John_F Loc: Minneapolis, MN

Got this in email from a conservative.

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. Bill

ONE OTHER QUESTION. 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! 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 $20,000 while the Volt costs $46,000-plus. So the American Government wants loyal Americans not to do the math, but simply pay three times 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.

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Bmarsh Loc: Bellaire, MI

I think the cost per kWh is way off. I pay less than 10 cents per kWh.

rmorrison1116 Loc: Near Valley Forge, Pennsylvania

Some folks just have to find fault in anything new. We have to start somewhere and develop new technologies to maturity. Eventually the benefits justify and outweigh the cost. Remember, the future starts in the present.

lamiaceae Loc: San Luis Obispo County, CA

Glad someone else figured that out. I'm not an engineer, but I am a biologist and had thought of most of those things myself. I'd like to see an alternative for the gasoline engine, but the electric car has a long way to go. The "car part" of a all Electric or a Hybrid car is more or less workable now, but the infrastructure in not. Solar and Wind power are the closest to a "free lunch". To charge a plug-in one uses electric power generated from some other source, Wind, Solar, Nuclear (bad in my opinion), Fuel Oil (bad), Coal (really bad), Hydro-Electric (dammed water - OK), Tidal (possible), Geothermal (possible). But for the hundreds of millions of vehicles in the U.S. alone we would need a huge increase in the available power (to the grid). In sunnier places I do see solar panels for electric car charging. But it is only a few. Most likely we will end up with multiple (partial) solutions. I'd like to see both Hydrogen - Oxygen Fuel Cell Electrics and Hydrogen Burning Internal Combustion Engines. The only waste from these is water.

John_F Loc: Minneapolis, MN

I have always has a fascination with hydrogen fuel but the fact that the hydrogen chemical bond is so strong that making hydrogen gas from any hydrogen-bearing compound would require large amounts of energy. Plus containment and piping to cylinders offers a high risk of explosion. Thermodynamic tables enable a calculation of the Gibbs Free Energy of the H2O -> H2 + 1/2 O2 .

Bmarsh Loc: Bellaire, MI

So true but I would rather see new technologies become economically viable rather than being forced by the (un) knowing gummint. When buying an electric car becomes a no-brained, I’ll buy one.

rmorrison1116 Loc: Near Valley Forge, Pennsylvania

I agree.
When I was looking at new cars about 1 year ago I looked at hybrids and I looked at electric and settled on a small gasoline engine with a big turbocharger. The car gets between good and great gas mileage, my best so far is 48.6 mpg, and with the money I saved by not buying the really expensive alternative fuel vehicle, I got some really nice options.

Paulie Loc: NW IL

"The 15.8 cents per kWh that Chicago households paid for electricity in December 2017 was 16.2 percent higher than the nationwide average cost of 13.6 cents per kWh."
(Bureau of labor statistics)

I like some key thoughts in this article, but unfortunately this one argument makes it all irrelevant.
Also it mocks people for being lazy to do their own calculations, (it's true in many cases) but at the same it uses false statement to manipulate sheeple's minds.

It's good to use your own brain to get to the conclusion.

I had conversations on this topic with many people who completely missed my point, bought loaded F150 in 2007 for 45K, one year later traded it in for 15k in exchange for Prius with leather and navi for 28K and their argument was saving money ('cause MPG!!) Laughable...(45-15 = 30+28 = 58, but that's none of my business..)

Another example: take difference in cost of a car vs cost of a hybrid version of that same car, cost of fuel per gallon, how many gallons you save using hybrid while doing your typical miles per year. Put it all together and you will find out that most people will come up with a figure somewhere around $300-400 of savings per year, so how many years of maintenance free driving do you need to justify the price difference and to actually start saving money? 5? 7? 10? Of course depending on a model, fuel cost and miles driven.
Keeping that F150 would make much more sense from "personal finances" point of view, because 30K they lost in this transaction would buy them a lot of fuel, like 10-15 year supply? But that's just me...
And I am just talking about the purchase, which is just a beginning.

Joe Blow

As an engineer, Bull Sheet.

Electricity is a very efficient method of transporting and using energy. It is more efficient than any other current form of power.

An older home may have 100A service. Newer homes have 200A and many modern homes have 400A and 500A service. If your street is incapable of handling a Tesla charging, then you must live in Tibet.

Suggesting that something requires a 75A service to charge is also false. No home circuit is capable of supplying that current.
Tesla sells kits that can charge with either a 120V or 240V home source. Neither of those will handle a 75A load. I didn't study the page, but it appears the 120V kit uses a 15A supply.

I can't speak for BC Hydro, but there are very few locations that can not meet infrastructure loads required for charging Teslas.

The Chevy Volt is designed for urban traffic. It has an estimated range of 53 miles and a total range of almost 500 miles, which is similar to most domestic gasoline cars. Will the Volt attain its projected range? Most likely not, but then neither does any car meet its EPA estimates.

GM advertises 18+KwH battery supply, not 16KwH. The cost to charge a Volt battery is around $0.12-$0.20 /KwH (depending on where you live). That is less than $4.00 to completely charge, less than 1/4 your claim. It will take about 12 hours at 120V but around 4 1/2 hrs at 240V from a near zero charge. The Volt is designed to travel at traffic speeds, not 20 mph.
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There are many other errors in your "email". I won't bother refuting them all. I will say that discussions using false information aren't off to a good start. Anyone too lazy to bother verifying someone elses claims only shows they know nothing on the subject.

Neilhunt

There are a few misconceptions in this article...

On Infrastructure: Tesla can use a 75A drop, but it's perfectly serviceable at 30, which is the same as your tumble drier. And it's pretty easy to avoid tumble drying while you are charging, so most houses are adequately set. Secondly, the total of all the loads in the typical home is likely to exceed 100A - you just don't use them all the time. And finally, it's normal to set your EV to charge in the middle of the night, when there is lots of surplus power from the grid. So called "base power" generation can't be turned on and off during the day, and in the middle of the night, it's either used, or dumped. In fact, the real marginal cost of that power could be negative (it's cheaper to use it to charge your car than to dump it into heat).

On cost: Those Volt numbers don't make a lot of sense. A 16kWh battery is good for at least 48 miles, perhaps 64. Likely the Volt is switching to hybrid mode either because it has reached the freeway and the electric is not intended for 60mph driving (depending upon the model year), or because it is reserving some juice for surface streets later.

A Tesla gets about 3m/kWh, Leaf and smaller cars get about 4m/kWh. In most of the country, a kWh is about $.08-$.14, but if you have time-of-day metering, it could be as low as $.02. Even at $.14, that's only $.03-$.05 per mile - compared to $3/25 = $.12 for a typical gasoline car. If the OP is paying $1.16/kWh, he could be factoring in the fixed monthly cost of the connection and meter, which does not increase as you use more electricity. Or he could be a very unfortunately customer of a gouging utility. The fixed cost of a solar installation translates to much lower than $1 a kWh amortized over even a short 3-5 years, given some reasonable assumptions on how much power is used (or sold back to the utility).

On gas tax: This will be controversial - but I think you can demonstrate that the gas tax to fund roads is much less than the various subsidies on gasoline that the government pays. Now there are potentially rebates on EVs, so there is lots of material to argue about.

Benefits not enumerated in the original post:
* Other maintenance costs are super low. Just about tires only. I haven't taken my Leaf to the shop for 3 years.
* Silent. In urban areas, the exteralized cost of ICE noise is material, and the EV is a great deal more quiet.
* Fun. The torque from even a basic Leaf beats, for example, a turbocharged Juke (roughly the same sized and weight of car with a souped up 200hp ICE).
* Other emissions: CO2, NO, particulates - the EV emits no CO2, NO, or particulates. Yes, if it's charged from the grid, the grid power gen might emit some of those things, but at less than half the quantity of the equivalent ICE -- and since the emissions are centralized, it's much easier to scrub them (the scrubbers can be industrial sized, and don't have to be towed around the roads).
* Rare minerals. No platinum catalytic converters. While an EV has lots of lithium in its battery, lithium is quite common, relatively easily recycled. EVs today use rare earth magnet motors; I believe as volume ramps, we will see a switch to synchronous AC induction motors, with no permanent magnets.

And now - back to photography... Where at least, for most of us, we aren't struggling to figure out what to do with silver halides...

chrisscholbe Loc: Kansas City, MO

Why not put a wheel inside the engine compartment that turns with the wind, while driving, and generates electricity as you drive.

Joe Blow

Road damage is mostly caused by trucks. Their heavy weight causes roads to flex and crack. Cars are generally too light to cause effective flexing of a roadway. However, since the truck and transportation lobbies are so powerful, trucks do not pay their share of roadways. Electric cars, however, weigh more than gasoline cars so their propensity to damage a road is greater even if far less than a truck.

A Volt weighs around 3,800 lbs while the maximum axle weight for trucks is 20,000 lbs or 80,000 total for unit. An empty garbage truck weighs around 30,000 lbs and full is around 50,000 lbs. The damage / weight is exponential. So when your residential street is full of potholes, don't be blaming your neighbor's Volt.

BTW, you made many good points and corrections in your comment.

G Brown Loc: Sunny Bognor Regis West Sussex UK

They came up with 'friction' motors (?) where a heavy ish horizontal flywheel was initially powered up. The drive took some of the inertia power and the alternator drew power all the time it was spinning....I think the trams in Sanfrancisco used a version of this. it lowered electrical power 'drain'. It would make the car heavy with low 0-60 time, but as a town car it would work.

its always a case of people wanting instant ooomph and 'economy' at the same time.

I saw a facebook ad for an electric trials 'motor'bike built using a mountain bicycle frame and motorbike handlebars and wheels . Looked like a lot of fun and very fast....next thing will be - changes to make them 'classed as a motorcycle' with all the additional costs incurred. That is what happened when they made mopeds more 'quick' and got rid of the 'pedals'. Everytime you get something 'almost for nothing' the Government want you to pay them for your economies,

to be 'green' we should invest in trams.....more people per journey!

rmorrison1116 Loc: Near Valley Forge, Pennsylvania

Assuming you go down more hills than up, that may work.

DaveO Loc: Northeast CT

I pay .0839 per kwh (tax incl). Oh yeah, I also pay .1211 per kwh for delivery. Total for 604 Kwh is $123.83.