A good way to think about what they’re trying to take away from us is to consider what ten gallons of gasoline weighs.
The figure is about 63 pounds, each gallon weighing just over six pounds. That 63 pounds of liquid energy will power a piston-engined car that averages 30 miles-per-gallon about 300 miles.
A standard issue Tesla Model 3 goes about 263 miles on the solid-state energy contained in more than 1,000 pounds of battery pack. To put this in liquid-energy equivalent, 1,000 pounds of gasoline would be about 158 gallons of regular unleaded. That quantity of fuel would be enough to power the 30 MPG piston-engined car in our example above some 4,740 miles.
Which is more “efficient”? 
Interestingly, it the piston-engined car also travels farther as it consumes the liquid energy it carries, because it carries around less weight as it burns up its fuel supply. The electric car, on the other hand, is just as heavy when it is fully charged as it is when it is fully discharged.
There is also no “energy penalty” for storing liquid energy. So long as the tank isn’t leaking, there won’t be less energy available when the piston-engined car’s owner wishes to drive somewhere – even if he left the car sitting for a month after having pumped in those 10 gallons. They do not evaporate or become less energy-dense. The tank requires no energy to preserve the energy it contains.
Electric car batteries, on the other hand, consume energy even when their energy isn’t being used . . . to power the car. But it is necessary to power the heater that maintains the temperature of the battery, which must be kept above a certain threshold in order to avoid damaging it and to maintain its capacity to receive a charge. Which it will require, after sitting for a month – unless it was hooked up to a charger, using energy that way.
More so, if it’s very cold out.
How about cost-per-mile?
It is cheaper to charge up an electric car than to refuel a piston-engined car.
A Tesla 3 with the standard 50 kilowatt-hour battery costs about $10 to fully recharge; equipped with the upgrade 82 kilowatt-hour battery and the cost to fully recharge goes up to about $14. This is still much less than the roughly $32 it takes (at current per gallon cost of about $3.20) to buy ten gallons of liquid energy.
But is it cheap enough to make up for the cost of the electric car, itself?
A Tesla Model 3 with the 263 mile battery pack lists for $41,990. Excepting its electric drivetrain, it is otherwise similar to other small sedans such as the Audi A3, which lists for $33,900 – a difference “up front” of $8,090.
The Tesla goes 262 miles on about ten dollar’s worth of solid-state energy. The A3 goes more than 400 miles on 14.5 gallons’ worth of liquid energy (more than 500 miles on the highway) which costs its owner about $46 (at $3.20 per gallon).
To travel the same distance as the A3, the Tesla would have to receive an additional $5 or so of kilowatt-hour-equivalent energy, bringing the savings down to about $31 to travel roughly the same distance per charges in the Tesla vs. tankful (singular) in the Audi.
It works out to about $124 per month in the the Tesla’ favor. But only in isolation. One cannot ignore the other cost difference – the $8,090 additional that the Tesla cost vs. the Audi. It will take about six years of driving to “work off” that sum ($124 times twelve months equals $1,488 times six years equals $8,928).
The costs of recharging also varies – depending on the power demands of the battery pack in the particular electric car. As in the example above of the cost of charging up the base vs. optional-battery’d Tesla.
This is interesting because it does not cost any more to put however many gallons of liquid energy into the tank of a V8 muscle car or pick-up than it does to put the same quantity of liquid energy into the tank of a four cylinder-powered economy car such as a Hyundai Accent.
A Tesla 3 with the standard 50 kilowatt-hour battery costs about $10 to recharge; equipped with the upgrade 82 kilowatt-hour battery and the cost to fully recharge goes up to about $14. And of course, the higher-powered the electric car is, the more power it uses. This is of course true of higher-powered piston-engined cars as well; however, they all cost exactly the same to fill with the same volume of liquid energy.
But the electric car can be recharged at home. This is said to save time, which is a way of saving money. The problem here is how much time it costs to recharge the EV at home.
The perception of this time can be made favorable if it is convenient to recharge the car while you sleep, overnight. But if you need the car before it has had time to charge up it can be extremely inconvenient.
Finally, the electric car us said to save the planet. But this assumes, first of all, it needs “saving” (like people needing “vaccines”) and that it can be “saved” by driving cars that use more energy than the cars they mean to replace. There is a great deal of energy tied up within 1,000 pounds of one one electric car’s battery pack – and it takes an enormous amount of energy to power up that battery pack. It will take an almost inconceivable amount of energy to power up millions of 1,000-plus pound EV battery packs.
Until the arrival of Mr. Fusion, electric cars aren’t “saving” anything – whether in terms of dollars or the planet.
It is my sincere desire to provide readers of this site with the best unbiased information available, and a forum where it can be discussed openly, as our Founders intended. But it is not easy nor inexpensive to do so, especially when those who wish to prevent us from making the truth known, attack us without mercy on all fronts on a daily basis. So each time you visit the site, I would ask that you consider the value that you receive and have received from The Burning Platform and the community of which you are a vital part. I can't do it all alone, and I need your help and support to keep it alive. Please consider contributing an amount commensurate to the value that you receive from this site and community, or even by becoming a sustaining supporter through periodic contributions. [Burning Platform LLC - PO Box 1520 Kulpsville, PA 19443] or Paypal
-----------------------------------------------------
To donate via Stripe, click here.
-----------------------------------------------------
Use promo code ILMF2, and save up to 66% on all MyPillow purchases. (The Burning Platform benefits when you use this promo code.)
And the disposal of the batteries has not been addressed and neither has the mining of the lithium.
And, further Eddy O – not mentioned is the requirement to replace the battery as its energy storage capacity degrades over time until the battery needs replacing which is a function of time and not use rate. ” The short answer is at least 8 years or 100,000 miles,”
https://www.truecar.com/blog/how-long-do-electric-car-batteries-last/
Snippets from the article:
“Modern EVs are powered by lithium-ion batteries. If that term sounds familiar, it’s because the same fundamental technology is used to power electronics. Currently, the average cost to replace an electric car battery is $5,500. Batteries are one of the more expensive components in an electric vehicle.” (Eric didn’t mention this).
Battery life factors:
“A common rule is to avoid leaving your car sitting fully charged or at low levels for extended periods of time. Both put excessive wear on the battery ― something to keep in mind if you’re working from home or on vacation. ”
“DC fast chargers are currently one of the fastest ways to charge an electric vehicle, with most compatible vehicles going from 20% to 80% in less than an hour……but frequent usage can degrade your battery faster. If you want to keep yours in prime condition, try to save fast charging for road trips and emergencies. but frequent usage can degrade your battery faster. If you want to keep yours in prime condition, try to save fast charging for road trips and emergencies.”
General maintenance is lower for EVs
“Maintenance costs for electric vehicles are also much lower, with batteries being the most expensive component to replace when the time comes. You’ll still have to replace normal wear items like tires, brake pads and windshield wipers, but those are relatively simple and straightforward. Overall, you should expect fewer visits to the dealership service center or your local mechanic.”
What’s commonly omitted when evaluating EVs is their use in colder climates like UK when heaters. lights and windscreen wipers are used a great deal and will reduce range and battery wear.
https://www.cfact.org/2022/01/05/imagine-electric-vehicle-usage-in-inclement-weather/
AND here is an EV owner’s experience over one year:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jan/08/streets-ahead-what-ive-learned-from-my-year-with-an-electric-car?utm_term=61da960477b07a17d12f8b5052d69848&utm_campaign=GuardianTodayUK&utm_source=esp&utm_medium=Email&CMP=GTUK_email
I just looked up the gas tank (ICE equivalent of a battery) for my 165,000 mile 25 year old car, that is still on it’s original tank. $193.
My tank does not degrade faster when near empty or completely full.
So those driving range numbers for electric cars should have a giant asterisk to the fine print, “Only 75-80% of range should be used to avoid excessive battery degradation”
The only thing being mined with these cars is your hard earned cash. The powers that be are “all” carpet baggers.
Sorry I can’t reference the article but it made the claim, when all things factored an EV gets 5.7 mpg equivalent.
The whole thing is a farce, like climate change.
Power and control is about all you need to know.
Eric didn’t even figure in the conservation of energy calculations. The amount of energy (non-green ) required to dig, process, and make the batteries, and then dispose of the batteries at the end.
I see a new cottage industry springing to life over the charging issue. Vehicle transport rigs will be redesigned to be a kind of tow truck, charging station. These rigs can operate on the highway system and act as a car pooling service where you load your car on the trailer and do the highway route while getting a charge. You get the idea.
Conversion loss is the deal killer for EV. They consume a decent multiple of the energy IC vehicles consume, to go the same distance.
We have morons making decisions.
I was thinking they could mount solar cells on the roof to help charge the battery. Drive to work and let the solar panels charge it while you sit in the office for the next 9 hours
Better yet, a windmill to generate electricity to charge the battery. The car could stay charged just by driving around.
Iska, I am going to go with you were being sarcastic. I hope so anyway.
At the engineering firm I worked at ~15 years ago, one of the staff actually suggested exactly that. Me and the other engineer there looked at each other and started laughing, thinking he was joking. He wasn’t laughing and looked confused as to why we were.
Thank Christ he was just one of the sales people. They don’t need to understand thermodynamics.
Make the blades out of solar cells and you could produce more electricity than you use, but only if you drive in the sunlight.
On a windy day.
How about a windmill with solar panels as the blades?
Electricity is what cars crave.
It’s got…
They get it from the coal that is burned at the local power station.
Lol.
Lower standard of living and control are what electric cars are about. Think you will be going on a quick 1000 mile trip in your EV think again. Also, no one talks about the efficiency of electric cars. That 236miles can be a lot less depending on various factors (speed, road grade etc.) Yes, the same is true for gasoline cars but if I am low on gas, I can get a quick fill up and be on my way. Not true for an EV. There was a clip on here of some lady trying to drive her EV a long distance and she could not find any charging stations. Hilarious! Think you are towing your boat or trailer with an EV?? Plan is to get rid of gas cars and severely curtail travel and recreation. You will own nothing and be happy!! Remember?
Electric cars are to freedom of movement what central bank digital currencies are to your personal finance.
What matters most is that they can be turned off if you misbehave.
The rest is window dressing.
^^This!
The US just passed a law to put a kill switch in all new cars, ICE or electric.
Hmm. Now why would they do that?
Time for a cottage industry of disabling/removing the kill switch – without making it look like it’d been tampered with, of course. Same thing with whatever other info/metrics being sent home to ‘moma’ – over the same ‘over-the-air’ used to engage said kill switch.
Maybe you can tow a trailer behind your EV with a gas generator on it so you can charge your EV while driving, sort of like a Chevy Volt.
No. Last week I drove 1000 miles in 16 hours. Impossible w/ electric.
Yesterday I drove 910 miles in 18 hours in my Tesla. Not quite 1000 in 16, but plenty for me.
.
A ten-year (maybe) life span of a battery pack versus 20+ years of a well-maintained car.
The cost to replace the battery pack is astronomical. I am not going to post links here, look for yourself.
Rural drivers have even less opportunities to charge these damn things at charging stations, so what to do?
These cars are shit in New England during the winter months, sucking more energy to keep the stupid thing heated versus driving. Toyota actually recommends NOT using your heater, and instead just keeping the heated seat on. Yeah, sounds great when it’s minus 4 outside.
And, as anyone who commutes to Boston knows, a 50 mile trip can take 90 minutes or more one way during rush hour. Now do that in the winter, during a snow storm. What happens when you are stuck on the highway for 6+ hours in your Prius? Do you think the battery will be enough to keep your from freezing to death? Unlikely.
We currently do not have the electrical grid sufficient to power all these toilets anyway. Nor do we have the place to put all the junk batteries when they are dead.
AND…electric cars are much easier to equip with a “kill switch” if TPTB don’t like you, your politics, or where you are heading.
I don’t miss traffic or commuting at all.
The lifespan of the battery packs AND supply chain issues compared to the costs are the top two reasons why i will not buy an electric bike. They are fun to ride but will lead to disappointment in the end. In my opinion.
Like fat chicks…
I like fat chicks, too.
You’re the bomb.
Be my wingman.
Just something to bear in mind.
The UK government had a study compiled to estimate what would be needed to convert the entire UK fleet to electric. It found that many years of world production of rare earth metals would be needed just to make the batteries. Just for the UK.
So you see most people will not get an electric car.
Something else to consider is to get rare earth metals requires strip mining on a grand scale. This will never be allowed by the greenies as you know environment etc.
Unless there is a major breakthrough in battery and power generation electric cars will never be as common as petrol or diesel driven ones have been.
They do not want you to have an electric car. They want you to have no car at all. Your untimely demise will be the next step.
Your are absolutely correct.
As there seem to be some electric car fans here I thought I would point out just some of the more obvious flaws in that fantasy.
More chance of a vehicle powered by unicorn poop being the solution.
There will be EV’s for all after the ClotShot kills billions.
But, but, but, we’re saving the planet….
Former San Luis Obispo mayor and climate change activist Heidi Harmon attempted to “do the right thing,” and travel to a rally in San Francisco in an electric car. After multiple attempts to find a working charging station in San Jose, Harmon realized charging the car would take up to seven hours and there was no way she could make the rally.
Harmon posted multiple videos about her difficulties in traveling in an all-electric vehicle. She discusses calling the police or asking someone to send a helicopter to rescue her.
I guess it was nice of San Luis Obispo voters to hire a retarded lady to be their mayor.
There is no math that can properly account for the liberal virtue that accrues when pulling up to the valet station at the farm-to-table restaurant in Marin or to the one-and-done child’s private international school. Shoot, even just a slow roll through a Whole Foods parking lot swells the liberal heart like a fist fulla Pfizer jabs. You can’t put a price on that. And if you try, it’s because you are racist.
COTD!
I would never have thought to compute efficiency on an energy-per-pound basis. A 77 KwH battery contains the energy equivalent of about 2.3 gallons of gas, and will move a Tesla (for example) almost 300 miles – up to 130 miles per gallon equivalent. That seems pretty efficient to me. I realize that electricity has its own inefficiencies, and that it doesn’t just “come out of the wall”. And neither does gasoline “just come out of the pump”. I honestly don’t know which takes more to produce and deliver, but it doesn’t really bother me.
It is true that a lot of electric car drivers are arrogant “look at me saving the world” types. But not all of us. I’m not an environmentalist whacko, I know where my electricity comes from, and I think we should all be able to drive whatever we like. For me, there are a lot of advantages to electric, but to be honest, its mainly the instantaneous, effortless, neck-snapping power! A word of advice – don’t try racing a Tesla unless you like to be embarrassed!
My mother in law has a 9 year old hybrid Lincoln with 52k miles on it. Her gas mileage has dropped from 44mpg last year to 25 mpg this past year. She needs new batteries. They cost more than the car is worth. Since it is a Hybrid the 2.0 L engine is doing all of the work. My brother-in-law has suggested removing the battery packs and running gas only. I have tried to explain the re-gen braking with out a storage media will quickly fail as will some of the other features that rely on the batteries. She needs to suck it up and buy the batteries.
I did the math for the way my wife drives a car. We would need to get 270K miles on an electric car (cheep Tesla) with Gas at $3 a gallon to break even with a gas vehicle that got 22 mpg at $3 a gallon at 200K miles. In Georgia an electric vehicle is being powered by Nuclear, natural gas, or coal. Electric vehicles are more expensive than gas vehicles to operate.
Unmentioned is that even if the liquid energy (gasoline or diesel) were unavailable, a multitude of substitutions can be made for automotion.
Gasoline ICEs can run on CNG, propane, wood gas, alcohols, etc. with some delivery mods.
Diesel ICEs can run on a number of substitute oils, again with some mods.
If electricity is unavailable, the EV is bricked. There are no substitutes.
Happy motoring!
Much of the demand “to save the planet” is from educated women.Unfortunately NONE of that education is Home Economics.That ended in the 1960s.
Didn’t you see that movie about those black ladies who sent those astronauts to the moon by doing arithmetic with pencils?
Just checked and my Prius Plug-In costs 5 cents a mile using EV (in my case the first 8.2 miles, plus any regen energy), and 10 cents a mile using regular gasoline. It’s a great combination and I wouldn’t want a solely EV car.
Agree that EVs are not saving the planet. They can save money if you buy them and keep them for many years, but they are not suitable for all uses (forget towing!). I don’t think people should be buying them to save money nor save the planet.
That said, Tesla batteries are degrading less than you’d expect, the real-world data shows less than 10% loss at 160k miles is typical (of course if the battery is abused, or in harsh conditions, it will be less). So the costs aren’t as bad as I expected them to be.
One point that I rarely see made about EVs is that if you have solar, you have fuel. There are situations where that could be very useful.
Eight years ago we put solar panels on our roof, without a battery pack. Picked Solarcity (now owned by Tesla). $27000 out of pocket. $6000 tax credit the first year, leaves $21000. Savings on electricity about $50 per month = $600 per year. Energy credits that we sell: approximately $300-500 per month = $4000 per year. Total savings (600+4000): $4600 per year. Payoff period approximately 5 years, so we are already coming out ahead after 8 years.
Bottomline: without government subsidies, this stuff will always be a money loser.
Plus, we will leave the dismantling and disposal of the panels to the next owner of the house.
Do I feel bad about doing this project in the first place? Not really. Have bigger fish to fry.