Quote:
Originally Posted by Dan B
If people want to talk about how much energy is wasted when charging, refining crude is not an energy free operation either. As a start, about 24% of a standard 42 gallon barrel of crude is lost during refining. There are other energy costs like drilling, shipping, shipping the gasoline, electricity to pump the gasoline etc..
This is not to say it is more or less efficient. But if you want to point out energy loss when charging, you need to look at the energy expended to pump gas.
It becomes a pretty complicated endeavor, so MPG and MPGe are used.
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What drives me up the wall about MPG vs MPGe is that for ICE cars, the inherent inefficiency of the engines are baked into the MPG number that you get. But when it comes to MPGe, you completely ignore the fact that the grid is about only 40% efficient at best? It's nonsensical and just makes EV's look far more efficient than they are.
Basic physics. Heavier vehicles consume more energy, and that comes out in calculations such as these when you run through the math. The reason for the dishonesty is because then EV's wouldn't sell at all, and they wouldn't be able to gaslight people about how they're saving the environment when they're really not. To charge a 100 kWh battery, the grid itself has to consume 250-300 kWh worth of energy to produce that, and they pretend that's not the case with the MPGe number and hope you don't notice.
ICE/hybrids are the most energy efficient vehicles on the road due to both the hybrid engines which are typically Atkinson cycle and hitting 40% peak thermal efficiency which matches the what the grid delivers, while not lugging around extremely heavy 1000+ lb battery packs everywhere they go.
What you say about fuel production is true, and similar costs apply to battery production through mining hundreds of thousands of pounds of earth per battery, transporting that, refining it, processing it, etc. It's getting into the weeds and becomes impossible to calculate. Insiders who truly know the costs probably aren't allowed to tell.