Doing some quick energy calcs, they used a total of 101 KWh for the trip assuming a full 24 KWh charge at the start and 80% charges en route. Gasoline has a combustion energy of about 33.4 KWh per gallon. This results in an equivalent of 59 MPG for this trip. Anybody know how much energy it takes to turn X tons of coal into 1 KWh stored in a battery? Bet it’s a good bit more than it takes to turn oil into gasoline at the pump.
Thinking back, I had a ‘89 Jetta diesel back in the 90’s that I bought for less than 3 grand. It got 50 MPG with my foot on the floor all the time. I could drive it 750 miles without refilling.
coal is cheap.
there are 14,000 BTUs per lob of coal. figure about 15 to 20 cents per million BTUs. A coal power plant is about 85% efficient. That’s about as far as I can get. I don’t know the conversion from BTUs to KWh off hand. Figure about 50% line losses in the power lines.
Doing the math, you will find that an electric vehicle is amazingly efficient. But what you are not accounting for is the waste heat off a gasoline engine that is used to heat the car in winter. That 35% efficient gasoline car goes up in efficiency in the winter if you count the free heat, and the efficiency of electric cars goes down even if you don’t heat the car interior.