I wonder if anybody pushing for electric cars has done a study of how much energy automobiles use daily, then do some math and come up with how much capacity our energy grids will need to expanded by to run electric cars.
The US uses ~390,000,000 gallons of gasoline in cars per day (2019 figures).
There are ~132,000 BTU in a gallon of gas, that's about 38kWh/gallon.
My last electric bill was ~850kWh, or equivalent to 22.3 gallons of gasoline/month.
Anyway, 390 million gallons a day at 38kWh/gallon is 1.482e10 kWh/day just for gasoline cars.
I'm not sure is kWh/day is the correct terminology, the little program I use to convert units didn't have many choices and BTU is mainly used to size heating and cooling systems here.
The US uses ~390,000,000 gallons of gasoline in cars per day (2019 figures).
There are ~132,000 BTU in a gallon of gas, that's about 38kWh/gallon.
My last electric bill was ~850kWh, or equivalent to 22.3 gallons of gasoline/month.
Anyway, 390 million gallons a day at 38kWh/gallon is 1.482e10 kWh/day just for gasoline cars.
I'm not sure is kWh/day is the correct terminology, the little program I use to convert units didn't have many choices and BTU is mainly used to size heating and cooling systems here.
Not so long ago I read an article about our fate and future... it basically said that we (the average wealthy people from the, ahem, civilized, or better industrialized world) would/will need to ditch something like 90% of our energy-consumption to come to terms with our earth, or our wish to stay there... don‘t know if even an electrified bicycle would fit that bill...
Isn't hydrogen produced by electrolysis which uses more electricity than the fuel cell produces, and doesn't it take lots of energy to super cool the hydrogen to store it, and doesn't hydrogen bleed of into the atmosphere ( it's a green house gas ) when it's stored?
Not so long ago I read an article about Arctic summers could be ice free by 2014.
People are sheep waiting to be led. Hence our arrival. Nobody got here by navigation. We're constantly introduced to the facilities by which those pulling the strings are maintaining their positions of wealth, the true rulers. Who of us, the peasants, would refuse to agree to save the planet if decided by referendum? 55% of all ocean seafood is deliberately mislabeled...globally. Take a wild guess why. I will not buy sole anymore. The largest example available is about 6 inches long and asbout 1/2 inch thick. Google how large a fully mature specimen would be...all gone! Would anyone here not agree to a 10 year global moratorium on ocean fishing? As long as they can keep the blinders on us they will continue. I could be more explicit/revealing but politics is not allowed.
Electric Cars - Are they great or what?
THE PINEHURST PRESS NEWS & VIEWS
Interesting Take on Electric Cars
As an engineer I love the electric vehicle technology. However, I have been troubled for a longtime by the fact that the electrical energy to keep the batteries charged has to come from the grid and that means more power generation and a huge increase in the distribution infrastructure. Whether generated from coal, gas, oil, wind or sun, installed generation capacity is limited. A friend sent me the following that says it very well. You should all take a look at this short article.
IF ELECTRIC CARS DO NOT USE GASOLINE, THEY WILL NOT PARTICIPATE IN PAYING A GASOLINE TAX ON EVERY GALLON THAT IS SOLD FOR AUTOMOBILES, WHICH WAS ENACTED SOME YEARS AGO TO HELP TO MAINTAIN OUR ROADS AND BRIDGES. THEY WILL USE THE ROADS, BUT WILL NOT PAY FOR THEIR MAINTENANCE! Now where will money come from for roads if not the gas tax?
In case you were thinking of buying hybrid or an electric car: Ever since the advent of electric cars, the REAL cost per mile of those things has never been discussed. All you ever heard was the mpg in terms of gasoline, with nary a mention of the cost of electricity to run it. This is the first article I've ever seen and tells the story pretty much as I expected it to.
Electricity has to be one of the least efficient ways to power things yet they're being shoved down our throats. Glad somebody finally put engineering and math to paper.
At a neighborhood BBQ I was talking to a neighbor, a BC Hydro Executive. I asked him how that renewable thing was doing. He laughed, then got serious.
If you really intend to adopt electric vehicles, he pointed out, you had to face certain realities. For example, a home charging system for a Tesla requires 75 amp service. The average house is equipped with 100 amp service. On our small street (approximately 25 homes), the electrical infrastructure would be unable to carry more than three houses with a single Tesla, each. For even half the homes to have electric vehicles, the system would be wildly over-loaded.
This is the elephant in the room with electric vehicles. Our residential infrastructure cannot bear the load. So as our genius elected officials promote this nonsense, not only are we being urged to buy these things and replace our reliable, cheap generating systems with expensive, new windmills and solar cells, but we will also have to renovate our entire delivery system! This latter "investment" will not be revealed until we're so far down this dead end road that it will be presented with an 'OOPS…!' and a shrug.
If you want to argue with a green person over cars that are eco-friendly, just read the following. Note: If you ARE a green person, read it anyway. It's enlightening.
Eric test drove the Chevy Volt at the invitation of General Motors and he writes, "For four days in a row, the fully charged battery lasted only 25 miles before the Volt switched to the reserve gasoline engine." Eric calculated the car got 30 mpg including the 25 miles it ran on the battery. So, the range including the 9-gallon gas tank and the 16 kwh battery is approximately 270 miles.
It will take you 4.5 hours to drive 270 miles at 60 mph. Then add 10 hours to charge the battery and you have a total trip time of 14.5 hours. In a typical road trip your average speed (including charging time) would be 20 mph.
According to General Motors, the Volt battery holds 16 kwh of electricity. It takes a full 10 hours to charge a drained battery. The cost for the electricity to charge the Volt is never mentioned, so I looked up what I pay for electricity.
I pay approximately (it varies with amount used and the seasons) $1.16 per kwh. 16 kwh x $1.16 per kwh = $18.56 to charge the battery. $18.56 per charge divided by 25 miles = $0.74 per mile to operate the Volt using the battery. Compare this to a similar size car with a gasoline engine that gets only 32 mpg. $3.19 per gallon divided by 32 Mpg = $0.10 per mile.
The gasoline powered car costs about $25,000 while the Volt costs $46,000 plus. So the Canadian Government wants loyal Canadians not to do the math, but simply pay twice as much for a car, that costs more than seven times as much to run, and takes three times longer to drive across the country.
WAKE UP AMERICA!!!!!!!
THE PINEHURST PRESS NEWS & VIEWS
Interesting Take on Electric Cars
As an engineer I love the electric vehicle technology. However, I have been troubled for a longtime by the fact that the electrical energy to keep the batteries charged has to come from the grid and that means more power generation and a huge increase in the distribution infrastructure. Whether generated from coal, gas, oil, wind or sun, installed generation capacity is limited. A friend sent me the following that says it very well. You should all take a look at this short article.
IF ELECTRIC CARS DO NOT USE GASOLINE, THEY WILL NOT PARTICIPATE IN PAYING A GASOLINE TAX ON EVERY GALLON THAT IS SOLD FOR AUTOMOBILES, WHICH WAS ENACTED SOME YEARS AGO TO HELP TO MAINTAIN OUR ROADS AND BRIDGES. THEY WILL USE THE ROADS, BUT WILL NOT PAY FOR THEIR MAINTENANCE! Now where will money come from for roads if not the gas tax?
In case you were thinking of buying hybrid or an electric car: Ever since the advent of electric cars, the REAL cost per mile of those things has never been discussed. All you ever heard was the mpg in terms of gasoline, with nary a mention of the cost of electricity to run it. This is the first article I've ever seen and tells the story pretty much as I expected it to.
Electricity has to be one of the least efficient ways to power things yet they're being shoved down our throats. Glad somebody finally put engineering and math to paper.
At a neighborhood BBQ I was talking to a neighbor, a BC Hydro Executive. I asked him how that renewable thing was doing. He laughed, then got serious.
If you really intend to adopt electric vehicles, he pointed out, you had to face certain realities. For example, a home charging system for a Tesla requires 75 amp service. The average house is equipped with 100 amp service. On our small street (approximately 25 homes), the electrical infrastructure would be unable to carry more than three houses with a single Tesla, each. For even half the homes to have electric vehicles, the system would be wildly over-loaded.
This is the elephant in the room with electric vehicles. Our residential infrastructure cannot bear the load. So as our genius elected officials promote this nonsense, not only are we being urged to buy these things and replace our reliable, cheap generating systems with expensive, new windmills and solar cells, but we will also have to renovate our entire delivery system! This latter "investment" will not be revealed until we're so far down this dead end road that it will be presented with an 'OOPS…!' and a shrug.
If you want to argue with a green person over cars that are eco-friendly, just read the following. Note: If you ARE a green person, read it anyway. It's enlightening.
Eric test drove the Chevy Volt at the invitation of General Motors and he writes, "For four days in a row, the fully charged battery lasted only 25 miles before the Volt switched to the reserve gasoline engine." Eric calculated the car got 30 mpg including the 25 miles it ran on the battery. So, the range including the 9-gallon gas tank and the 16 kwh battery is approximately 270 miles.
It will take you 4.5 hours to drive 270 miles at 60 mph. Then add 10 hours to charge the battery and you have a total trip time of 14.5 hours. In a typical road trip your average speed (including charging time) would be 20 mph.
According to General Motors, the Volt battery holds 16 kwh of electricity. It takes a full 10 hours to charge a drained battery. The cost for the electricity to charge the Volt is never mentioned, so I looked up what I pay for electricity.
I pay approximately (it varies with amount used and the seasons) $1.16 per kwh. 16 kwh x $1.16 per kwh = $18.56 to charge the battery. $18.56 per charge divided by 25 miles = $0.74 per mile to operate the Volt using the battery. Compare this to a similar size car with a gasoline engine that gets only 32 mpg. $3.19 per gallon divided by 32 Mpg = $0.10 per mile.
The gasoline powered car costs about $25,000 while the Volt costs $46,000 plus. So the Canadian Government wants loyal Canadians not to do the math, but simply pay twice as much for a car, that costs more than seven times as much to run, and takes three times longer to drive across the country.
WAKE UP AMERICA!!!!!!!
http://www.fuel-efficient-vehicles.org. Some kooky stuff in there but some interesting concepts also. Hydrogen on demand is a very easy solution with zero emission.
I can't help thinking that a 450kg Lotus 7 with a 750cc V twin would be greener than a car with 1/2 ton battery.
The onset of electric cars is an inconsequential blip on the radar of car production. It is exclusively a "first-world" issue, the other billions of people in the world are toying along in ratty twenty-plus year old two-stroke scooters.
Why do you think third-world countries consistently have big city air pollution problems? For every new micro Suzuki pickup truck, there are thirty compatriots in these two-stroke scooters plying the roads.
This fascination with electric cars & self-driving technologies caters to the worst aspects of the human condition...no "connection" with the dynamics of driving, no thought as to where your going, how your getting there...none of it. The disconnection is trying to become complete...very telling, the individual who died in a self-driving Tesla, was occupied watching a movie in his car.
This is the future we are looking towards, no wonder the OP feels sad...poor humanity.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------Rick.........
Why do you think third-world countries consistently have big city air pollution problems? For every new micro Suzuki pickup truck, there are thirty compatriots in these two-stroke scooters plying the roads.
This fascination with electric cars & self-driving technologies caters to the worst aspects of the human condition...no "connection" with the dynamics of driving, no thought as to where your going, how your getting there...none of it. The disconnection is trying to become complete...very telling, the individual who died in a self-driving Tesla, was occupied watching a movie in his car.
This is the future we are looking towards, no wonder the OP feels sad...poor humanity.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------Rick.........
I have driven a manual car since I was 18 (now 69). One day, I my boss announced that I was to drive him to Milton Keynes in his Rolls Royce.
First time I had ever driven one of these, and the first time in an automatic. Everything was fine, apart from frightening myself to death at one point. I had discovered the cruise control, and coming off a roundabout, I discovered Resume; I did not believe that a car of such weight could get from 25 to 70 so quickly.
Driving home that night, I stopped counting after 3000 gear changes; I have driven an automatic ever since.
Will petrol cars go in a few years? Not a chance.
Regarding recycling, why do government leaders insist manufacturers make products that are repairable, that they must supply spare parts and service data - at sensible prices.
Two years ago, my tumble drier developed a fault, no problem repairing it, but for £5 more than the cost of the spare parts, I bought a new one.
A couple of days ago, a newspaper reported the owner of a Jaguar E-Pace had taken it in for repair, due to something puncturing the floor pan battery compartment. The quotation for the repair was 65% of the cost of the car, provided there was no damage to the batteries, if there was, the price would exceed the cost of the car.
The world has gone insane.
First time I had ever driven one of these, and the first time in an automatic. Everything was fine, apart from frightening myself to death at one point. I had discovered the cruise control, and coming off a roundabout, I discovered Resume; I did not believe that a car of such weight could get from 25 to 70 so quickly.
Driving home that night, I stopped counting after 3000 gear changes; I have driven an automatic ever since.
Will petrol cars go in a few years? Not a chance.
Regarding recycling, why do government leaders insist manufacturers make products that are repairable, that they must supply spare parts and service data - at sensible prices.
Two years ago, my tumble drier developed a fault, no problem repairing it, but for £5 more than the cost of the spare parts, I bought a new one.
A couple of days ago, a newspaper reported the owner of a Jaguar E-Pace had taken it in for repair, due to something puncturing the floor pan battery compartment. The quotation for the repair was 65% of the cost of the car, provided there was no damage to the batteries, if there was, the price would exceed the cost of the car.
The world has gone insane.
We are going to put this one on hold while we discuss if it belongs here in our awesome audio forum. It would be a shame if someone stepped over the line and had to be punished for speaking their mind about important issues. Issues that belong in other forums. Thanks for your understanding.
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