sparkn wrote:
"It is much cheaper and lower on the carbon footprint to get the energy from a wall socket than a fuel tank."
Nothing could be further from the truth. You need to do some research instead of simply parroting politically correct propaganda. I hate to burst you bubble, but the energy does not come from "a wall socket." Think big picture; think of what it takes to get the power to the battery and what on the other side of that receptacle – no dear, contrary to what you’ve been told, it’s not magic. Consider production of the equipment to mine and transport the coal, the actual mining of the coal, coal transportation, coal burning generator plant infrastructure, power grid infrastructure, and maintenance of all of the above.
Similar environmental costs are acrued in the mining, refining and transport of oil
Then there’s the pollution related to the burning of the coal (Can you say acid rain? I thought you could.)
Similarly, we burn the gas in IC motors.
Then of course there’s the loss of the energy you seek to put into your battery as it passes through various forms (heat, rotational force, electrical power, transformation to lower voltages, finally to battery then back to rotational at motor and Lord knows how many other transformations in between. Then of course there’s the fact that energy is lost as electricity travels through power lines (energy in is more than energy out). Bottom line is the closer the energy source is to the energy use the lower the energy loss. Then what do you do with the billions of batteries as they expire? (oh I know, recycle them – more magic that takes zero energy to do, right?)
The issue of the batteries is I think the biggest hurdle, but technology has come a long way in even the last 10 years
If that’s all too complicated for you to ponder, consider the following: If the millions of folks in a given urban area come home after work and turn on their PC’s, TV’s, lights, ovens, air conditioners, and other appliances AND all plug in their millions of electric vehicles the power grid will go kaput. So you build an even bigger power grid, do more coal mining (which anyone can see is just dandy for the environment) burn 10 times as much coal, etc, etc.
The issue with this is that they are not going to sell enough EV cars to affect the power grid any time soon, and most people will be charging them overnight to take advantage of cheaper hydro costs. This makes the EV charging situation similar to when you are riding your bike, if you plug in a GPS to charge while you ride the extra fuel consumption and added stress to the charging system is negligable, similarly plugging in a ferw thousand EV's at non-peak hours would not be a big deal. Not to mention that most places are slowly moving away from coal power to more renewable forms of hydro production. By the time we have a majority of EV vehicles (maybe someday) power generation would likely be very different than today, and batteries would be much more efficient.
I’m not suggesting that there are not be ways to make vehicles more energy efficient and reduce overall energy consumption; there most certainly are. But electric vehicles are for linear thinkers who cannot fathom the bigger picture. Now somebody please help me off this soapbox.
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