4 ms·

More efficient? Are you on drugs?

by valtih1978 13y ago

3pt14159 13y ago
In fact electricity driving cars is so much more efficient that you could burn gas in power plants and it would still outpace crude internal combustion engines.
- sliverstorm 13y ago
  That's mostly the difference between large, highly efficient internal combustion engines, and the small, less efficient but extremely portable, performat, and actually-obscenely-sophisticated internal combustion engines in cars. Electricity is simply efficient-enough of a transmission medium that it does not eat up all of the savings.
- valtih1978 13y ago
  How does it make coal or atomic energy more efficient than oil? You get electricity by burning them. When you burn either coal or oil, you loose 70% of energy. Then, you loose delivering the electric power and charging the accumulators. Finally, you have losses in the electric car. You are left with at best 10% of what the coal has supplied. Oil is higly concentrated energy. It could provide you 30% of the energy it contains into kinetic energy of the vehicle. So, which efficiency are you talking about? Is it the efficiency of warming the planet up? You are on the right track! Burning more carbon fuel is what we crucially need in our age of peak-everything!
  - 3pt14159 13y ago
    Because you only use the explosive power of gasoline when you use it in a car and because you idle much of it away. The savings from transmission and charging do not account for the biggest waste of energy: lack of thermo use in internal combustion engines. I speak about efficiency per unsubsidised dollar which is generally a rough correlator for usable work per input fuel.
    - valtih1978 13y ago
      What?
      - 3pt14159 13y ago
        When you use liquid fuel in an engine you are taking advantage of the fact that the fuel converts into a gas quickly and thus increases the relative pressure enough to transfer momentum to the piston head which ultimately powers the drivetrain. In an electric power plant, this is only part of the equation, the other part is that you also use the excess heat to drive a glycol or water / steam turbine system, recovering much more energy from the fuel. This makes up for the losses of electricity in the lines. furthermore, nuclear power is by far the safest and most energy efficient source of power. Cheaper, safer, and far more environmentally friendly than a distributed gasoline delivery and combustion system.
        valtih1978 13y ago
        This makes the heat distribution a joke. In the urban sprawl you use gas to heat the building and water. Do not try to cheat me. At first, heat power plants can "recover" the heat only when you have vertical cities in the cold regions. Then indeed you can supply the heat as byproduct to the city. However, the car infrastructure assumes that you have a horzontal city (aka urban sprawl). You loose much more in the electric transformations that I have described than "recover" from these conversions. How safe is nuclear, you may ask Bellarussians. The Japaneese managed to contaminate a the immense Pacific ocean with a single nuclear plant! "I think you should do some reading, then. The basic problem is the ever-growing pile of radioactive waste that no-one can get rid of. And as we keep seeing, no-one can effectively contain it either. http://sustainability.stackexchange.com/questions/2396/accounting-for-ecological-foot-print-of-non-renewable-resources#comment2641_2397 http://sustainability.stackexchange.com/questions/2396/accou... -- What do you think is he talking about? I have not yet considered the costs of uranium mining. Now, you propose to replace all fossil power (which is 90%) by atomic, you'll have the disasters 10 times faster. Do you know when we have the peak Uraneum? Squash that peak moment and you'll know that we have no more than 20 years of nuclear fuel. So, who do you try to cheat? The electric cars are only compatible with sustainability when you they are used only for special services (e.g. ambulance or agriculture but biofuel can be used there) rather than by general population.

More efficient? Are you on drugs?

In fact electricity driving cars is so much more efficient that you could burn gas in power plants and it would still outpace crude internal combustion engines.

sliverstorm 13y ago
That's mostly the difference between large, highly efficient internal combustion engines, and the small, less efficient but extremely portable, performat, and actually-obscenely-sophisticated internal combustion engines in cars. Electricity is simply efficient-enough of a transmission medium that it does not eat up all of the savings.
valtih1978 13y ago
How does it make coal or atomic energy more efficient than oil? You get electricity by burning them. When you burn either coal or oil, you loose 70% of energy. Then, you loose delivering the electric power and charging the accumulators. Finally, you have losses in the electric car. You are left with at best 10% of what the coal has supplied. Oil is higly concentrated energy. It could provide you 30% of the energy it contains into kinetic energy of the vehicle. So, which efficiency are you talking about? Is it the efficiency of warming the planet up? You are on the right track! Burning more carbon fuel is what we crucially need in our age of peak-everything!
- 3pt14159 13y ago
  Because you only use the explosive power of gasoline when you use it in a car and because you idle much of it away. The savings from transmission and charging do not account for the biggest waste of energy: lack of thermo use in internal combustion engines. I speak about efficiency per unsubsidised dollar which is generally a rough correlator for usable work per input fuel.
  - valtih1978 13y ago
    What?
    - 3pt14159 13y ago
      When you use liquid fuel in an engine you are taking advantage of the fact that the fuel converts into a gas quickly and thus increases the relative pressure enough to transfer momentum to the piston head which ultimately powers the drivetrain. In an electric power plant, this is only part of the equation, the other part is that you also use the excess heat to drive a glycol or water / steam turbine system, recovering much more energy from the fuel. This makes up for the losses of electricity in the lines. furthermore, nuclear power is by far the safest and most energy efficient source of power. Cheaper, safer, and far more environmentally friendly than a distributed gasoline delivery and combustion system.
      - valtih1978 13y ago
        This makes the heat distribution a joke. In the urban sprawl you use gas to heat the building and water. Do not try to cheat me. At first, heat power plants can "recover" the heat only when you have vertical cities in the cold regions. Then indeed you can supply the heat as byproduct to the city. However, the car infrastructure assumes that you have a horzontal city (aka urban sprawl). You loose much more in the electric transformations that I have described than "recover" from these conversions. How safe is nuclear, you may ask Bellarussians. The Japaneese managed to contaminate a the immense Pacific ocean with a single nuclear plant! "I think you should do some reading, then. The basic problem is the ever-growing pile of radioactive waste that no-one can get rid of. And as we keep seeing, no-one can effectively contain it either. http://sustainability.stackexchange.com/questions/2396/accounting-for-ecological-foot-print-of-non-renewable-resources#comment2641_2397 http://sustainability.stackexchange.com/questions/2396/accou... -- What do you think is he talking about? I have not yet considered the costs of uranium mining. Now, you propose to replace all fossil power (which is 90%) by atomic, you'll have the disasters 10 times faster. Do you know when we have the peak Uraneum? Squash that peak moment and you'll know that we have no more than 20 years of nuclear fuel. So, who do you try to cheat? The electric cars are only compatible with sustainability when you they are used only for special services (e.g. ambulance or agriculture but biofuel can be used there) rather than by general population.