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Originally Posted by Photonfanatic
1. How much does it cost in electricity, to "fuel up" an electric car, to go say... 300 miles.
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I pay 12 cents per KWH, that is also the national average for flat rate billing, of course a lot of power companies offer off peek rates for electric vehicle charging, some are down to 4-6 cents per kwh, but if you go with the national average it would cost me $12.24 to drive a Nissan Leaf 300 miles, my electric car uses closer to 250watt hours per mile, so it's a little cheaper.
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2. How the heck do you run an air conditioner, power steering, and power brakes on an all electric car? Or even an efficient heater that does a good job? I'm willing to make the sacrifice of paying for gasoline in my Yaris, if it means I get an air conditioner, power steering, power brakes, and a heater lol. I'm not willing to sacrifice all those things unless I absolutely have to. Which currently, none of us do. Currently.
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The largest electric draw in the car is the drive motor so even running a 3000 watt electric heater to heat the cabin will have an impact on rage but not huge, but electric heated seats tend to be 50 to 100 watts each and they heat your body instead of the air, the Leaf comes with a heated steering wheel and electric heat warms up much faster then the heat from a gas engine, as for power steering and other power options, a lot of new cars have electric power steering already, power brakes is just a small vacuum pump, air conditioning is easy to do as electric and also can be a reversible heat pump to provide heat while using less energy.
Most factory built electric vehicles also have an option to time your heat your AC to come on while the car is plugged in or to turn it on with your smart phone.
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3. Is the overall environmental impact of a full electric car less than that of a gasoline car? You have to take into account not just what its putting out once its on the road, but where the fuel actually comes from. Burning coal to make electricity for our electric cars isn't exactly environmentally friendly. Nor is it friendly if the actual production of the car itself, pollutes more than producing a vehicle that consumes fossil fuels.
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The amount of electricity it takes to pump crude oil, refine it and deliver it is one of the largest uses of electricity in the country, each gallon of gas took enough electricity to power a car like the Nissan Leaf for around 22 miles, so if you were to replace a 22mpg car with an electric car the over all demand on the grid for electric power would stay the same, of course with gasoline you still have the pollution from burning the gasoline and as I said already, if you charge with off peek electricity you are evening out demand on the grid, oil refineries demand that electricity 24/7 but you have options as to when your car is going to charge, most of this can be preprogramed and timed to be automatic or controlled by the power company to turn off for a few minutes at a time to lower peek day time demands with devices like are used to control water heaters and air conditioners.