/evtech.shtml EV charging doesn't need to deliver anywhere near the amount of energy contained in gas to displace gas.
- coderenegade 2y ago
  The ~2MW value is after taking that into account.
- cudgy 2y ago
  Does this calculation account for the 10-20% electrical energy loss during transmission across the grid?
  - SOLAR_FIELDS 2y ago
    Probably if you wanted to do that you would also need to calculate the energy loss of transporting the gas to the pump as well
    - actionfromafar 2y ago
      And losses during burning of the gas.
  - pfdietz 2y ago
    The fraction of energy lost in the grid in the US is around 6%.
  - zamalek 2y ago
    Things look even more dire for gas when you consider the entire supply chain. Remember that you burn gas as terrible efficiency to transport it to gas station.
    - 2y ago
Y-bar 2y ago
On the other hand, a significant number of trips will begin their trip with a full "tank" (battery) and will therefore not even need to stop to refill. The median distance travelled on long-distance trips is less than 200 miles in the US, which is clearly within the limit of a normal BEV battery. https://www.bts.gov/statistical-products/surveys/national-household-travel-survey-long-distance-travel-quick-facts https://www.bts.gov/statistical-products/surveys/national-ho...
- dingnuts 2y ago
  The GP's point about the energy density of gasoline and how quickly it can be transferred is not refuted by this irrelevant statistic; indeed, reading the same statistic with a pessimistic interpretation makes my point: if the median trip distance is 200 miles, about half of trips are longer than an EV battery charge, requiring a long refuel stop. Half is a lot of trips to give up by switching to an EV!
  - Y-bar 2y ago
    > how quickly it can be transferred is not refuted by this irrelevant statistic Of course it is refuted. No need to transfer is without a doubt faster than a transfer taking a few minutes. > if the median trip distance is 200 miles half of trips are longer than an EV battery charge The median LONG distance trip. The trip which only happens a few times per yer. That trip. There are about 2.6 billion long distance trips, and 411 billion daily trips. So this means that just over 0.5% of all trips in a year is a long-distance trip, and therefore significantly less than half of those again can be completed without a refill. 0.25% of 365 = 0.9125 So one, probably two, long distance trips in USA per year on average need a refill on the way, when adjusted for all trips in the nation. In what world is that a lot?
  - vel0city 2y ago
    > if the median trip distance is 200 miles, This is a figure not based on reality. The normal commuter car does not have a median trip distance of 200mi. More like 20mi, if even that. How many people do you know have a 200 mile daily commute? Who normally drives 200mi to go get groceries? Absolute insanity. For most people I know their median car trip is probably <15mi. Mine is probably like 10.
occz 2y ago
Does that figure account for the wildly inefficient nature of internal combustion engines?
out_of_protocol 2y ago
> BYD will soon start deploying its 1000 kW ultrafast charging stations in China. The first batch of 500 chargers will begin operating in early April > ZEEKR unveiled a 1.2 Megawatt EV charger So it's possible. Hard to do though, 1-10MW of available capacity is hard to come by, infrastructure is not ready. Well, gas station infrastructure was built over more than a century of gas domination

The equivalent wattage of a gas pump is something like 1-2 megawatts, based on energy transfer per time. (Internalizing this fact is important for understanding why gasoline is hard to displace!)

faitswulff 2y ago

It’s wild that Chinese automakers are getting to equivalent charging rates.

sbelskie 2y ago
By this do you mean that Chinese automakers are getting close to a charging rate that would be equivalent to the time it takes to pump gasoline for the equivalent energy? If so, do you have any sources on that?
- badlibrarian 2y ago
  https://insideevs.com/news/755163/chinese-evs-1-megawatt-chargers/ https://insideevs.com/news/755163/chinese-evs-1-megawatt-cha...
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

rafram 2y ago

I just don’t buy this argument as a reason people don’t want EVs. The primary benefit of an EV is that you ~never need to stop and “refuel” it unless you’re making a long road trip. You can install a charger at home, even a very slow one that doesn’t need a special circuit, and always have a full battery in the morning. When you do need to stop on a road trip, you can use fast charging, which is ~250 kW, so somewhere around a quarter of the gas pump’s “wattage.” You’ll probably want to use the bathroom/buy a drink anyway, so charging taking four-ish times as long as pumping isn’t really a big deal.

alephnerd 2y ago
> You can install a charger at home, even a very slow one that doesn’t need a special circuit Lots of people rent, and might not have a parking space with charging available. That said, battery and charging technology is evolving, so it might be a solved problem 10 years from now - especially as Toyota and Idemetsu Kosan are on track for mass producing Solid State EV batteries by 2028 [0] [0] - https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/japans-idemitsu-build-lithium-sulphide-plant-help-support-toyotas-ev-plans-2025-02-27/ https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/japans-idemitsu-buil...
- rafram 2y ago
  Yeah, of course. I’m a renter, I understand. Some states [1] have laws allowing tenants to install chargers, although obviously not all renters have designated parking spaces. Where I live (NYC), most people rent and the idea of a “tenant parking space” is fairly foreign, but there are a decent number of EV chargers on the street in my neighborhood, so people make it work. [1]: https://americanlandlord.com/california-landlord-tenant-laws/california-landlord-must-allow-electric-vehicle-charging-station/ https://americanlandlord.com/california-landlord-tenant-laws...
dylanmulvaney 2y ago
[flagged]
hartator 2y ago
> unless you’re making a long road trip Yes, but that’s enough to really make road tripping on an EV a chore.
loloquwowndueo 2y ago
I don’t want an EV because it’s too freaking expensive. That’s basically the only reason at this point.
- tzs 2y ago
  In the US if you buy before the tax credits go away you can get a Chevy Equinox EV for around $27500.

abetusk 2y ago

To further expand on this with some back-of-the-envelope calculation, I've heard EVs are on the order of 30-40 kWh. Say the power storage of the gas tank in an ICE car and the battery storage of an EV are commensurate. Conservatively, say refueling your ICE car takes about 1 min, so 30,000 Wh / ((1/60)h) ~ 1.8 MW.

vel0city 2y ago
40kWh is a pretty small EV battery. Many are more like 70-90kWh.
Calwestjobs 2y ago
for home charging, figures are exact opposite - when i come home it "costs me" 3 seconds to plug it in, then i do literally literally nothing ( or something else rather), then it "costs me" another 3 seconds to unplug it in morning, so for 100kwh it is essentially 6 seconds. so electric car wastes 1/10 of my time compared to gasoline one. im good mathematician, but i like engineering more, because it has to take into account external factors, not "just" numbers. (intentionally not calculating travel time to and from gas station, queue, noise, smell of a gas station etc )
- abetusk 2y ago
  The way you've described it, charging at your home takes 8+ hours. You can do other tasks in parallel, so the effective cost to you is 6 seconds but that doesn't change how long it takes to charge your vehicle. There are many use cases where charging at home is not an option, in which case understanding charging time becomes an important factor. I like mathematics and engineering, which is why I like to understand basic facts to better address an issue rather than contort facts to dismiss an issue.
  - Calwestjobs 2y ago
    you phone literally knows when you're going to sleep, when on toilet, what cake did you have on your birthday. so you can ask it to tell you exact trips you took, and you can calculate when and how you can charge and for how long, from that data.

wopwops 2y ago

"EVs convert over 77% of the electrical energy from the grid to power at the wheels. Conventional gasoline vehicles only convert about 12%–30% of the energy stored in gasoline to power at the wheels." https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/evtech.shtml https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/evtech.shtml EV charging doesn't need to deliver anywhere near the amount of energy contained in gas to displace gas.

coderenegade 2y ago
The ~2MW value is after taking that into account.
cudgy 2y ago
Does this calculation account for the 10-20% electrical energy loss during transmission across the grid?
- SOLAR_FIELDS 2y ago
  Probably if you wanted to do that you would also need to calculate the energy loss of transporting the gas to the pump as well
  - actionfromafar 2y ago
    And losses during burning of the gas.
- pfdietz 2y ago
  The fraction of energy lost in the grid in the US is around 6%.
- zamalek 2y ago
  Things look even more dire for gas when you consider the entire supply chain. Remember that you burn gas as terrible efficiency to transport it to gas station.
  - 2y ago

Y-bar 2y ago

On the other hand, a significant number of trips will begin their trip with a full "tank" (battery) and will therefore not even need to stop to refill. The median distance travelled on long-distance trips is less than 200 miles in the US, which is clearly within the limit of a normal BEV battery. https://www.bts.gov/statistical-products/surveys/national-household-travel-survey-long-distance-travel-quick-facts https://www.bts.gov/statistical-products/surveys/national-ho...

dingnuts 2y ago
The GP's point about the energy density of gasoline and how quickly it can be transferred is not refuted by this irrelevant statistic; indeed, reading the same statistic with a pessimistic interpretation makes my point: if the median trip distance is 200 miles, about half of trips are longer than an EV battery charge, requiring a long refuel stop. Half is a lot of trips to give up by switching to an EV!
- Y-bar 2y ago
  > how quickly it can be transferred is not refuted by this irrelevant statistic Of course it is refuted. No need to transfer is without a doubt faster than a transfer taking a few minutes. > if the median trip distance is 200 miles half of trips are longer than an EV battery charge The median LONG distance trip. The trip which only happens a few times per yer. That trip. There are about 2.6 billion long distance trips, and 411 billion daily trips. So this means that just over 0.5% of all trips in a year is a long-distance trip, and therefore significantly less than half of those again can be completed without a refill. 0.25% of 365 = 0.9125 So one, probably two, long distance trips in USA per year on average need a refill on the way, when adjusted for all trips in the nation. In what world is that a lot?
- vel0city 2y ago
  > if the median trip distance is 200 miles, This is a figure not based on reality. The normal commuter car does not have a median trip distance of 200mi. More like 20mi, if even that. How many people do you know have a 200 mile daily commute? Who normally drives 200mi to go get groceries? Absolute insanity. For most people I know their median car trip is probably <15mi. Mine is probably like 10.

occz 2y ago

Does that figure account for the wildly inefficient nature of internal combustion engines?

out_of_protocol 2y ago

> BYD will soon start deploying its 1000 kW ultrafast charging stations in China. The first batch of 500 chargers will begin operating in early April > ZEEKR unveiled a 1.2 Megawatt EV charger So it's possible. Hard to do though, 1-10MW of available capacity is hard to come by, infrastructure is not ready. Well, gas station infrastructure was built over more than a century of gas domination