To get to 2x, you'll need to assume the average BEV is substantially less efficient than a Tesla - that all gasoline is refined at the most efficient refinery - that all ICE cars get Prius mileage - that it takes 0 energy to extract and transmit / ship oil - and probably that the majority of your electricity is coming from coal.
That sounds well off.
How much energy is required to refine fuel suitable for use in an ICE vehicle? Gas and oil fired power plants use a far less refined fuel.
How much energy is required to get the fuel to the vehicle? Gas and oil plants are usually connected via high efficiency transport mechanisms like pipelines rather than ships or road transport.
Vehicle engines are only in the region of 20-35% thermal efficiency but the average across all gas fired plants in the uk is 50% and drops to 42% for oil fired.
I don’t know for sure but only 2x smells to me.
Solar => Grid => Car Battery is less than 10% lost usually. Obviously it can vary a lot - so can oil extraction, shipping and refining...
This means Solar => Grid => Car battery is >5x as efficient as Oil in ground => Pipes => Refinery => Pipes => Gas Station => Car.
Once the energy is in the car, we know the BEV is 5x more efficient.
We also know Solar => Car is SUBSTANTIALLY more efficient at transferring BTUs into the car than the gasoline infrastructure.
In reality, it's probably closer to 10x as efficient than 2x.
Given the reluctance to expand nuclear power, we're going to be charging EVs with fossil fuels for a long time.
Even if you never used wind, solar, nuclear, hydro, etc. then you’d still be ahead in the BEV case.
An oil power plant has around 42% thermal efficiency. A gas one 50%+ an ICE is only up to 35% but in the US it’s significantly lower on average.
Neither of which have tailpipe emissions in populated areas unlike ICE.
But we do also use wind, solar, nuclear etc as power sources for BEV.
Yes, but not by much.
A coal power plant averages 33% efficiency. Gas is 42%. Source: google
> Neither of which have tailpipe emissions in populated areas unlike ICE.
CO2 doesn't care where it's emitted.
> But we do also use wind, solar, nuclear etc as power sources for BEV.
And nowhere near the power needed if everyone switched to EVs.
This is pointless argument. We don't have enough EVs for everyone to switch to EVs.
It looks like the bottleneck will be EV production, not wind & solar adoption.
We only need to quadruple solar panels in the US to provide all electricity necessary for ALL cars to switch to EVs...
This looks like it'll happen within 10 years. We won't be 100% on EVs in 20 years.
Disease rates (e.g. asthma) in the population do though
>> And nowhere near the power needed if everyone switched to EVs
You’re saying that if demand for electricity goes up, it won’t be met? Why?
> You’re saying that if demand for electricity goes up, it won’t be met?
Yes.
> Why?
Because government does not price things based on supply&demand. Therefore, you get shortages (rolling blackouts).
Fortunately, that's not what we are doing. I just wish EV proponents would stop pretending it is.
Is there a term for a self-inflicted straw-man?
I didn't follow this part, there’s an energy loss in the process of charging the battery and there’s a loss in the process of converting from dc battery to ac traction motor, but it’s well shy of 20%. The high amperage involved in both charging and discharging mean losses are low (because if they were high, you’d generate so much heat as to make the system unusable)
>> EVs powered by oil power plants is not a good use of energy
It’s a huge step forward from ICE. You’ve cut disease rates in the population by moving tail pipe emissions away from population centres. You’ve swapped a circa 30% efficient process for a circa 40%-60% efficient process. Not to mention the emissions benefits of LNG over Gasoline or diesel.
40-50% is a conservatively low number.
This is categorically false.
We already produce >10x as much wind energy alone that all BEVs in the US consume.
We already produce orders of magnitude more hydro electricity than we need for every passenger vehicle in the US to be a BEV.
Yet California urged customers to not charge their EVs during peak hours because there isn't enough electricity available. And EVs are still only a tiny percentage of cars.
> hydro
is a doomed power source, because rivers are drying up, suitable sites are rare, and no new ones will be built because of environmental concerns. Existing ones get blown up.
https://www.nps.gov/olym/learn/nature/dam-removal.htm
BTW, a lot of PNW hydro power gets sold to California, which still has to tell people not to charge their EVs.
If we’d built car-to-grid infrastructure, EVs would be helping load shift, and they’re already not hurting in most cases, because we’re mostly not charging during peak consumption hours.
You can play this game all day long, depending on which figure you want to land on. Efficiency is nice but the reason it hasn't mattered at all is that it is more about what is readily available and cheaply exploited.
> You can play this game all day long
And you should, to be serious about CO2 emissions reduction. Otherwise, we're all just fooling ourselves.
If the BEV is running with their 2kw heating turned up full blast in addition to running down the road, and there was a heat loss of around 2-5% while charging the car then We’re still at around 3x more efficient in the BEV vs the ICE.
Then there’s the electricity supply which ranges from 0 refinement loss and 50% thermal efficiency (natural gas fired power plant) to NaN% for nuclear, wind and solar.
A BEV charging right this minute in the UK is consuming energy originating from 25% gas, 25% nuclear, 25% wind, 5% solar (its 6:30pm).
It could be more than 5x when you compare with ICE fuel supply / refinement / storage / delivery.
Right. Now factor in the losses in thermodynamic electric power generation to fuel the EV.
> We’re still at around 3x more efficient in the BEV vs the ICE.
Don't neglect the losses from generating that electricity, which is about 70%.
What? There’s 70% loss in the process of generating electricity? Where does that occur?
Coal is circa 20% of the supply in the US. About the same as nuclear or renewables.
I've seen this figure before. It ignores the efficiency of the generation of electric power to charge the EV.
A much more realistic figure is 2x.