Which Technology Is The Most Cost Effective?

"Consider the Tesla Model S, which has an available 85kWh battery and a 265 mile range.

Consider a similar gas-powered car, which gets 35 mpg.
Gasoline contains about 33kwh of energy per gallon.
The Tesla uses 320 Wh/mile of energy (85kWh/265 miles)
The gas powered car uses 940 Wh/mile of energy (33kWh/35 miles)
Once the energy is onboard (not counting the efficiency of the power generation, oil refining, or charging), the Tesla is using only about a third as much energy as the comparable gasoline-powered car."

"The direct answer to your question is that electric engines can be more than 90% efficient and even up to 98% efficient while combustion engines are 30 to 45% efficient. "

https://www.quora.com/How-energy-efficient-are-electric-motors-compared-to-combustion-engines

Well you have to consider economies of scale, and a quick side-by-side comparison of vehicles on the market by sales price, then the maintenance cost of ownership over the design life of the vehicle...

"Driving an electric car can save 36% or $10,538 over five years."

https://www.nerdwallet.com/blog/loans/electric-hybrid-gas-how-they-compare-costs-2015/

http://www.edmunds.com/new-cars/

but the price of buying an electric car is ^{a guess} about $20,000.00 more than a comparable sized ICE car.

Well closer to 10k, but depends on options....Here's a ford focus in all 3 iterations...but remember there are tax breaks, incentives and other benefits the hybrid gets...

http://www.edmunds.com/ford/focus/electric/years/

http://www.edmunds.com/ford/focus/sedan/years/

http://www.edmunds.com/ford/focus/hatchback/years/

According to Gaspricewatch.com:

The United States federal excise tax on gasoline is 18.4 cents per gallon (cpg) and 24.4 cents per gallon (cpg) for diesel fuel. On average, as of April 2012, state and local taxes add 31.1 cents to gasoline and 30.2 cents to diesel for a total US average fuel tax of 49.5 cents (cpg) per gallon for gas and 54.6 cents per gallon (cpg) for diesel.

So gas powered cars are helping to pay for electric cars. Not to mention the various subsidies to encourage people to buy EVs.

Yes but distribution system for electricity is the power lines, and the gasoline has to be trucked in every week or so to every location...The trucks add to the pollution and environmental costs with spills and last mile fuel costs...Then it has to be pumped into the fuel tank.....You have a very expensive distribution network...

Power (coal) plants in the Midwest (atleast in the upper Midwest) are shutting down (for now) just for the reason it can but electricity cheaper off the grid elsewhere. Probably from NG power plants. Wind is coming around but I don't think its establish well enough to make much of an impact.

"Total Electricity System Power

Electricity generation is more and more natural gas than anything else....

http://energyalmanac.ca.gov/electricity/total_system_power.html

Major energy sources and percent share of total U.S. electricity generation in 2015:¹

• Coal = 33%
• Natural gas = 33%
• Nuclear = 20%
• Hydropower = 6%
• Other renewables = 7%
• Biomass = 1.6%
• Geothermal = 0.4%
• Solar = 0.6%
• Wind = 4.7%
• Petroleum = 1%
• Other gases = <1%

https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=427&t=3

OK I'll cover some real world realities....For one thing by the time we start seeing measurable sea level change, it will probably be too late to do anything about it.....So it's not something we really want to see increasing at a noticeable rate.....Air pollution is measureable and it effects the health of everyone living on the planet, it's just most noticeable in the cities.....Having this country dependent on other nations for oil, is an untenable situation, we must attain energy independence as quickly as we can....The temperature is increasing on average and that is changing things, some like you might say those changes are making things better, but that is isolated and doesn't take into account that it is a package deal, so the effects in other places are not for the best and in some cases maybe catastrophic in nature....

Hydrogen fuel cell cars.... fixes all this....

20' tidal surge!! Yikes!!! You do realize that most of Florida is around 5' above sea level don't you? I would think a 20' tidal surge would be devastating to anyplace on Earth, even with a narrow localized event, like a hurricane, if it was to occur at high tide, somewhat less at low tide....There are places on Earth that experience a huge tidal difference where 20' surge at low tide would be non-eventful, and as far inland as you are, well no effect at all, but that's not the point...If we made the high tide level the median level then the high tide mark would be that much higher, you don't seem to get that....You seem to think we can pick up and move all the infrastructure at the drop of a hat, and pay no attention to the dollar figures involved(trillons) that have been invested...Most of the people on Earth live in coastal regions, and that's where most of the infrastructure exists...

As you can see the area's where there is population is largely on the coast lines, which are all 5 to 10 feet above sea level....The higher elevations are in north florida which is very sparsely populated...I mean would you move to Florida to live inland in the north section? There's nothing there it's wilderness...

http://sealevel.climatecentral.org/news/senate-climate-change-hearing-focuses-on-sea-level-rise

Cool flash rising sea level...

http://cegis.usgs.gov/video/30m/FloridaSLR.swf

http://cegis.usgs.gov/sea_level_rise.html

Hah, this may very well be true, but at least you can get behind ending air pollution and achieving energy independence....? Putting an end to global warming is just the cherry on top.....

Extrapolating into the next century when the sea level rises, the entire coastline will be wall to wall casinos, so with a bit of plaster in between the buildings, we have a ready-made sea wall.

Agreed, that air pollution is to be reduced. Pollutants are such as sulphur and other chemical substances as well as solids but certainly not CO2 that is an invisible gas, you can't even see it.

H2 in my opinion will never be a fuel. H2 combined with C, the hydrocarbons, however are. H2 on its own is a very light gas, is very hard to store and even contain. The hydrocarbons on the other hand have very high power density, are liquid, can easily be stored and handled. Why separate the H2 out? It is a pure fuel also capacity wise while the hydrocarbons produce the necessary CO2 as needed for nature and plants. It is much better all around. H2 alone make no sense at all.

Problem is that Nature's time scale is centuries or millennia, not years or decades.

To state that CO2 is the reason for climate change is one of the biggest lies spread around. CO2 weighs 1.5 times as much as air and stays mostly on the ground where it is needed for plant and food growth. Without CO2 we would all die of starvation. Thanks to the volcanoes we have sufficient CO2.

Besides, there is no iota proof that CO2 is bad. It is all hearsay. All the proof given is that it is a greenhouse gas so it must be the cause. First of all there are many other much more potent green house gases around even simple water vapour. And then consider the amount of CO2 in the air, it is now ~ 0.00004 parts of the atmosphere and that shall cause all the problems??? Get real.

CO2 has increased by 0.000005 parts over that last 50 years. Much larger changes have occurred in the past that cannot be blamed on man. Blaming the minute CO2 increase on climate change is totally ridiculous.

It is as much a lie as 'Fossil fuels' and 'Peak oil'.

Climates change all the time. They have in the past and will do so in the future. That is with or without man made CO2 that is relatively little and helps the environment and it is needed just like H2O. Both are fundamental and necessary building blocks or our nature.

CO2 has increased by 0.000005 parts over that last 50 years

???

In the 1970s the atmospheric CO2 concentration was 0.03% or 300 parts per million. It is now 400 ppm

Batteries are just a bridge technology leading to fuel cells....Using batteries now allows us to develop the electric vehicle in all other aspects, and continues reducing CO₂ levels as we move forward....

Here's the bottom line...

http://www1.eere.energy.gov/hydrogenandfuelcells/education/pdfs/thomas_fcev_vs_battery_evs.pdf

I think the larger issue is which technology is more practical.

Hands down it's gas ICE.

If your $100K Tesla runs out of juice in the middle of the Nevada desert, a gallon of gas won't help much.

Jump start? Nope!

You decided to buy a gas trimmer because you didn't think battery technology was mature.

Electric infrastructure is in its infancy also.

Given the total picture, cost to manufacture the cars, the batteries, provide infrastructure, cost to REPLACE battery modules after 5-10 years all say gas is more efficient.

If efficiency were the only goal I think we could do much better than an ICE....such as a fuel cell with a rankine cycle heat engine....

http://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/9/4/267/pdf

Yes, if.

But this is still the real world.

You drive a Mustang.

I have 4 ICE vehicles, with no plans to go electric.

Yes, but we're old and set in our ways....ask kids what kind of car they want...or if they want a car at all...We were raised in a generation that worshipped the car, our grandchildren are being raised in the uber sustainable recycle generation, they worship sustainability...and phones

Recharging Technology still has a ways to go.

Typically true if you convert chemical-mechanical-electrical, total efficiency degrades along the process. But, consider if you source out free/renewable energy in the circuit, it would be at much cheaper cost and manageable to go electric.

Converting chemical (Fossil fuel) in a plant in bulk would assure that pollution is controlled and treated or removed in the equation as compared to individual vehicular pollution regulation.

ICE will soon be gone by next 50 years or so. I always taught kids, to invest more in electronics, because it seemed to be that we are heading that horizon nowadays.

"ICE will soon be gone by next 50 years or so"

Never happen.

Da Ja Vue from the sixties, same thing was said back than too.

Crude oil is not limitless and the demand of energy rise exponentially. There are more cars produced now in a day as compared to the 50's, likewise babies who would need cars by the next 18 years or so.

When oil is gone, the grass is greener and horses will rule.

ICE is a great innovation of Mr. Diesel but, lets face the fact, it is not built to last.

True! more cars are being produced today than in the 50's, but more cars are leaving the road and being scrapped. People think that we should be recycling more, but in reality; we are recycling much more than people realize. Recycling is a whole new industry in itself. I can't quote the actual figures, but aluminum for example is made from around 70% recycled scrap and the remainder is newly processed bauxite. The same is true of just about anything you can think of.

Some items that are being recycled:

• aluminum
• steel
• paper
• TV's
• batteries
• tires
• plastics
• glass

To quote my late buddy M. King Hubbert, ''Our ignorance is not so vast as our failure to use what we know.'', and while he may have gotten a lot of wiggle room on ''Peak Oil'', it is inevitable that in the not too distant future (a couple of generations from now?), those who chose to use what they know will say, ''By burning it, we not only bolloxed up our terrestrial biome, but we deprived ourselves of recyclable industrial feedstockl why did THEY do that for over 100 years?''

Oil is a-bionic

<...using oil to run a generator to charge batteries for use in an electric automobile...> The concept is nonsensical when there is so much wind, wave, solar and hydro about.

Do change up a gear...

I'd love to switch over to an electric car, almost as much for the improved performance as for the improvement to the environment, but it doesn't seem like it will save me any money at this point. When it saves me money, then I'm on board.

Overall I have to go with SE. He is just a whole lot better than I at finding numbers to illustrate what is happening. The ICE is relatively inefficient at transforming energy into motion.

But I want to advocate for electricity being generated by fast nuclear reactors. Much better than thermal reactors in efficiency and other categories. Plus, electricity is pretty efficient and fairly easy to transport to where it is needed. And if someone complains about high tension transmission lines, the Small Modular Reactors offer a solution to that by generating electricity close to where it is needed.

Some time ago I read the e-book "Prescription for the Planet" by Tom Blees. He suggested we consider using boron for something like car propulsion. I would have to dig out the book to see how this was proposed to work.

Yeah, I'm not on board with the boron....theoretically it could work, but too many negatives...A lot of people say hydrogen is not possible, some say it produces pollution through production methods...This is true using present methods, steam reforming from nat gas, but in future it could be carbon neutral and even someday produced via nuclear molecular dissociation from water, rendering a cheap and endless supply produced locally...

https://bravenewclimate.com/2009/01/13/prescription-for-the-planet-part-ii-newclear-energy-and-boron-powered-vehicles/

"Some prototype Generation IV reactors, such as the HTTR, operate at 850 to 1000 degrees Celsius, considerably hotter than existing commercial nuclear power plants. General Atomics predicts that hydrogen produced in a High Temperature Gas Cooled Reactor (HTGR) would cost $1.53/kg. In 2003, steam reforming of natural gas yielded hydrogen at $1.40/kg. At 2005 gas prices, hydrogen cost $2.70/kg.^{[citation needed]} Hence, just within the United States, a savings of tens of billions of dollars per year is possible with a nuclear-powered supply. Much of this savings would translate into reduced oil and natural gas imports.

One side benefit of a nuclear reactor that produces both electricity and hydrogen is that it can shift production between the two. For instance, the plant might produce electricity during the day and hydrogen at night, matching its electrical generation profile to the daily variation in demand. If the hydrogen can be produced economically, this scheme would compete favorably with existing grid energy storage schemes. What is more, there is sufficient hydrogen demand in the United States that all daily peak generation could be handled by such plants.^[16]

Recent research on the hybrid thermoelectric Copper-chlorine cycle has focused on a cogeneration system using the waste heat from nuclear reactors, specifically the CANDUsupercritical water reactor.^[17]"...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_splitting

Uranium extraction from seawater seems to provide an endless and renewable source, making nuclear energy completely renewable...

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2016/07/01/uranium-seawater-extraction-makes-nuclear-power-completely-renewable/#79a9d87646e2

One thing that I haven't seen mentioned yet (I may have missed it) is that the best sources of electrical generation (wind, solar, hydro and nuclear) are already operating at close to their existing capacity. It seems to me that any additional load on the grid by electric vehicles will most likely be taken up by increasing the output of the least desirable sources.

I think analyzing overall efficiency of electric vehicles using our existing mix of power generation is misleading because it does not take into account the fact that the increased load on the grid will have to be taken up by the least efficient sources. At least until additional infrastructure is built and that could take many years.

will have to be taken up by the least efficient sources. At least until additional infrastructure is built and that could take many years.

This is true, but I think he was asking about efficiency to know which way to jump for building new infrastructure. In my opinion, the best way to go is with fast nuclear reactors. They could be the heat source for existing coal plant generators and also use existing transmission lines. I think that wind and solar cannot obtain the capacity to meet the world's needs.