Would you buy an electric car?

[Shannow]

Originally Posted By: IndyIan
Originally Posted By: Shannow
Remember, a gallon of gas "holds" 36.6KWhrs...nearly 3 times my household's daily consumption.


But you do have to remember as well that a gas engine is maybe 15% efficient turning the gas energy into go. An electric motor for a car would be around 90% efficient. So a trip in a gas car that requires a gallon of gas, only takes 5 to 6 KWhrs of electricity.


From an environmental aspect, a power station is only 35-40% efficient at burning coal. Transmission losses of around 10%, whatever charging losses are into the battery etc. etc.

Environmentally, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense for a large part of the world.

Cost wise, power for all WILL go up as any excess in the grid will be rapidly consumed, and new plant (and environmental damage) will have to come on line.

First will be the 23% efficient gas peaking plant.

 

[rpn453]

Originally Posted By: meep
it sickens me, in this economy, in this world stage, to see how much american money gets given away for foreign oil.


It does seem pretty bad, but maybe it would look better from a different perspective: money isn't real, but control of a huge, steady oil supply is!

 

[expat]

There are a lot of things I like about electricity for propulsion, especially if you consider stop and go traffic.
Right now I would not buy because of Price, Range, Life expectancy of batteries, lack of quick charging infrastructure etc.
But I can see in Ten years they could be almost the norm in urban areas.
Lets face it, the days of the Gas Guzzler are coming to an end.

 

[Kestas]

Not for me. There are some weekends where I put 300-400 miles on my car. I couldn't afford the extra cost of purchase, registration, insurance, and maintenance just to have a second car (commuter car).

 

[heathenbrewing]

Without a doubt, yes.

But the only one I want is the Tesla Roadster since my boss let me drive his.

0-60 in under 3.9 seconds.

 

[Shannow]

If I could afford a Tesla, that would be my commute car...

But then I wouldn't need to commute.

 

[severach]

Originally Posted By: Shannow
First will be the 23% efficient gas peaking plant.

What's that going to do to my heat bill? Oh look, it's happening already!

 

[CivicFan]

Originally Posted By: rpn453
Originally Posted By: meep
it sickens me, in this economy, in this world stage, to see how much american money gets given away for foreign oil.


It does seem pretty bad, but maybe it would look better from a different perspective: money isn't real, but control of a huge, steady oil supply is!


The money to buy the oil is one slice of the pie. Maintaining a large military presence around the world is probably even costlier.

And then there is the non-monetary cost of killed, maimed or psychologically disturbed soldiers.

 

[IndyIan]

Originally Posted By: Shannow
Originally Posted By: IndyIan
Originally Posted By: Shannow
Remember, a gallon of gas "holds" 36.6KWhrs...nearly 3 times my household's daily consumption.


But you do have to remember as well that a gas engine is maybe 15% efficient turning the gas energy into go. An electric motor for a car would be around 90% efficient. So a trip in a gas car that requires a gallon of gas, only takes 5 to 6 KWhrs of electricity.


From an environmental aspect, a power station is only 35-40% efficient at burning coal. Transmission losses of around 10%, whatever charging losses are into the battery etc. etc.

Environmentally, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense for a large part of the world.

Cost wise, power for all WILL go up as any excess in the grid will be rapidly consumed, and new plant (and environmental damage) will have to come on line.

First will be the 23% efficient gas peaking plant.

Australia is moving to renewables though, its a pretty sunny place on average I think. Build big solar arrays and big water reseviors to store solar energy as gravity potential energy for the evenings and cloudy days.
Moving dirt and rock around once has to be cheaper than fooling around with finicky nuclear plants forever and doing something with the spent fuel...

 

[D189379]

Originally Posted By: friendly_jacek
It's not a question of if but when.

Two words: peak oil.


We'll be running out of electricity too if that happens.

 

[tonycarguy]

If electric vehicles take over the world, BITOG would disappear too. No more oil changes! What would we all be doing instead of arguing over what oils are Group IV?

 

[Glockenspieler]

I think in their present state of development, it is probably a pretty small segment that they really make sense for. I think that one might make sense for my wife. She works about 4 miles from home and she does bike occasionally but we live in Atlanta and she just can't show up sweating after a ride up and down hills in 90 degree temps. We would stay with two cars so in mine we could load up the bikes or go on a long trip if need be.

Honestly, I think that what is probably needed is some steady increase in the cost of gas to reflect the true cost of burning gas. Right now, making the planet warmer is free in a sense, but it is really going to cost down the pike. But I think that when that happens, we're going to find that it will be far better to simply develop a more mass transit orientation than to try to replace all the gas cars with electric. That doesn't mean that everyone will have to take the train/subway/bus but probably alot more will do it than do now.

 

[spasm3]

Originally Posted By: meep
i like the volt. electric propulsion. fueled charge for extended range. make the volt's genset a diesel (why they didn't astounds me). all of the sudden it doubles in usefulness, not range-limited.

it sickens me, in this economy, in this world stage, to see how much american money gets given away for foreign oil.

M


Thats why i don't understand limiting our offshore deep drilling , while loaning money to Venezuela to deep drill in the same places.

 

[RTexasF]

Electric? No thanks, I'll stick with unleaded.

 

[artbuc]

Originally Posted By: IndyIan
Originally Posted By: Shannow
Remember, a gallon of gas "holds" 36.6KWhrs...nearly 3 times my household's daily consumption.


But you do have to remember as well that a gas engine is maybe 15% efficient turning the gas energy into go. An electric motor for a car would be around 90% efficient. So a trip in a gas car that requires a gallon of gas, only takes 5 to 6 KWhrs of electricity.


This is the kind of thinking that drives me nuts. Please tell me the typical overall efficiency of converting fuel at the generating plant to electricity delivered to your home. Also, where will the electricity come from when we all convert to electric cars? Are you in favor of nuclear power and/or coal burning? Have you calculated how many windmills we will have to build to power electric cars? Will you accept the annihilation of certain bird species caused by windmill carnage? Seriously, the environmental wackos NEVER consider the unintended consequences of their naive schemes. How do you feel about the presence of MTBE in every gallon of fresh water in North America? Were you leading the charge to add MTBE to gasoline in order to "reduce" pollution.

 

[rshunter]

Originally Posted By: spasm3
Thats why i don't understand limiting our offshore deep drilling , while loaning money to Venezuela to deep drill in the same places.

Explaining it would require violating the forum rules...

 

[Merkava_4]

Yes, because electric cars are capable of breath taking acceleration.

All they need to do is get the range extended and the recharge time reduced and people will buy them.

 

[CivicFan]

Originally Posted By: spasm3
Originally Posted By: meep
i like the volt. electric propulsion. fueled charge for extended range. make the volt's genset a diesel (why they didn't astounds me). all of the sudden it doubles in usefulness, not range-limited.

it sickens me, in this economy, in this world stage, to see how much american money gets given away for foreign oil.

M


Thats why i don't understand limiting our offshore deep drilling , while loaning money to Venezuela to deep drill in the same places.


You gotta watch news sometimes. There was a huge spill a few months ago by BP. I'm sure you may have heard something - or Google might be your friend.

Also, look at the map. Venezuela is far away from our shores.

 

[IndyIan]

Originally Posted By: artbuc
Originally Posted By: IndyIan
Originally Posted By: Shannow
Remember, a gallon of gas "holds" 36.6KWhrs...nearly 3 times my household's daily consumption.


But you do have to remember as well that a gas engine is maybe 15% efficient turning the gas energy into go. An electric motor for a car would be around 90% efficient. So a trip in a gas car that requires a gallon of gas, only takes 5 to 6 KWhrs of electricity.


This is the kind of thinking that drives me nuts. Please tell me the typical overall efficiency of converting fuel at the generating plant to electricity delivered to your home. Also, where will the electricity come from when we all convert to electric cars? Are you in favor of nuclear power and/or coal burning? Have you calculated how many windmills we will have to build to power electric cars? Will you accept the annihilation of certain bird species caused by windmill carnage? Seriously, the environmental wackos NEVER consider the unintended consequences of their naive schemes. How do you feel about the presence of MTBE in every gallon of fresh water in North America? Were you leading the charge to add MTBE to gasoline in order to "reduce" pollution.

So you would have stuck with leaded gas, no catalytic converters, and 16 mpg cars?

Obviously not every vehicle should be electric either, it will work for some situations and not for others. Also electric cars could also be made to be much more efficient and use half the energy for actual travelling that gas cars use. A car is only 15% efficient at crusing 55mph, in stop and go traffic it could be 5%, an electric car is 90% efficient all the time.
Also you have to do a full account of the energy and environmental cost to get gas to your local station. Gas from the tar sands has taken a huge amount of energy to process, maybe the same amount of energy in gas...

As I've said earlier, solar panels on your roof and some sort of home flywheel energy storage system might have 1/3 of commuters using electric cars with no additional load on the grid at all and probably could feed into it...

 

[Shannow]

Well there's another 30-40 grand to factor in to electric car ownership.