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0 pointssleavey4y ago0 comments

That's a good question, I don't know the answer to that. One thing to include though is transmission loss to get the electricity to the place it's needed. And at the same time of course include the energy used to get petrol to a gas guzzling car. In other words, the comparison needs to be fair, and that doesn't sound like an easy analysis. I'd be interested to hear from anyone that knows more about this.

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lozenge4y ago

The car engine has to fit a weight and size limit that means most of the heat is wasted instead of harnessed.

Power plants can capture 60% of the heat energy. http://needtoknow.nas.edu/energy/energy-sources/fossil-fuels...

Conventional cars capture 12-30% of the energy in the fuel. https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/evtech.shtml#:~:text=Energy%....

The difference is big enough that the analysis is easy.

orwin4y ago

You're absolutelly right, just a small caveat for the 60% figure: most well-maintained plants capture between 35% and 40% of heat energy. Peakers can reach 35% too. Pulsed coal and new gas tech can get to 50-60% in ideal conditions. Also, most of these techs are new and are available on recently-build plants. That 60% could be as low as 45%.

Still at least twice as effective as ICEs.

However, a 2-tons electric car compared to a 800kg ICE? without taking into consideration the wear on infrastructure and on singular parts of the vehicle, i still think you are in comparable zone.

mepiethree4y ago

I like this (very pro-EV) video which gets into this exact question https://youtu.be/1oVrIHcdxjA

The most important point, IMO, is that localized emissions do the most harm. Even if the emissions were equal, keeping pollution out of the urban core will literally prevent (or defer) millions of cases of lung cancer etc. This paper quantifies the social cost of atmospheric release: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10584-015-1343-0

wonnage4y ago

It's really hard to make these comparisons because environmental impacts aren't fungible. The emissions from building and running an electric car might be more CO2 overall but the CO2 is being emitted at a few large factories and could be more easily captured than from individual cars.

ICEs also emit lots of other pollution in the middle of cities, including noise pollution. Electrics would cut down on those or emit them around the factory instead of downtown.

cycrutchfield4y ago

Transmission losses are not significant in most cases. Your assertion that electricity from fossil fuel power plants is somehow worse than inefficient ICE cars is completely wrong.

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