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...

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.

Interesting BUT! If electric cars are so efficient, so exhaust clean, so cheap to maintain, so cheap to operate.....then why are they being subsidized by both the US and many State governments? The deeper look is.....a majority are bought and owned by people who have $$$$. While the rest of us provide the cash through taxes for the subsidies. Start by removing ALL the government cash rebates, and the electric Co rate reductions......then observe the real economic picture. Some short concerns. 1) Quiet? yes so quiet the vision handicapped cannot tell an electric car is passing thru a PEX crossing. 2) Fuel tax for roads? Last time I drove there were at least 50x more lite cars vs big trucks. Why not charge MORE for electric power to the electric car users to help pay for the road upkeep? 3)Winter? when the temps are down and the daylight is short....part of the battery is used to keep you WARM and HEADLIGHTS...MPKw effect? 3) Vehicle Maintenance? I own two cars one with 150,000 miles the other with 120,000 miles. When the usage for you new electric car reach those numbers we can compare maintenance bills. 4) Emissions? The EPA just slapped the hands of VW for NOx emissions for their diesel cars (42+MPG). What is the largest source of NOx? Power plants. Just because the pollution is not at your personal tail pipe...you are still guilty. 5) Major power interruptions? rain, snow, sleet, earth quakes, tornados, hurricanes, mudslides stop electric power supplies (many times for weeks) at your home...try filling up your electric car. Bottom line.....the technology should not be forced. Electric cars along with subsidized solar panels along with bird killing wind generators will have their day when the technology makes economic sense. To try & force it before that happens is poor use of anyone's limited cash resources.

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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