Quote:
Originally Posted by Rich H
The efficiency of all combustion-driven rotating machines - IC engines, turbines, etc. - is in the 30% +/- range. That's why running cars using electricity generated by fossil fuel is an automatic energy loser, even without considering losses in the grid itself.
Adding nuclear, solar, and wind seem superficially attractive alternatives until the practical realities intrude of: a) having to use gas turbines with them to provide required grid reliability, and b) someone having to pay the higher costs of alternative power plants compared to fossil power plants.
The only sure way to lower fossil energy use and CO2 with electric cars, is to charge the batteries using as-available power output from non-fossil generators that are not connected to the grid.
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to add to this the big reason to keep using IC has to do with the amount of new vehicles that enter the market. That number is roughly 10% each year which amounts to 10 years before we see a changeover. This means that even if the tesla whitestar is a phenomenal success *and* is affordable enough for people to buy *and* enough of them can be supplied it will still be 10 years until we are on electric.
Then you run into the logistics of used vehicle ownership: all those whitestar vehicles will need a battery pack replacement in 5 years or 100K miles. So what will happen for all those whitstar owners is that they will either trade them in on a new one or turn it in (if leasing is an option). Many people can only afford used vehicles and often buy high mileage IC vehicles knowing that they will run to 200K miles or so with only moderate maintainance. For these people the whitestar is not going to be practical if a 10K battery replacement is in the near future.
The main reason for using alternate fuels in IC engines has to do with th fact that we can use them *now* in all vehicles without any changes to our existing infrastructure.