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It's more efficient than blowing it up in your engine. ICE engines are ~15% efficient at converting energy to movement. You must also include the cost of trans
by confluence 14y ago
It's more efficient than blowing it up in your engine.
ICE engines are ~15% efficient at converting energy to movement. You must also include the cost of transporting, refining and drilling for the oil (coal is cheaper to get). This should push it down to ~10% burn to road.
Main stream coal power plants are ~30-39% efficient, electric transmission lines are ~95% efficient, battery charging is ~88% efficient and electric engines are ~92% efficient. That's burn to road of ~20-30%. Even without taking into account the extra costs of doing stuff with the oil to put it into your car, and having that priced with electric - electric is still better. There's a reason we electrified our trains, and a reason that diesel trains actually use their diesel engines to run electric motors.
Here are Tesla's calculations:
http://www.teslamotors.com/goelectric/efficiency http://www.teslamotors.com/goelectric/efficiency (look at the final well-to-wheel efficiency - you'll notice it's a little more than double ICE engines).
We're also ignoring the cost of pollution that ICE vehicles bring (it's a lot more than power plants - which because they are centralized, can economically mitigate the release of pollution). If you price that into ICE, they lose pretty badly - because pollution is not, and never should have been free.
It's a resource you use and abuse to the detriment of everyone else.
Fundamentally you must understand this and this only:
Electric vehicles are 2x as efficient as ICE vehicles and cost less on a total cost of ownership basis.
They have won so badly that only willful ignorance can stop one from avoiding such an obvious conclusion (Innovator's dilemma).
- knowtheory 14y agoThis also presumes that you have access to a reliable power grid which is not the case in places like central and subcontinental Asia, or in the aftermath of a natural disaster like Superstorm Sandy. (despite that i totally think we should go electric. just that we should figure out ways to setup better infrastructure and disaster mitigation)
- confluence 14y agoYou don't have access to cheap/easy oil in those disaster situations either. Furthermore subcontinental Asia is driving the adoption of tiny electric vehicles - China has over 130 million electric scooters (and that's from a few years ago - the numbers are going insane).
- hellgas00 14y agoIf you're on the moon, combustion based engines wouldn't work, so there is that... A freak natural disaster isn't a great reason to stay away owning an electric car. Of course there are going to be places around the world where the adoption of EVs isn't a good idea, but there are places where owning a boat is more useful than owning a car. It's about the needs of the consumer and the ability of local infrastructure to support it.
- r00fus 14y agoHowever, that's where hybrids shine - the slightly increased complexity of my Prius still makes it 2x as gas-efficient as a non-hybrid gas car. I remeber a slashdot post a few years ago about a Prius onwer who mentioned how the evacuation of Houston during Hurricane Rita was an absolute nightmare for most car owners - the roads were packed and everyone was doing 1-2mph for 8+ hours. Many SUVs were simply abandoned on the side of the road. He ended up getting 55mpg for the week. If I didn't own a hybrid already, a Volt would be an awesome car to get - can be electric for it's full range, but like modern diesel trains - it simply uses the gas engine as a powerplant to run it's electric motor.
- varjag 14y agoAlso, sizable portions of electric energy worldwide are generated from renewables (hydro, nuclear), so the efficiency is even higher.