Quote:
Originally Posted by MyFutureSelfnMe
I think the general idea behind electric vehicles is that it is more efficient and cost effective to produce electricity centrally (the power plant) than in the current distributed model (internal combustion on-board each car). That said, I'll do a little research on distributed energy production tonight. I'm curious. The mainframe doesn't seem like a perfect analogy because it disregards the significantly greater energy consumption of PCs vs. terminals. PCs are rather inefficient beasts. I'm not saying they necessarily need to be.
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IMO, where this idea falls flat is that energy is lost in each step of the chain; the more steps, the more is lost. Internal combustion is more efficient in this respect, which is why it's so difficult to displace gasoline when it comes to meeting transportation energy needs (gasoline very portable and energy-dense to boot, which gives it the edge in practicality and convenience). With electric, you have to deal with the inefficiency at the plant (heat losses, frictional losses, etc), power loss during transmission, loss at the transformer at your house, loss when charging the battery, loss when discharging the battery, frictional losses (IC has that as well); all of those add up when talking about 'well-to-wheel' efficiency.
This might give you a better idea of what I'm talking about
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The Secret Lives of Energy - The Energy Problem - Conservation of Energy