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To: NormsRevenge

“...even when emissions from generating the electricity are taken into account, electric vehicles have a much smaller carbon footprint than gas-powered vehicles because they are much more efficient.”

Carbon dioxide emissions (not that they really matter) and energy efficiency are two different (if related) things.

Internal combustion engines are (if I remember correctly) about 30% efficient, maybe a bit better if running close to their thermodynamic ideal. Using electric energy to power a drive train is, in fact, a lot more efficient, in terms of the fraction of the total energy that ends up moving the vehicle (somewhere in the neighborhood of 80%, if I remember correctly).

BUT the energy in the battery doesn’t magically appear there - it has to be generated somewhere. If it comes from a coal-fired plant (our most common generation source), you’re talking somewhere in the neighborhood of 60 to 70% energy wasted in generation losses and transmission losses, which wipes out the benefits described above.

Now if you’re getting your electrons from nukes, it’s a different story - no greenhouse gases, little generation loss, mostly just transmission losses.

But I don’t think people pushing electric cars are going to lobby for a whole bunch of new nuclear plants.


15 posted on 04/04/2011 3:19:51 PM PDT by Stosh
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To: Stosh

I use recycled electrons, regardless.


20 posted on 04/04/2011 3:51:24 PM PDT by Gondring (Paul Revere would have been flamed as a naysayer troll and told to go back to Boston.)
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