Electric cars win on energy efficiency vs hydrogen, gasoline, diesel: analysis Oct 10, 2017
If you want to drive the absolute cleanest car possible – and if you’re reading this site, we’re willing to wager that you do – then you need to calculate the total well-to-wheels energy use of the car and everything you put into its tank or battery.
When it comes to comparing types of vehicles – hydrogen, standard gasoline and diesel, or battery electric – then a full accounting of the averages reveals that
electric cars are the total efficiency winners. At least, they are in
a new study from the UK-based Transport & Environment.
The results are not even close.
Starting with all renewable energy for either charging or to process the gasoline or hydrogen, all-electric vehicles managing an overall efficiency rating of 73 percent, compared to 22 percent for hydrogen fuel cell vehicles, and just 13 percent for standard fossil fuel vehicles using gasoline made with the Fischer Tropsch process.
Of course, there are many details that need to be picked apart here.
For example, T&E says that fossil fuel vehicles lose 70 percent of the energy in their sloshing tanks because of inefficient engines.
That may be a good average, but Toyota made a big point of saying that its latest Prius has a 40 percent thermal efficiency, which means 60 percent energy loss, not 70 percent.
Also, the efficiency rate at which an EV charges also plays a big role in the well-to-wheels efficiency.
Lastly, given T&E’s location, we assume it is basing the numbers in the study on the European electric grid and European MPG figures. Oddly, we can’t find the original T&E report to confirm this guess, but if you do, please let is know in the comments.
DON'T MISS: Two words the Trump Administration can't say: climate change
UK's Transport & Environment says that electric cars are the most efficient.
Of course, any study like this is not necessarily applicable to your personal situation.
As we discussed when we looked at similar comparisons of EVs and hybrids in the U.S., there are a lot of regional differences – to say nothing of the variations in your specific vehicle.
Given all those minor and major variables, in some rare cases (i.e., for three percent of U.S. drivers), driving an electric vehicle is not the most efficient option.
Even so, when you look at the averages,
you’re most likely going to be better off plugging in than gassing up. If
anyone says otherwise, ask
them to show you the math.
— Sebastian Blancohttp://www.greencarreports.com/news/1113175_electric-cars-win-on-energy-efficiency-vs-hydrogen-gasoline-diesel-analysisAgelbert NOTE: Fossil Fuel Industry reaction to the above study:
Agelbert reaction to the above study:
The issue stopped being "energy efficiency" around 1970. That is around the time that human civilization GUARANTEED MORE than 1.5 degrees centigrade of baked in Global Warming. IOW, AFTER THAT, we entered the
existential threat territory.
This is a war for survival. No country, when they are in a WAR FOR SURVIVAL, says they must surrender to the enemy because the machines they need to build to SURVIVE are not efficient enough.
Business as usual is a stupid, irrational and totally unnecessary surrender to the
Climate Change enemy of the biosphere in general, and our species in particular.
Most fossil fuelers and/or doomers have made up all sorts of magical thinking fairy tales about "supply and demand", collapse from "peak this, that and the other" which will "make the environment hunky jake again" and other amazing bits of pretzel logic.
They are off their rockers. We transition out of polluting fuels or we will perish, PERIOD.
These videos briefly (
VERY briefly) explain what fossil fuelers
and many doomers
are in brain dead denial of in regard to the irrefutable facts about WHAT CAUSES Climate Change and the consequent degradation of our biosphere:
How do Greehouse Gases REALLY work?
A demonstration of carbon dioxide absorption of infrared radiation by Iain Stewart, Professor of Geoscience Communication at the University of Plymouth:
The animation from
Rasmus Benestad‘s article about
his new paper at RealClimate:Agelbert NOTE: In the next video, Physics Professor Ray Pierrehumbert explains WHY the atmospheric expansion portrayed above (
Adiabatic Lapse Rate - i.e. temperature decrease per kilometer of elevation is radically altered causing the surface average temperature to radically rise) in the gif
is so great with a tiny amount in parts per million of
Greenhouse gases.
An explanation of the greenhouse effect by Ray Pierrehumbert, current Halley Professor of Physics at the University of Oxford, in both text:“Infrared radiation and planetary temperature”and video:Read more:
http://greatwhitecon.info/resources/greenhouse-effect-explanations/https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/chem/surface/level/overlay=co2sc/orthographic=-115.52,37.59,1092/loc=-122.660,38.427