Quote:
Originally Posted by NeilBlanchard
I am highly suspicious of the 83% "efficiency" of gasoline -- sweet crude may have been this easy if you only count the refining stage. But crude is getting to be lower quality now, and even tar sands are being considered now. And extraction and transportation are energy intensive and cannot be ignored.
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mnmarcus explained it very well above
... ~83% is just the refining efficiency ... I suspect it also ignores the electrical energy consumption the refineries have ... but it definitely ignores the transportation efficiency losses , usage efficiency losses , etc ... as pointed out above ... in separate studies they come to similar conclusions ... well or mine to wheels ... the BEV is significantly more energy efficient than an ICE... first study BEV about ~2x more efficient , 2nd study BEV about ~2.8x more efficient , 3rd study BEV about ~2.4x more efficient.
Even mnmarcus' studies assume only a ~40% efficient power plant ... modern technology , including co-generation plants ... are far far better than a meager ~40%... which only shifts it even further to the BEV's benefit in terms of energy efficiency.
I strongly suspect that the same fuel , fossil or bio-fuel ... would be more efficient to use in a modern co-generation power plant and a BEV , than just using it in a mobile ICE directly... exactly how much better we would need to get all the data to crunch the numbers.