[John Jorsett]

In many parts of the world outside of California, the government actually allows (instead of outlaws) the creation of new generating capacity. There is excess capacity (at night) at cheap rates in many places. (Electricity costs $US0.05/kWh here.)

See my #39 post about how much energy it takes to be the equivalent of 1 gallon of gasoline. Using your figure of $.05 per kwh, a "one gallon of gas" equivalent amount of electrical power would cost $1.70. And that assumes perfect conversion efficiency, which doesn't happen in the real world, so let's use something realistic like 75%. That would make the cost $2.25. Somewhat better than the $3.00+ we're paying today, but not as spectacular as some people might hope.

[USFRIENDINVICTORIA]

In your post # 39 you say: " gallon of gasoline yields 115,000 BTUs". You then compare that directly with the cost of an equivalent amount of electrical energy (assuming 100% efficiency for the electricity).

Actually, the losses in the charger, battery storage, and motor would yield an efficiency of about 75% for the electric vehicle. However, a gasoline IC engine is only about 35% efficient (at best) and a diesel engine about 40% efficient. Therefore, electricity is cost-competitive against gasoline at about $1.25/gallon. (BTW -- we pay well over US$3.00/US gallon for gas in Canada.) Of course, there are excise taxes on gasoline and none on electricity. If electric cars become popular, governments will figure out a way to rectify that by somehow also taxing electric vehicles. If the taxes were equalized, the cost advantage of electricity would be reduced significantly.

The biggest advantage of electric cars is that there is a wide variety of ways to generate the electricity -- therefore the dependency on oil would be reduced.