electricity usage to produce gasoline to the electricity needed to drive an electric car
Electricity use to produce gasoline to electricity needed to drive an electric car. The short version: “It takes more electricity to drive the average petrol car 100 miles, making it to drive an electric car 100 miles.”
Let’s review again. If we just count the electricity used to make gasoline that is burned in a normal vehicle, you need more juice than they do to move an electric vehicle the same distance. Of course, then you need to factor in real gasoline used (and consequent CO2 emissions). Also, do not forget, you need a lot of water to refine gasoline. Put all this together and you in hell of an argument for energy efficiency for plug-in vehicles. Here are some numbers (more details on Norby’s post).
There is no accurate estimate of the amount of electricity needed for drilling, transport and refine a gallon of gasoline, but the amount accepted is about 8 kWh. Therefore, for 8 kWh, you can go 22 miles (with the U.S. average, we know you can go to more than double if you drive a Toyota Prius). This means that a gasoline car uses a little less than 40 kWh to go 100 miles. An electric vehicle, by contrast, uses about 30 kWh to go 100 miles (3.3 miles per kWh given, which is at the bottom of some cars). Even if the exact number necessary to spend a little one way or another, we are comparing the use of electricity here – not the oil needs to be taken into account ICE vehicle. Therefore, if we were able to magically use all the electricity that is currently spent to give us and put gas in car battery packs in place, we would use less energy and no gasoline. So much for the argument of the exhaust pipe length. Nissan sometimes uses this argument in the offer sheet, but it is a commonly used statistic.
