An electric automobile will convert 5-10 percent of the energy in natural gas into motion. A normal vehicle will convert 20-30 percent of the energy in gasoline into motion. That's 3 or 4 times more energy recovered with an internal combustion vehicle than an electric vehicle.
Electricity is a specialty product. It's not appropriate for transportation. It looks cheap at this time, but that's because it was designed for toasters, not transportation. Increase the amount of wiring and infrastructure by a factor of a thousand, and it's expensive.
Electricity does not scale up properly to the transportation industry due to its miniscule nature. Sure, a whole lot can be used for something, but at extraordinary expense.
Using electricity as an energy source requires two energy transformation steps, while using petroleum requires only one. With electricity, the original energy, usually chemical energy, must be transformed into electrical energy; and then the electrical energy is transformed into the kinetic energy of motion. With an internal combustion engine, the only transformation step is the conversion of chemical energy to kinetic energy in the combustion chamber.
The difference matters, because there is a lot of energy lost every time it is transformed or used. Electrical energy is harder to handle and loses more in its handling.
The use of electrical energy requires it to move into and out of the space medium (aether) through induction. Induction through the aether medium should be referred to as another form of energy, but physicists sandwich it into the category of electrical energy. Going into and out of the aether through induction loses a lot of energy. Related: Oil Prices Fall As Hedge Funds Throw In The Towel
Another problem with electricity is that it loses energy to heat production due to resistance in the wires. A short transmission line will have 20 percent loss built in, and a long line will have 50 percent loss built in. These losses are integrated because reducing the loss by half would require twice as much metal in the wires. Wires have to be optimized for diameter and strength, which means doubling the metal would be doubling the number of transmission lines.
High voltage transformers can achieve 90 percent efficiency with expensive designs, but household level voltages achieve only 50 percent efficiency. Electric motors can get up to 60 percent efficiency, but only at optimum rpms and load. For autos, they average 25 percent efficiency. Gasoline engines get 25 percent efficiency with old-style carburetors and 30 percent with fuel injection, though additional loses can occur.
Applying this brilliant engineering to the problem yields this result: A natural gas electric generating turbine gets 40 percent efficiency. A high voltage transformer gets 90 percent efficiency. A household level transformer gets 50 percent efficiency. A short transmission line gets 20 percent loss, which is 80 percent efficiency. The total is 40 percent x 90 percent x 50 percent x 80 percent = 14.4 percent of the energy recovered before the electrical system does something similar to the gasoline engine in the vehicle. Some say the electricity performs a little better in the vehicle, but it's not much.
Electricity appears to be easy to handle sending it through wires. But it is the small scale that makes it look cheap. Scaling it up takes a pound of metal for so many electron-miles. Twice as much distance means twice as much metal. Twice as many amps means twice as much metal. Converting the transportation system into an electrical based system would require scaling up the amount of metal and electrical infrastructure by factors of hundreds or thousands. Where are all those lines going to go? They destroy environments. Where is that much natural gas going to come from for the electrical generators? There is very little natural gas in existence when using it for a large-scale purpose. Natural gas must be used with solar and wind energy, because only it can be turned on and off easily for backup. Related: Do Saudi Arabia And Russia Really Want Higher Oil Prices?
One of the overwhelming facts about electric transportation is the chicken and egg phenomenon. Supposedly, a lot of electric vehicles will create an incentive to create a lot of expensive infrastructure. There are a lot of reasons why none of the goals can be met for such an infrastructure. The basic problem is that electricity will never be appropriate for such demanding use as general transportation, which means there will never be enough chickens or eggs to balance the demand. It's like trying to improve a backpack to such an extent that it will replace a pickup truck. The limitations of muscle metabolism are like the limitations of electrical energy.
Electrons are not a space-saving form of energy. Electrons have to be surrounded by large amounts of metal. It means electric motors get heavy and large. When cruising around town, the problems are not so noticeable. But the challenges of ruggedness are met far easier with internal combustion engines. Engineers say it is nice to get rid of the drive train with electric vehicles. But in doing so, they add clutter elsewhere, which adds weight, takes up space and messes up the suspension system. Out on the highway, the suspension system is the most critical factor.
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These problems will prevent electric vehicles from replacing petroleum vehicles for all but specialty purposes. The infrastructure needed for electric vehicles will never exist when limited to specialty purposes. This would be true even with the perfect battery which takes up no space and holds infinite charge.
By Zerohedge.com
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Almost half of the article is devoted to how there are losses while transmitting electricity but what about the energy cost of drilling and transporting not to mention liquefy or compress the natural gas or process crude for gasoline.
It is people like these who stop us from moving forward with their blatant lies, misinformed opinion and 'alternative facts'.
I am surprised something like oilprice.com chose to publish such a nincompoop.
Let's build towards a future of alternative energy and not alternative facts. Peace
Electricity doesn't scale? That's what the whale oil lamp sellers claimed all the way into bankruptcy. Name a industry, any industry, that can function without electricity. The USA has the largest natural gas reserves in the world. Wind and solar prices are falling. Small scale, eco friendly hydro is making a comeback. The there is new nuclear and even coal technology. Electricity will be cheap and plentiful for many generations to come. Or, we can continue buying oil from rag heads who hate U.S.
This is so blatantly biased and false that it's hard to believe it was republished.
Electric motors get 25% efficiency in electric vehicles?
Transformers at residences reach 50% conversion?
The sad thing about this is that they are so obviously wrong and demonstrably. We truly are living in a post fact world.
Oilprice.com will often publish politically-motivated propagandists (Alberta's David Yager is another example). There's nothing wrong with right of left leaning point of vues... it's just that I'm turned off by partisan hacks that will consistently denigrate their opposition parties and prop-up their own political party... even if evidence sometimes shows otherwise.
This website should be about oil... not oil as a tool for a political end.
The title "Inconvenient Truth" itself suggests a political hack job. Zerohedge is either a political hack, or an industrial one. Until Zerohedge can compare apples to apples, oilprice.com should not give it the mike.
We do not have to rely on imprecise statements like "electricity is lossy" or "we'd need more infrastructure" to determine how hard it is to use electricity for transportation (which trains and subways have been doing for the better part of a century, by the way), we can look at how much these things, which we are in fact doing, are in fact costing. And how those costs are changing over time. And the actual numbers paint a very different picture than this balderdash.
Is this a joke?
The author is a nut. If all the electrical machinery had stated efficiencies they would melt.
The number of transformations of energy are irrelevant. What counts is the overall efficiency. When gas was $3/gallon, the effective cost of electricity to travel the same distance with electricity was 25 cents. With so many errors (and there are many more), this article isn't worth reading.
You also need a bigger engine if you want more horsepower. I hope noone accepts these falsehoods.
An Aerospace Engineer
I think you missed the point of hard to scale, I believe the author was referring to hard to scale for mass use in vehicles, not scale for signal large uses.
"what about the energy cost of drilling and transporting not to mention liquefy or compress the natural gas or process crude for gasoline"
What about the energy cost of producing solar panels, wind turbines and batteries?
The losses in transmitting is relevant regardless of the source of the power (coal, natgas or solar etc.).
Electric motors operate at efficiencies between 50% to 60% minimum.
IC Engine runs at 33% maximum!
And then the whole point of electric mobility is to eventually start producing clean energy as well.
I see EVs as a stepping stone to a better world where all energy is clean and vehicles are green.
This article is not true and the writer seems to be misinformed/biased.
Shame on you. This article is so slanted that it is insane. You forget to mention the carrying, refining, and production costs of crude oil which amounts to efficiency far less than electric.
Anyone who has owned an electric vehicle for a day can refute everything the writer is saying and I am no engineer.
It is writers like you that make statements that are blatantly not true and thus make the internet sources less trustworthy.
If anyone is reading this please check his sources.
You realise the idea is that the electricity won't be produced by natural gas as in there's these things called Solar and Wind which we can use to generate electricity and don't release CO2.
EV's are happening and only getting better. With the new 350 kWh chargers being deployed now they can charge a car at 20 miles per minute. The current issues are the batteries are too expensive but the pack price is projected to be less than $100 p/kWh by 2020. An average car will require 50-60 kWh for a 200+ mile range. These metrics will not suit everyone but even assuming all R&D stops in 2020 this type of vehicle will suit a large portion of the market.
I'm glad to tell you that:
- electricity can come from other sources than fossil fuels. Yes wind and solar but mostly nuclear. Nuclear is cheap and well understood (but badly percieved) and easily controlled
- we idle nuclear reactors due to not enough demand. That is expensive and wasteful. At night time electricity consumption goes waay down. Perfect time to charge your vehicle w/o 100x wires!
- smart grids have already theoretically solved the issue of peak power demand. It will be a LOT easier if many homes have a few GJ stored conveniently in a car battery which is easy to pull from during peak surges.
- combustion engines require a huge infrastructure: drilling, mega tankers, refineries, gas distribution, gas stations. These are really expensive to build and maintain. Electrical cars - not so much.
- it is not the energy requirements that make fossil fuels bad. It is the side effects. With electricity even if it is less efficient to convert into motion we have a better control on side effects.
- electrical vehicles are a LOT more efficient than gas engines in urban settings due to energy recovery and a much better efficiency at low RPMs. It is a no-brainer.
- electrical vehicles suspention has zero to do with its drive train. That was just whacky. Have you ever driven one? Buy one with the money you got from gas giants for this article. But again, this article is not worth that much anyway. Get your facts straight before pen meets paper.
It takes electricity and diesel and gasoline made with electricity to drill for, extract, transport, refine and pump petroleum products into internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles. Not to mention the electricity necessary to manage and maintain that infrastructure. Seems to me that's hugely in efficient. Some simple Googling finds there are roughly 11 gallons of gasoline refined from a barrel of oil. It takes an average 6.8 kWh of electricity to refine each gallon. 6.8 kWh of electricity will propel a modern Nissan Leaf 23 miles (with air conditioning). That's just on the electricity for refining, nothing else.
Modern, computer controlled engines are 25%-30% efficient, yet the average American car gets only 26 mpg. The lowly Nissan Leaf electric motor operates at 80+% efficiency with a average mpge (mpg equivalent range) of 95 miles. Most EVs charge at home. Homes that get their electricity from the same source as yours. If EVs weren't better for the environment auto makers would be building ICE vehicles with those 50% efficient engines and 200 mpg carburetors I keep hearing about.
If you compare apples for apples, the EV driving experience is far superior to ICE vehicles. EVs require less maintenance, are cheaper to operate and even catch fire less often than ICE vehicles. The USA has the world's largest natural gas reserves. Wind and solar generation prices are also falling. Electricity will be plentiful and cheap (cheaper than gasoline) for many generations to come. Most homes and other buildings in the US can support at least one EV charging station. Most homes & commercial buildings don't/can't support fuel pumps.
And they should really employ an engineer over at Zerohedge, all the numbers are made up.
Electric motors in EVs are around 90% efficient and remain at that efficiency practically their whole life. Combustion engines are around 30% efficient and that drops unless you have a lot of maintenance over its life.
I used to pay about £230 per month on petrol and now pay about £25 per month for my EV...
Plus in the years to come all electricity will be from renewables.
Articles like this downgrade the actual and perceived quality of Oilprice.com.
"Well to wheel" efficiency best case: EV/Li-ion: 45% , Oil/Gas: 81.7%
http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2010/ph240/sun1/
"EVs exhibit the potential for significant increases in human toxicity, freshwater eco-toxicity, freshwater eutrophication, and metal depletion impacts, largely emanating from the vehicle supply chain."
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1530-9290.2012.00532.x/full
Oh, and both are infinite, unlike all fossil fuels.
Please work on your math. It is terrible to say the least
Yes, that is true, but not as big of a deal when the losses are only about 5% now.
> Wires have to be optimized for diameter and strength, which means doubling the metal would be doubling the number of transmission lines.
So what, with what we know now?
> High voltage transformers can achieve 90 percent efficiency with expensive designs, but household level voltages achieve only 50 percent efficiency.
As transformers are part of the transmission and distribution network, their losses are included in the [5%](https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=105&t=3). However, for more information, you will find that transformers at many sizes are around [98% efficiency](http://www.csemag.com/single-article/increasing-transformer-efficiency/37c25f0039ccfad0f24b52aa4e906ed8.html).
> Electric motors can get up to 60 percent efficiency, but only at optimum rpms and load.
Electric motors can get up to [95 percent efficiency.](https://www.energydepot.com/RPUcom/library/MISC003.asp)
> For autos, they average 25 percent efficiency.
["An electric motor runs somewhere in the low 80’s to high 90% range over its entire RPM band."](https://matter2energy.wordpress.com/2013/02/22/wells-to-wheels-electric-car-efficiency/)
> Gasoline engines get 25 percent efficiency with old-style carburetors and 30 percent with fuel injection, though additional loses can occur.
We already found this to be mostly true.
> Applying this brilliant engineering to the problem yields this result: A natural gas electric generating turbine gets 40 percent efficiency. A high voltage transformer gets 90 percent efficiency. A household level transformer gets 50 percent efficiency. A short transmission line gets 20 percent loss, which is 80 percent efficiency. The total is 40 percent x 90 percent x 50 percent x 80 percent = 14.4 percent of the energy recovered before the electrical system does something similar to the gasoline engine in the vehicle. Some say the electricity performs a little better in the vehicle, but it's not much.
See first section.
> Electricity appears to be easy to handle sending it through wires. But it is the small scale that makes it look cheap. Scaling it up takes a pound of metal for so many electron-miles. Twice as much distance means twice as much metal. Twice as many amps means twice as much metal.
So some of this is correct. But as [/u/Formerly_Guava said, "This is only true if you don't change the voltage. But all long distance transmission lines are all high voltage. Hence why they are called "high voltage transmission lines", and if you double the voltage, you only need half as many amps."](https://www.reddit.com/r/teslamotors/comments/69jg89/would_like_to_hear_opinions_on_this_article/dh75qga/)
> Converting the transportation system into an electrical based system would require scaling up the amount of metal and electrical infrastructure by factors of hundreds or thousands.
This is partially true, but as already shown, the electric infrasture already needs to be upgraded.
> Where are all those lines going to go? They destroy environments.
As a rebuttal to the oilprice.com article, where is all the oil pipelines going to go?
> Where is that much natural gas going to come from for the electrical generators? There is very little natural gas in existence when using it for a large-scale purpose.
tl;dr: There is almost 5 times as much natural gas reserves in the US versus gasoline reserves when measuring after conversion to motion. Also not all electricity is natural gas.
There is [324,303 Billion Cubic Feet of Natural Gas Reserves in the US](https://www.eia.gov/dnav/ng/ng_enr_sum_a_EPG0_r21_BCF_a.htm). (There are [1032 BTU per cubic ft](https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=45&t=8), other sources used are above) That means there is 32.17 trillion kWh available as measured after conversion to motion. There is [35.2 billion barrels of crude oil reserves in the US](https://www.eia.gov/naturalgas/crudeoilreserves/). ([19 gallons of gasoline in 1 barrel of crude oil](https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=327&t=9), plus other sources already listed above). That means there is 6.7 trillion kWh of gasoline avaliable as measured after conversion to motion. Of course this is not counting international reserves for gasoline or for natural gas.
> Natural gas must be used with solar and wind energy, because only it can be turned on and off easily for backup.
Right now yes, but Tesla is working on batteries.
> One of the overwhelming facts about electric transportation is the chicken and egg phenomenon. Supposedly, a lot of electric vehicles will create an incentive to create a lot of expensive infrastructure. There are a lot of reasons why none of the goals can be met for such an infrastructure. The basic problem is that electricity will never be appropriate for such demanding use as general transportat
The hell! "long line will have 50 percent loss built in" 300kV lines can carry up to 300MW energy. These wires would evaporate in a second if 150MW of power would absorbed in these lines!
Energy losses in transmission lines including HV transformes in my country is 2-3%
50% electricity losses!!! power lines would evaporate in a second if such amount of power is absorbed in them. In my country losses are 2-3% and that includes transformers
Very disappointed that Oilprice.com allows this to happen. I am all in favor for debate but facts are facts. Do not mislead.
---
Zerohedge's business is to predict future for all kinds of investors. If some believe them and they are right, those investors make money (or, at least, not loose)
Then it seems electricity is not that bad... an electric engine has a very high performance compared to a combustion engine which is ridicoulous. You could be losing as much power as the car is putting to the ground, through the radiator.
If you think of electricity as we know it now, and how we get it now, yes, maybe is not that great. Wait 30 or 40 years and the thing could be totally different.
Remember folks, gas does not just appear in gas pumps, it's drilled, transported, refined, transported, stored and pumped along with all sorts of other processes.
I'm not saying there is not much in creating electricity but there is a lot of electricity used to make gas and all of the processes along the way.
much worse...the editors at oilprice published it
good news...readers recognized it for what it is
better news...most readers responded appropriately...however...
@timmie tee...please reconsider your "facts"...e.g. the Stanford reference you provided (thank you for that) specifically states that overall w to w efficiency of ICE vehicles is worse than electric, not better as you interpreted.
We are paying this for that in my taxes everywhere. Why we don't have efficient electrical transmissions in the gasoline cars, you generate electricity only not mechanical power. Volt was a start but an 8000% battery out of warranty is not easy to afford if and is still with tax payer money. Where is the 40 volt initiative in cars? Smaller wires more efficient usage of electricity.
Put as many efficient solar panel in all the deserts of the world and help those poor guys there but is not the solution here in northern emisphere. Who is making money in the wind turbine business? How much is costing me the tax payer ? I want to here an honest engineer working with electricity and good at math have opinions here.
EVs have almost no maintenance: No oil changes or filters, no tune-ups, no transmissions, no emissions checks, and unbelievably cheap operation. Because of electricity, they have the performance of a sports car, with 100% torque at zero speed.
Using regeneration, we can trade momentum for more battery power as the motor turns to generator slowing down the car as we back off on the pedal. One-pedal driving is such a treat in city and commute driving! In the 17 months we have had it we have saved over 800 gallons of expensively-blended California Gasoline at about $2.80/gal. It is over $3 now.
You will be surprised at how soon you will have one.
Crank in the maintenance needs of a toaster (clean it out once in a while), and the result is clear.
You deserve to be put to shame to even write this.
Stop lying and deceiving people about what you pretend to know about electricity.
You are providing Inconvenient Lies for/from people in the oil industry.
I'm happy to see so many people prove you wrong.
Just because you work and get paid by them doesn't mean you should purposely pretend you don't have a "FRACKING" conscience because you don't FRACKING care about the FRACKING environment.
It took 40 min for the super charger to recharge the SUV battery to 80% from 10% to continue the trip. Truth is I could have filled a IC car in ten minutes but have spent the same 40 min in that place anyway!
For us It made no difference whatsoever.
What the author dosn't seem to grasp is the people living in cities dying from fumes emited by vehicles. The move to electric is a hugh difference and yes it may use energy at a different rate, but look at how much this technology had come on in recent years. I applaud the EV revolution.
Top energy conversion of gas / steam turbine electric generators is 40 %.
Electric transmissions losses are typically in the 10% range. Net thus equals 30%.
Lithium-ion battery charging efficiency is 99%. Thus loss of 1% there. Electric motor efficiency is in the 95% + range. (Thus - 5% energy loss there. )
30% - 5% - 1% = 26% efficiency for electric automobiles.
When you consider maintenance requirements of gas autos compared to electric the electric auto advantages are huge.
When you consider hydro or other forms of renewable energy for electric car battery charging the advantages of electric automobiles a far superior to that of gas autos.
I would like the maths geniuses to explain why Anybody would need to refine the gallon of gasoline.to drive less mileage?
Petrolheads will find any excuse to get a gasoline vehicle.
The other thing that makes commenters sound silly is talking about what "we could do" - OK, could you? You also sound like first world spoiled brats talking about your EV's that you love. The only people allowed to be smug are people who walk or pedal or take the subway. You EV owners are not saving the planet with your consumption.
And the final annoyance - you are so smug about having cheap electricity. Have you ever seen a copper mine or a coal mine or the fracked states in the USA?
Can we stop talking about what we "believe" and work really hard to get real? What website hosts that kind of reality based discussions?
Anyway I don't have time for this now, my household transformers are melting again.
"An electric automobile will convert 5-10 percent of the energy in natural gas into motion."
A reference would be nice. Let us roughly calculate EV efficiency when powered by natural gas:
http://naturalgas.org/overview/uses-electrical/
50-60% combined cycle
http://insideenergy.org/2015/11/06/lost-in-transmission-how-much-electricity-disappears-between-a-power-plant-and-your-plug/
Appears to imply up to a 10% loss from plant to plug
http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/comparing_the_battery_with_other_power_sources
Li-ion batteries have 99% efficiency
some additional losses in boost converter commonly mid 90% efficiency.
https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/electrical-motor-efficiency-d_655.html
>100hp motor should be over 90% efficient
Multiply it all out:
39% efficiency
As good as the best internal combustion engine under ideal conditions.
IC engines rarely run in the optimal domain. Start and stop with idling, throwing away kinetic energy on braking. I'd argue this is significant, putting EVs well ahead of the best IC engines.
Why an article full lies trying to stop us from running America on Natural Gas? Read Zero Hedge for a bit, you'll figure it out.