4 ms·
The EPA says the best internal combustion cars are 26%: http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/atv.shtml http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/atv.shtml
by Zak 14y ago
The EPA says the best internal combustion cars are 26%: http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/atv.shtml http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/atv.shtml
- JoeAltmaier 14y agoAnd coal plants are about the worst yield of various energy plants. Anyway, the whole thing is moot. The article may as well say "High School Student crams stuff under hood of car, claims it will kick butt if he can get it to work". I predict we'll never know.
- Zak 14y agoCoal plants may be the least efficient, but they're the most common source of electricity in the US. To be fair, I picked the most optimistic efficiency I could find for a coal plant. I was trying to present a best-case scenario. It looks like the best case with natural gas is 60%, or 35% total system efficiency. Yes, that's a significant gain over 26%, but it's a best-case scenario. The real-world efficiency of the most efficient internal combustion cars is fairly similar to that of electric cars.
- JoeAltmaier 14y agoIt may be harder to measure 'efficiency' of nuclear (which we use here), solar and wind. Certainly they are more sustainable. Maybe we want the 'sustainability metric' instead.
- Zak 14y agoIt's not hard to measure the efficiency of nuclear or solar; it's just not as useful as directly comparing two systems that run on fossil fuels.
- JoeAltmaier 14y agoHm. How do you compare uranium fuel efficiency to coal? Chemical vs nuclear reactions - by weight? cost? heat?
- Zak 14y agoYou don't compare them, as such comparisons aren't useful. You can measure the efficiency of a nuclear plant by comparing the total amount of energy released in the reaction to the amount of electric output. Such measurements are commonly used to compare different reactor designs to each other.
- JoeAltmaier 14y agoIn the end, there's only human efficiency. How much effort in people-power does it take to get how much energy. Indirectly or directly. We often get confused about money and chemistry etc. They are not really comparable to human capital.