ELECTRIC CAR and 100 mpg plus

You might be surprised! A kilowatt-hour of electricity has 3440 BTU or so. It sell sfor $0.15 in most areas, except Washington state. So the cost is about $43.60 per million BTUs.

A gallon of gasoline, totally untaxed, is about $2.51 based on world oil prices. At, say 6.5 lbs/gallon x 15,000 BTUs/Lb we get $25.74 per million BTUs. So, electricity costs 43.60/25.74=1.69 or 69% more than gasoline. With all taxes in gasoline is about $39.00 per million BTUs. The ratio would then be 43.60/39=1.12, or 12% more expensive than gsoline.

The reason a plug in hybrid saves money is the conversion effiency of an electric motor in nearly 100%, while a gas engine in a car has between 25 and 30% conversion efficency.

So electricy is 12% more expensive than gasoline but the gasoline is only 25% as efficient, there for the electric motor still has a considerable cost advantage; 1.12x25/100=28% of the cost of gasoline.

So, a “gallon” of electricity is cheaper than gasoline in Wasshington stae, but not in most areas. The more efficient conversion of electricity makes is cheaper.

Electric cars cannot hold enough stored energy to be a viable method of transportation. Electric cars are also not clean at all. The electricity that charges these cars comes from mostly coal and fuel-oil burning power plants, which causes far more pollution than gasoline. In fact, only about 15-20 percent of “global warming” gases come from autos, the vast majority of these gases come from cattle, power plants, and factories. The way of the future is E85 or just straight ethanol. Ethanol is completely renewable and can be made from many crops(corn, sugar cane, etc.) The price of refining is greatly reduced and all of our fuel needs could be supplied completely from within our own country. We would no longer depend on OPEC for our oil needs.

The big environmental advantage of plug-in hybrids is that it transfers urban pollution from cars from downtown to remote areas where power plants are located. By pollutoion we mean NOX, unburned hydrocarbons, Volatile organic compounds (VOCs), particualtes, etc.

As I mentioned in a prior post, the CO2 generated by the coal fired station has to be compared with the CO2 saved when the car is operating in the electric mode. If the power is Hydro, such as in the North West, or nuclear, such as in France, there is a significant reduction in greenhouse gasses by going electric.

Everyone knows electric cars cannot hold enough stored energy to go a long distance; that’s why the plug-in hybrid allows us to take trips running mostly on the gas engine, and using the battery for acceleration.

E85 gives clean combustion in cars, but the overall energy cycle is very poor in efficiency, almost as much energy is consumed in creating E85 as it produces in heat content. This product is a political fraud and will severely drive up food prices while making corn belt farmers very rich. It is a very bad political soluition to an economic and environmental problem.

By the way, we mentioned in a previous post that if all US cars were as small as those in Europe (4cyl) and we had a munber of hybrids, the US would not have to import ANY OIL from ANY COUNTRY, not just OPEC. Canada is currently the biggest supplier of oil to the US. We would also not need E85, and could take our time developing ethano from non-food sources.

You sound like my friend, Brad. Lake city dude. Talk about Grand Coulee; dam!

I say, stop paving over the worlds surface and return to the horse and buggy. (We never should have left it)

You think cars are causing a pollution problem? Just imagine enough horses to keep up with today’s population and commerce. New York City was just about drowning in horse manure at the turn of the 20th Century, and the rise of the automobile saved it. Seriously.

“Transformers , sub stations, squirrels”…the latter has absolutely NOTHING to do with electric automobiles.

Most charging will take place at night…at low peak energy demands.

Ask yourself, which is the better automotive technology, one which implements less than 300 parts, while doing the same job [and CLEANER], or the Middle Eastern gas guzzling, dependent ICE which has well over two thousand parts?

Amazing, how people are resistant to change, even when it benefits them!