Electric cars use less energy because electric motors are extremely efficient at converting stored energy into forward motion. Around 90 percent compared to a gasoline engine that may only be around 25 percent efficient.
Problem is the loss sending that power to your house, which is no where near 100% efficient.
To burn gasoline, you consume energy already stored by nature. To run electricity, you have to burn fuel to store and convert to electricity probably at the same efficients as the gas burners. I can't see electricity as more efficient. Add the efficiency losses to store the energy to that lost by converting stored electricty to kenetic energy, and I see electricty as more inefficient.
All true, but since the electricity has to come from a stationary power plant, you have to include the efficiency of that plant, and the transmission losse getting the electricity to your home. I just read where when you add in those losses to obtain the “real” efficiency of an electric car, they are on a par, but not better than, a gasoline-engined vehicle. Plus, given the sorry state of our power grid here today, we don’t have the generating capacity to “fuel” much more than a few extra golf carts. Lastly, unlike hybrids, when an electric car is out of juice, it takes hours to recharge. It’s not like you can pull into a charging station and be on your way with a fresh charge in the time it would take you to fill up your tank.
The problem with electric vehicles is that the battery becomes less efficient over time. The more charge/discharge cycles, the fewer miles the battery can produce before having to be recharged...IOW more energy is required to get the same mileage over time. This decline in efficiency of the battery increases with the number of cycles, and of course the battery ultimately has to be replaced.
If you add all that up, plus the amount of energy required to pay for and replace the old battery, there’s no way an electric car can be more efficient than an ICE, which will get approximately the same gas mileage over the life of the engine.
BTW...none of this includes the amount of energy that is lost from a battery that is just sitting. A battery is either charging or discharging, nothing in between. When you park that cool looking electric car, the battery discharges. May not be much (of course this also will increase over time), but it does discharge none the less. Gas powered cars don’t do that.
——Electric cars use less energy because electric motors are extremely efficient at converting stored energy into forward motion. Around 90 percent compared to a gasoline engine that may only be around 25 percent efficient.-——
But the electricity is created at oil or coal-burning plants, which are 33% efficient, and then transported over lossy power lines.
The problem is that much of that energy is lost, anyway, in the conversion INTO electricity.
The great advantage of electric cars is that you don’t have to carry a power plant and fuel around with you, allowing the energy to be from Thorium, coal, solar, whatever.
“Electric cars use less energy “
Um, two cars that weight the same going the same speed and having accelerated at the same rate used the same amount of energy reglardless of their powerplant.
“Electric cars use less energy because electric motors are extremely efficient at converting stored energy into forward motion. Around 90 percent compared to a gasoline engine that may only be around 25 percent efficient.”
The efficiency of coal power plants is about 30%, the stuff electric cars run off of.