# Green Electricity, Electric Cars Are Smart Match



## EVDL Archive (Jul 26, 2007)

Charis Michelsen reminds everyone that for electric cars to be really 'green' they can't be powered by coal.

More...


----------



## Matt4door (Feb 12, 2012)

Hello
I'm brand new to all the electric car talk. I am very excited to get started building my own EV BUT I stumbled across something very disturbing which I found while looking into the Power Plant disaster in Japan.
By the nature (physics) of a steam turbine, which is used to drive most generators (no matter what fuels the plant) are approximatly 33% efficient! This means 66% of the fuel converted to heat energy to make steam is released into the atmosphere! The most efficient turbine is in France @ 42%! This make driving a car on gasoline seem like a highly efficient way to go. This 33% is only the turbine efficiency, this does not take into account line loss and conversion inefficiencies.
I'm still a big fan of the EV, but I will try to charge the batteries using solar energy. Also my belief is that EV cars as they are right now are for short range use. I keep seeing post where people are trying to go 40 miles with them. We are not there yet, I intend to go less than 12 miles per day. If I need to go further I will take my more efficient gas powered vehicle. I remember my physics professor pounding his fist on the desk shouting how stupid can we all be trying to use electricily with all it inefficiencies, and that was back in 1977, now I understand. Why does it cost less to charge your vehicle at home? Because the power plants are not paying the hidden road fuel tax placed on Gasoline and Diesel fuel. The biggest mistake the world has ever made is digging up this "black devil". Nature placed it far beneath the earth's surface where it could not harm use, but we know better,went and dug it up to destroy the earth, go figure.
Matt


----------



## tomofreno (Mar 3, 2009)

An internal combustion engine has about 20% efficiency. So why would you drive a vehicle powered by one of those if you think 33% is bad?


----------



## Matt4door (Feb 12, 2012)

Your right tomofreno, I never realized how ineffecient the IC engine was, I never thought it could be worse than 33%.
Well that makes me feel a whole lot better about the EV and feel a lot worse about how we use energy. 
Thanks for the quick education
Matt


----------



## Duncan (Dec 8, 2008)

Hi Matt

It gets worse - it takes about 7Kwhours of electricity to refine a gallon of petrol,
(on top of the energy to extract and transport the oil)
(that's about 25 miles of driving - before you think about the oil) 


So your gas car as well as a very poor efficiency has this extra on top!

(20% is at the top of the efficiencies achieved - stop go motoring with a "normal" car can drop below 10%)

You are also a bit out of date on the range,
If you remove and weigh all of the IC bits
and replace them with the same weight of motor and batteries you end up with ~ 60 miles range - 
With batteries that are expected to last 5,000 cycles (20 years) before being moved to a second life as power storage modules


----------

