That's a *huge* amount of energy being transferred to the atmosphere

Re:That's a *huge* amount of energy being transferred to the... by JeremyNT on Monday June 12, 2023 @10:44AM (#36294382)

> Yes, there is an energy cost in building the car, but there’s also an energy cost in building the refrigerator and dryer and washing machine etc in the house.

I don't think you can really hand wave away that cost. My instinct is that battery, aluminum, and steel production should be very energy intensive.

The 3500+ pounds of "stuff" in your car is over an order of magnitude more "stuff" than a household appliance just by weight alone.

(Maybe we should forego the other luxuries as well, of course).

All that said I imagine the biggest direct end user energy usage would be the cost of HVAC systems running nearly continuously in inhospitable climates.

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Re:That's a *huge* amount of energy being transferred to the... by _kulang on Thursday June 22, 2023 @11:46PM (#36442542)

It’s not that bad. Fossil fuel burn is actually much worse. I used to think this as I thought buying used cars would be a great help but the break even point for the extra cost of building an entire vehicle is something like 2 years of driving. So building all new cars with half the fuel use could reduce overall emissions after about 4 years. Electric vehicles are worth it after 2-3 years. As long as your electric vehicles run for about 5 years, even if you make a whole new car, emissions would reduce considerably

When you look at it further, you find even an electric car uses 20-30kWh/100km at highway speeds. That basically a constant 20kW. Driving a car is just stupidly energy intensive and very little can be done about that. Trains and public transport have a huge benefit in energy use per person

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