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Old 03-12-2013, 08:39 AM   #11 (permalink)
NeilBlanchard
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The carbon footprint of oil is a very complicated thing to know precisely. We do know it takes a lot of electricity, and a lot of natural gas, and in at least two methods in use right now, it also takes an immense amount of water. All of these have their own overhead energy, and natural gas itself uses a lot of water and a lot of energy to frack.

To just get some crude out of the ground, they have to make steam and inject that underground to just soften the crude up enough so they can manage to pump it out of the ground. Tar sands bitumen has to be "washed" out of the sand with millions of gallons of heated water - and *then* it has to be dissolved in cheap gasoline (which had to be made!) so that it has a chance of being pumped through a pipeline. Pumping overcooked oatmeal would be easier...

Nissan said that it takes ~7.5kWh of electricity per gallon of gasoline. Other estimates put it about there or slightly higher. And yes, the carbon footprint of electricity (which is about 38% from coal in the US) has to be done from source to plug. But this same overhead also goes into the gasoline - so when you are comparing electricity to gasoline, it cancels out because it is on both sides of the equation, and you are left with the rest of the embedded carbon in the gasoline.

It takes as much (or more) electricity to drive a gasoline car a mile as it does to drive an EV a mile.

You can drive an EV for 2-3¢/mile including electricity and regular maintenance. A typical 23MPG car costs ~15¢/mile for gasoline alone, and another 3-3.5¢/mile for regular maintenance. So, a ICE car costs about as much to maintain (at typical dealer service charges) as it takes to drive an EV - and you save all of the money you would pay for gasoline.

A 40MPG car with $3.50/gallon gas will cost you $8,750 to drive 100K miles. Drive an EV and none of that 2,500 gallons of gasoline gets burned, and you pay $3,480 (290Wh/mile @ 12¢/kWh) to your electric company instead of your car dealer. If you ecodrive the EV, you can likely cut that by ~25-30%.

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