OK Smart People, Please Tell Me What Is The Real Truth. !!!!

A friend sent this to me this morning and I am still scratching my head about it. Hopefully some of you can shed some light on this subject and maybe fill in some blanks.


This is for engineers out there, surely there should be a rebuttal to this article. Say it isn't true!

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INTERESTING - 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.

Just because an electric car doesn't use gas, don't believe for a second that they aren't paying the tax. There is no way the Gov would let a single penny get away.

1.16/kilo watt

I pay 11 cents per kilowatt, just saying.

I believe a caveman could figure that one out

But you can generate electricity with windmills, and wind mills are free.

There are physical laws that exist and do not change just because they are inconvenient. Or because they are not trendy or were hard to understand in school.

But there are the folks that get excited about things they don't understand because they sound good. There is no free energy.
Electric cars are not efficient, there is no way for them to be.

I pay .087 per kwh. I love the premise, but it's a lie

They don't make extension cords long enough to justify electric cars.

No such thing.

Takes a hydro, fossil fueled or nuke plant
to make that tricity'.

Solar is somewhat of a joke.

Windmills (goober*ment subsidised)
are not even a funny joke.

We have been fed this Global Warming line for so long that many people will line up anything that says green in it. Another huge hidden cost in electric cars is the Government subsides to prop the clean energy fraud. We wont even bring up the problems of disposing of the batteries and the cost to replace them.

The grid is already approaching over-loaded. Projections put major changes/upgrades to infrastructure will be needed in 10-15 years with a relatively small ~1.2% load growth per year. See: Big $$$. Many distribution substations are already at over half the bank capacity and new transformers cost well over $6-7 million on the low-side.

I like that my profession is "needed" for future advancement but, as it stands, I don't see how we could incorporate mass adoption of Electric vehicles into infrastructure for another 50 years, at minimum. Made the more difficult that any incorporation will have to be made very intentionally.

The key to subverting my above statement is battery technology. If a battery can be made to "hold" electricity in the Mwh or even Gwh range, and still be affordable, many of these issue go away. Unfortunately, battery tech is moving forward more slowly than Molasses traveling uphill in winter.

The costs to infrastructure improvements alone should be enough to release this foolish pipe-dream... for now, anyway.

What is the question you want answered?

EverGreen1231 said:

The costs to infrastructure improvements alone should be enough to release this foolish pipe-dream... for now, anyway.

Click to expand...

Greens recognizing reality? Save the whales!

EAGLE EYE 444 said:

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.

Click to expand...

That statement is completely false. A typical gasoline engine has a thermal efficiency of 30%, at best. An electric motor on the other hand can achieve efficiency of over 80%.

The problem lies in the in energy density of the fuel each engine uses. Gasoline has an energy density of around 33kWh/gal (5.24kWh/lb). The batteries a Tesla uses have around 0.150kWh/lb. For example the Tesla Model S with the largest battery only has a 100kWh battery, roughly equivalent to 3 gallons of gas, yet can go 335 miles on a charge.

At 11 cents per kWh it would cost $13.75 to charge a dead battery (accounts for ~80% charging efficiency). So roughly about 4 cents per mile., whereas the cost is close to 8 cents per mile for a gas car that gets 30 mpg at $2.5 per gallon.

Currently charge times from dead for a home tesla charger is around 6 hours, sufficient for daily commuting. The newest version of Superchargers located across the country can charge at a rate of 300 miles per hour of charge. Is this as quick as filling a tank of gas? Absolutely not, but this a new technology, we have come a long way from the Model T.

As far as infrastructure goes at least we have a power grid. When gasoline car came around there were no gas stations they all had to be built from the ground up. Another benefit you may not think about is the stable cost of electricity. Electricity prices don't skyrocket every time there is a natural disaster, so you can rest easy knowing your summer vacation isn't going to cost 25% more in the price of gas because of a hurricane in Texas.

Are electric vehicles for everyone right now, no, but in 10 years I believe this will all change as the technology improves.

Electricity must be generated somewhere, somehow. It costs money and requires built up infrastructure. It has to be stored. Lack of understanding of the entire process is why some think it has advantages.

Want to improve it's chances and win an honest Nobel prize? Come up with a way to improve transmission lines. From the generating source to the plug in site. The amount of generating energy lost can power even Al Gore's house.

I am very familiar with the electrical generation and distribution side of the house as I work at one of those plants that splits atoms to generate electricity.
Currently electricity demand growth is at its near lowest level due to replacing older inefficient devices with newer more efficient devices. They want to scrap the new units at Vogtle because demand isn’t growing like anticipated.
If every instantly started driving electric cars the increase in demand would be about 30%. It’s going to be decades before this is reality which gives the power companies plenty of time to increase supply. Power companies are businesses that make money so I don’t see them complaining about increased profits.

https://insideevs.com/u-s-states-charge-electric-car-fees-make-lost-gas-tax-revenue/

This 2015 article says GA charges $200 per year road taxes on private electric vehicles.

Two points

- Starting about 20 years ago the average home service panel is 200 AMPs.

- The cost of electric power does and will vary according to seasons, natural gas prices and disasters. When local power producers are down the power is still available but it cost more to purchase from different sources.

basstrkr said:

- Starting about 20 years ago the average home service panel is 200 AMPs.

- The cost of electric power does and will vary according to seasons, natural gas prices and disasters. When local power producers are down the power is still available but it cost more to purchase from different sources.

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You are right there are differences in power cost by the season and amount used, but in a regulated market increases in rates require approval, something that doesn’t happen overnight. It does cost the power company more, but that doesn’t change your rate schedule.

acurasquirrel said:

As far as infrastructure goes at least we have a power grid. When gasoline car came around there were no gas stations they all had to be built from the ground up. Another benefit you may not think about is the stable cost of electricity. Electricity prices don't skyrocket every time there is a natural disaster, so you can rest easy knowing your summer vacation isn't going to cost 25% more in the price of gas because of a hurricane in Texas.

Click to expand...

Yes, there is a grid. No, it cannot sustain mass adoption of electric vehicles as of right now. Electricity doesn't just happen. I has to be generated. The generation happens at a cost and there are market pressures that dictate if a utility will buy power or generate their own. This will all change when/if electric vehicles catch on.

The load is also highly non-linear. I don't like to think of the harmonics injected into the system from one of these "superchargers." Dirty power on that scale will degrade the alternators, not to mention any other electrical device on the system. Load fluctuations will also be much greater. Alternator control systems will have to be re-written, protection schemes will need to be redesigned, conductor tolerances will need to be larger, along with many other things.

This is much more complex than "just building some stations" as it was yesteryear. Projections have to be made and plans for new infrastructure have to be initiated on a 20 year rolling span, minimum. It will be much longer than 10 years before electric vehicles can be adopted en masse.

If the global elites would share the alien technology that they have access to, we would never talk about energy consumption again.