Does an electric car really save money and energy?

It goes far beyond that. Where does your electricity come from? How is it generated by the power company? Like most new things these days, 'plugin' cars are being hyped to the max without a lot of real explanation or thought.

Doesn't matter to me, yet. Until the electric car builders can figure out how to let me recharge the battery in 10 minutes in the middle of nowhere (like you can with gas), it will always be a niche technology.

 

It is always cheaper and less polluting to have one fixed energy source rather than thousands of mobile sources. What creative is fussing about is that 15 amp 120v electricity is a pretty small 'hose' to pump power into your car with. The Dryer Plug at 240v is at least five times as fast. (Whoever wired my two car garage put in 8 240 outlets, two of them 3 phase, so I am ready)

Using the Tesla as an example to completely recharge it.
240v 90A 4 hours
typical dryer or welder plug 240v 50A 6 hours
240v 30A 10 hours
plugged into the A/C plug in a motel room 19 hours
Household 120v 15A plug 35 hours

So a 'normal' plugin is a pretty small source of power, but most houses already have a Dryer plug capable of recharging a Tesla overnight. Trying to do a road trip would take longer per day to charge it than drive it.

Hybrids, even plug in hybrids, fall back to gas engines, so do not have these issues.

Electric vehicles are going to be city cars, not coast to coast touring cars, good thing so many people live in cities.

 

Lets say you can drive 32mi using 16KW of electricity (Chevy Volt)(I know they claim 40 but I think they are dreaming).
Thats .5kw/mi @ $.10/KW so that works out to $.05/mi

A Prius getting 50mpg @ $2.50/gal cost so that works out to again $.05/mi

Where is the savings? None unless you produce your own electricity.

 

You mean there's no free lunch

 

Wait a min. it's KW per hour for electricity isn't it?

 

No. A "kiloWatt-hour" is a unit for quantity of electric energy. A kiloWatt is a unit of *power*, the rate of energy use, or energy per unit time. To get a total amount of energy you have to multiply power by time; thus the kiloWatt-hour. Using four kiloWatts continuously for one hour = 4 kW-hr. Using 1/2 kW continuously for eight hours also = 4 kW-hrs, and so on.

A "kW per hour" would be a unit of the rate of change of power, which is not very common, and is not how electricity is sold.

 

But you only get that result if you choose a car that DOES produce it's own electricity, if you compare the volt to non hybrids (or in CA where gas is $3) it does much better.

The Volt is not completion to the Prius, it is a solution for a different group of drivers.

Prius does not get as good mileage on short trips, gets great mileage on long trips.
Volt does not get as good mileage on long trips, gets great mileage on short trips.

 

I keep thinking about the 35-40K projected sticker price and GM claiming 230Mi/gal to show it is cheaper to drive than a hybrid. If you work <4mile away then it might make sense but even in CA where gas is $3/gal, electricity averages $.14/KW a prius costs $.06/mi and the Volt costs $.07/mi

 

Almost. It's kW*H. To get the amount of energy, you multiply the power times the duration, or Watt-Hours.

The poster that used kW in the calculation was wrong, but I'm sure he meant kWH.

Tom