Sometimes you just have to laugh - for fear of the hysterical crying fit that would ensue from recognizing our shameful pathological reality. To wit: Reuters [6] is reporting on a CBO study that shows the US electric car policy will cost $7.5bn by 2019. The report finds that the government's policy will have 'little to no impact' on overall gasoline consumption. 25% of the cost of the program is going up in Fisker Karma-inspired smoke [7] as part of the $7,500 per vehicle tax credit and the rest of the cost is in grants to such well-deserved and successful operations as GM's Chevy Volt [8] - which will backfire since the more electric vehicles the automakers sell (thanks to government subsidy) the more 'higher-margin' low-fuel-economy guzzlers it can sell and still meet CAFE standards (re-read that - amazing!) In 2012, 13,497 Chevy Volts and 4.228 Nissan Leafs have been sold (all that pent-up demand) as the CBO notes that despite the $7,500 subsidy, the cost-differential to conventional cars remains too wide - inferring a $12,000 tax credit would be more comparable.
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8 comments:
Wait till battery replacement time.
Hs anyone done the math on how many dollars a month, and therefore per mile, one's household electric bill goes up in order to keep the car (volt) charged up? Wouldn't it make sense that it would cost more than filling a hybrid with gas? And, yes, 1225, How much is a set of batteries divided by 60 months?
What a lot of greeny wienies don't understand (or will not acknowledge because it doesn't help their cause) is a basic rule of physics. Energy is neither created not destroyed-it just changes forms, and every time it changes forms, some of it is lost. I am not a physicist , but I do understand this basic concept, and when applied to converting coal fired electricity (which is still the major source of power by far) to power a car there is a lot of lost efficiency. Here is a basic, simplified explanation. First you convert the chemical energy in coal to heat energy via a boiler, then heat energy into mechanical energy via a steam turbine. This turbine then drives a generator which converts mechanical energy into electricity. There is heat energy lost to the atmosphere in the boiler, turbine and the generator and to friction in the turbine and generator. Then the power is sent through transmission lines to your house (or a charging station). There is energy lost in the lines and transformers to heat and friction. Here's where the extra inefficiency to electric cars comes into play. At your house, or at the charging station, the alternating current is converted to direct current by the charger which is a pretty inefficient process to start with from what I understand. There is energy lost to heat and friction. If you have a golfcart, you can feel the heat being lost by putting your hand on the charger while it is doing it's thing. Charging a electric car is basically the same process. Then it is stored in batteries at which time some is lost (both in charging and discharging). Then the electrical energy from the batteries is converted back to mechanical energy to drive the car (again loosing some of it to heat and friction in the motor and control circuits). Compare all this to simply converting the chemical energy in a gallon of gasoline to heat and mechanical energy by the internal combustion engine to drive the car directly and it looks to me like a whole lot more efficiency is obtained by the gasoline engine method, wasting less energy and resulting overall in less energy being used to drive the vehicle. Do the emissions from the gasoline outweigh the emissions from the coal? I don't know the answer to that one, but the gasoline engine sure looks a hell of a lot more efficient to me. Are there any physicists out there to verify or dispute my theory? Theory is what it is because as I said before-I am not a scientist by any stretch of the imagination. If I am wrong, I want to be corrected.
814, You made my point, thank you ! I know cars can't run on coal, wood, or hydroelectric power, but they can run on gasoline, alcohol, hydrogen, and propane gas. Electric cars are HIGHLY inefficient!
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One story of a Volt owner that I have read says his electric bill went up by 40 dollars a month and has not bought ANY gasoline, which he usually spends 200 plus dollars a month on.
I'm no physicist either but 40 versus 200 seems the better way to go.
Now if they can only get the price of the cars down to a more economical level.
Good question on the cost of replacing batteries. I'll add one more. Do the batteries even need replacing?
You can believe what you want 1:55, but be aware that 90% of what you hear or read is government propaganda.
With our economy based on oil, you won't find many legit attempts at greener energy solutions by the government and/or big business.
155, of course they need replacing! Doesn't the one in your car go bad every 5 years? Yes, it does! Well, let's see, these batteries nowadays are made of different (new, untested) materials, and may go bad even sooner, who knows? And they are damn sure going to cost more than lead!
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