Let's be fair on the high-mileage EVs
 

I see that the four highest-mileage cars listed on the left margin of the home page are all electric cars, with the exception of the Mustang HP2g (see more on that elsewhere). The data provided in the EV mileage logs indicates the assumed energy content of gasoline. Here are the numbers I found:

Citicar................36.6 kWh per gallon
Electro Metro......36.5?
1992 Metro.........33.6
Fiero EV.............36.6

Except for the third car, one wonders if these people are intent on violating the first law of thermodynamics. I think the most widely-accepted energy content (low heat value) for gasoline for use in an internal combustion engine is 116,090 BTU per gallon. This was adopted by Wang at Argonne Nat'l Laboratory (e.g., the GREET model) and (I think) is the value used for calculations for the Auto X Prize. From my CRC handbook, the conversion factor from kWh to mean BTUs is 3409.5. Dividing these numbers gives a HEAT energy content of gasoline of--

34.05 kWh (heat) per gallon.

I acknowledge that the higher value of approx. 36.6 kWh (heat) per gallon is obtained if you use 125,000 BTU per gallon, but I believe that would be incorrect for referencing to real gasoline in an internal combustion engine that exhausts products as gases.

Let's be kind and assume that the calculations are based on a strict 100% conversion of gasoline heat of combustion to electricity. However, this represents an implicit violation of the second law of thermodynamics, which states that heat cannot be converted entirely to work.

If the EV car owners would like to be entirely fair in representing the efficiency of their cars, then I suggest they agree to abide by both the first law of thermodynamics and the second law. We could be generous and let them use say the theoretical (Carnot) efficiency of a gasoline engine, or possibly a high (power plant+transmission) efficiency for an advanced power system, at about 50%.

In such a case, I would suggest that they use a kWh-gallon equivalence of either 17 or 18 kWh per gallon.

Making this adjustment will allow a much more fair comparison between EVs and highly-efficient IC cars.

Ernie Rogers

Wowsers! Somebody familiar with Carnot efficiency.

When I get my self better organized and a kill-a-watt meter on the charger for my comuta-car, I plan to keep track of power going in to the charger, it sounds like your formula is assuming that people are tracking the watt hours as it comes out of the batteries, not what it takes to charge the vehicle and that charging is what people tend to keep track of, energy in and miles driven.

Hello, Ryland,

I'm curious about your photo--that's not one of your vehicles, is it?

About the expression, "energy in and miles driven," I would be quite happy to work in those terms, but few people do. In this kind arrangement, you would report----

kWh (at the wall socket) per mile for the electric car

BTU (at the pump) per mile for the fuel burner.

The common term for this kind of vehicle efficiency is "pump-to-wheels." The problem with it is there is no satisfactory way to relate the two types of vehicles because the electricity is fundamentally different than the fuel.

Let's say you burn a gallon of gasoline and get 116,000 BTU of heat.

If you run 34 kWh of electricity through a resistor, you also get 116,000 BTU of heat. Electricity is "work." According to thermodynamics, you are allowed to convert work to heat with 100% conversion, like through a resistor.

But, the second law of thermodynamics says that you are not allowed to convert heat to work at 100%--it's impossible. The best you are allowed to do is the theoretical maximum, generally called the "Carnot limit." The machine that converts heat to work is what we call a heat engine. Fuel-burning cars use engines that always convert less than 50% of the heat of the gasoline to work. Work can move a car, but heat can not.

So, is it fair for the EV driver to assert that his car would get 120 miles per gallon running on gasoline? Not if he assumes the gasoline can produce 34 kWh of electricity--that's impossible. But, it would be fair to say that he might be able to get half of that, 60 mpg (or 17 kWh of electricity per gallon)because it is at least theoretically possible that at some future time a heat engine may reach 50% efficiency.

Ernie Rogers

Is Ernie Rogers the famous Ernie, "owner of the re gen braking system Citi car", that bennelson posted the vid from you tube?

I see were you are coming from Ernie, but I don't think this will lead to complete "fairness" in the comparisons.

I think if you were to consider where and how we get petroleum from one place on the globe to another so it can be put in your car vs getting coal/wind/water/sun/bagasse/??? to a power generation station and maintaining transmission then the table would be slanted very much towards electric vehicles.

I don't have the research to say that with certainty, but if price per unit of energy is any indication then that pretty much tells the story.

Wow, two hypermiling Ernies
 

Nope, I am not that Ernie. I'm this one--

Ern's Blog

Ernie Rogers

yes, that light blue vehicle is one two electric cars I own, it's a 1975 Seabring Vanguard, Citi-car, like what TomEV drives, the electric car that I drive every day is a later version, of that car, a 1981 Comuta-car, I don't have any good numbers on the energy usage of it because my batteries are 2nd hand and in rough shape so I've been leaving them on the charger more then I would normally to keep them topped off and to equalize and desulphate the plates, I'm also using the original on board charger from 1981 that does not turn off, it just tapers the charge slowly as the batteries get closer to full, this makes it hard to get exact numbers on energy usage, but if I had to make an educated guess based off Kill-a-watt meter readings at the outlet.
Ernie I would like to see, based off your math, what kind of mileage you think my electric car gets, with my current lead acid batteries I would say I can go one mile on 250-300 watt hours, or about 3-4 miles per KWH as it comes out of the outlet, before the charger.
So what does that come out to in MPG? and at what point am I losing that 50%?

Cost is a pretty good dipstick
 

I like this reasoning - cost tells us a lot about a system

Some data
losses are 7.2% in the US for electrical transmission
Electric power transmission - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

hard to compare to pumping and boating but ...
5-10% of oil cost is transportation
International Oil Transportation
I know this is not apples for apples - but transportation cost are practically identical

and if percent usage in vehicles is any indication
then that pretty much tells us a completely different story about cost

The costs are in another piece of the puzzle
part of it is in the subject Ernie is talking about - unit accounting, if you will

The energy efficiency of distribution is not strictly related to the financial cost of distribution. If we know what those relationships are, then we can make a reasonable comparison. If not, all we're doing is shooting in the dark.

There's a good discussion of this topic on Wikipedia, at Miles per gallon of gasoline equivalent - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
You could make a case for heat-equivalent, extractable energy equivalent, dollar-equivalent, or CO2-equivalent methods for comparing gas to electric. I'm inclined to favor CO2 methods, using the average US carbon intensity of electricty, which I think is .6kgCO2/KWh. With gasoline at 2.421kgCO2/gal, you have 4KWh/gal.

So I'd say Ryland is getting 14mpg(CO2equiv, US average electric mix).

As I've said in other threads, electric cars don't reduce CO2 emissions by themselves. Low-carbon electric generation is required.

So from a Co2 stand point I would be better off charging my car off a gas generator, rather then plugging it in to the wall outlet?
From a cost stand point I figure my electric car costs a little less then $10 per month in electricity, where my gas car costs me around $20 per month in gas, it's still a big chunk of my electric bill, almost a quarter of it.
There are also the days I charge my car off wind and solar, last time I tried to do that with my gas car it didn't work out so well.

Converting mi/kWh to mpg
 

Hello, Ryland,

You asked for my take on what your EV car would do as a gasser. Okay, here goes--

Just to repeat myself, there is no right answer for this. My view is that you get a fair estimate of what it will do by multiplying by 17, like this--

3 to 4 miles /kWh x 17 = 51 to 68 mpg

Where did the other 50% go? I threw it away when I converted from heat to electricity-- I assumed a 50% conversion, a little optimistic.

Now, I have a second approach that you might find interesting. When I calculate the mpg of a car using drag, rolling resistance and some drive efficiencies, I can do it for BOTH an EV and a gasser. I looked up one of those calculations and compared the EV numbers to the gasser mpg numbers, and these are the results--

For the very same car, both ways--

3 miles /kWh is equivalent to 45 mpg as a gasser
4 miles /kWh is equivalent to 59 mpg as a gasser

To get these, I used the following drive system efficiencies:

Electric car: 70% of the electricity at the socket reaches the motor shaft
Gasser car: 30% of the gasoline energy is converted to work at the shaft

There is an additional assumption that the car is exactly identical in the two cases in all other respects. For example, I assumed 85% transfer from the motor shaft to the wheels in both cases (a standard assumption for gassers). This assumption can easily be off for an EV with wheel motors or no transmission. (Effects are "backwards" here--lower transfer in the gasser means the equivalent mpgs are lower.)

I hope this actually helps to clarify.
/Ernie Rogers

So why are making wild assumptions and just tossing out 50% of the energy that is being used? just because we feel like it!
After all, gas cars have to run off a heat engine, so lets use their poor performance to drag down the math on electric cars too, after all I bet no one who owns an electric car has ever charged it using solar or wind and that doesn't work in to our nice simple "lets just toss out 50% of your energy" theory, so we will just ignore it all together.
If you were to pole electric vehicle owners I would bet that a large percentage of them charge with renewable energy.
I thought that the reason for finding a common factor like BTU was so you could make the math more reliable and if reliable math is what we are looking for tossing in randomness then makes total sense.

I'm sorry, Ryland,

I see I have hurt your feelings. There is a wild assumption here--the presumption by EV enthusiasts that their cars are naturally superior, and they "prove" that by the rediculus assumption that 34 kWh of electricity is exactly equal to the 116,000 BTU of heat contained in a gallon of gasoline. I am just pointing out that the idea of expessing EV efficiency in "miles per gallon" is absurd and should be abandoned.

Any crappy, poorly-designed EV looks good using bad math, which I confess is the normal practice everywhere, including by the EPA. You do your brotherhood a disservice by continuing this.

Ways to avoid this problem are--

1. Just admit there isn't a fair way to compare EVs and gassers, and provide separate lists of ranking.

2. We can all agree that electric drives are very efficient. We could concentrate on car efficiency from the motor shaft to the wheels, where all cars share roughly the same parts. Then we can compare merits of cars by their common elements of design such as rolling resistance, regen. braking, and aero drag.

3. We can go to the energy source in determining efficiency-- this is called "well-to-wheels" efficiency. (Which just gives us new things to argue about).

I have offered a reasonable compromise, that we simply acknowledge that heat and work (electricity) are fundamentally different, and I suggested that we connect them using the second law principles. This is what normally happens at an electric power plant anyway.

Ernie Rogers

Who in their right mind would evaluate the energy chain of an EV (or a biodiesel) using such a phrase?!? Try again.

Oh, I had overlooked your message earlier, Robert,

Excellent post, thank you.

Ernie Rogers

Not seeing a violation of any thermo laws...

The BTU figures are used as a comparison metric. Electric power trains aren't constrained by the btu content of gasoline. We could report in terms of mi/MJ - a unit that I've seen pop up more and more frequently...

Miles per MegaJoule

1KwH = 3.6MJ
1 gallon of gasoline (125,000btu) = 131.9MJ

3-4 miles/kWh - lets say 3.5 miles - this would be socket to wheel figures....

That's 3.5/3.6 mi/MJ = .97 mi/MJ

Compared to a 50mpg car - pump to wheel....

That's 50/131.9 mi/MJ = .38 mi/MJ


But doing so is missing the point. If I were completely new, and potentially open to the concept of driving more efficiently, I would feel alienated by this awkward unit. If I'm comfortable, I'm probably more likely to continue reading.



Does anyone have any literature with respect to an electric motor and the carnot heat cycle? That is, what's the equivalent/comparable isotherm compression stage for an electric motor and etc.? I've had red flags pop up in my head while reading that comparison. I even dusted off the old thermo book and heat transfer - nothing :p

I personally think the numbers are fair. As long as, they use 1 US gallon equals 125,000 btu's, 115,000 btu's equals 33.7 kWh (from wiki linked above in another person's post). Using these numbers, 36.6 kWh equals 1 US gallon of gasoline. An electric motor has heat loss just the same as the gas engine. It is just much less.

carnot and heat transfer have no bearing whatsoever on electric motors. period.

carnot is specifically regarding heat to work. Electricity is not heat. If you were to do something stupid like run it through a resistor and use that heat to power the an expansion engine then carnot applies.

Its literally like comparing force to work. They are different.

Also a gallon of gasoline produces 9kg of CO2. the US is powered by something like 53% by coal(22 lbs(8-9 kg) of CO2 per KWh). So a gallon of gas produces 18.odd pounds of CO2 and a KW in the US produces(or in the act of producing it, x CO is released into the atmosphere) 11 lbs(the other half is generated mostly through hydro and nukular(side note why does everyone always show the cooling tower as the evil face of nuclear power?)).

Thats a fair CO2 conversion.

Also it takes 4 GGE to make 5 gallons of gasoline(refining) So if you really want to whine about it being fair you had better add that in. Add in 40 more lbs of CO2 just for the electricity to refine the gasoline and already the electric is kicking gasoline out the door.

Ryland, how much electricity does it use while charging in total kwh and then how far does that get you. If its in your fuel log for the 100+ mpger I couldn't decipher it. Sorry I'm retarded I know.

Gasoline costs also emits an enormous amount of serious pollutants during refining. Coal drops NOx SOx, and some mercury, while refineries dump substantially more pollutants and far more carcinogenic compounds than a power plant.

who
 

I apologize,as I'm late to the party.I have some articles at home,from the 1990s,on EVs and alternate fuel vehicles and they were strong in emphasizing to the reader,the entire energy thermal efficiency pathway,from wellhead,mine,hydro dam,PV array,nuke,wind turbine,etc.,so we didn't lose sight of the entire energy balance.

At that date,they were talking about electric generation efficiencies of maybe 32% tops,then 7% loss in transmission lines to the household,the battery charger might have somewhere in the 85% efficiency.The battery might be around 80%,the propulsion motor might be 95%,but the controller would eat some of the battery power.

From the power station,to the drive wheel of the EV,the total thermal,or energy efficiency of the EV was less than stellar.

In 1988,the US EPA allowed car makers a CAFE rating of EVs,from200-400 mpg,for figuring fleet mpg on a sales-weighted basis.That doesn't mean they can do it.The GM Sunraycer was rated by Dr.Paul MacCready at 400-mpg as a gasoline car.We're talking curb weight under 400-pounds,maybe 4 square feet of frontal area,and Cd0.12.I agree with Ernie that we need to be firmly grounded in good science when we're throwing quanta around.

I can agree that EV is not as green as people like to point it out as, but its far superior chain included than gasoline.

EV worst case scenario.

Coal(22lbs of CO2 per KWhr)-->transmission 10% loss --> charging loss 20%--> battery loss 10%--> drive loss 20%.

Gas normal

refinery 66 lbs of CO2 per GG 80% loss in power(it takes 4 GGE to make 5 GG, out of every gallon you used 80% to make it)--> 5% loss in transit-->50% loss in engine.

start each with 100 kwhr of power

electric yields 50% of the power produced at the plant
gas yields 9.5% of the power delivered to the refinery.

The gas production is under ideal circumstances, not IRL achievable. Also the refinery suffers any limitations at the power plant so saying I am not factoring those in is like saying I could divide everything by 2. The comparison is in the ratio so it won't matter.

I have used this same argument against regulating emissions on gasoline vehicles against hydrocarbons in the form of catalytic converters. Limiting the output of a gasser in any way in order to decrease tailpipe emissions creates more pollution because changing how you use that nine percent has 11 times more effect on the overall system. Lean burn, using some simple techniques to limit NOx and SOx(that increase FE) emits probably about 2x as much pollution as normal on really low AFRs(right around 16) but even if it increases FE in your car only a little it increases the system much more so.

That does not put us in disagreement, and I have been advocating a standard conversion factor since August. I do think that would be "fair", but I don't think making a move in favor of ICEs in the name of fairness is a good way to frame it. You want to look at the whole energy chain, as really there is no other fair way to compare them.

I'm quite willing to just give citicar guy some slack myself for now too, rather than peel the onion on the energy chain.

referencing
 

Ernie,I was so impressed with the premise of your post, that I dug through my rat's nest,pulled together what I had on EVs,and posted it in the sticky,at the Fossil Free Forum.I hope people will add more current data,then all members and lurkers can get on the same page with respect to what happens between the power source and traction wheel of the EV.Thanks a lot!

conversion factor
 

dcb,I too would like to be able to get a handle on this can of worms.And I think this is the spirit behind Ernie's thread.If we can get a full accounting with each energy source,and a complete understanding of the chain of events,and their ramifications,in both directions from our utility meter,we'll have the best chance to make the best choices as citizen/consumers.

And I'm all in favor of "bridge" technologies which will get the US off foreign oil.Ed Begley Jr. is big on letting "science" talk.Much of the information needed to make informed decisions is omitted in the public domain.Many "findings" are found to be "Lab-shopped",are not peer-reviewed,are results of "outcome-based research" funded by some sector of the economy,which has a vested interest in the status-quo,or some agenda.

My formal education is a joke,and at age 57 now,I'm still working on self-education.I've lived off the grid for a decade,relying on wind an solar.The days of sustained cloud cover and zero wind,when I had to use a backup gasoline generator taught me some lessons in efficiency.

I'm a big proponent of plug-in electrics,especially powered by renewable sources,and am personally going down that road,however,with 200-million conventional vehicles in the US alone,it's going to take something big to move that off dead center.

I'll grind more numbers as time allows.In the meantime,I'll be leaning on all of you to keep me headed straight.Lets everybody, get that standard conversion put together.

I just dumped this on the EV start here thread but I'll drop it here to avoid back and forthing
Since Aero posted the EV chain I'll do the fossil

Out of a 43 gallon drum 19 gallons become gasoline

drum contains 6.1x10^9j and 6-7 gallons form diesel so 26x 1.3x10^8j/(61x10^8+energy consumed in coal to refine(29.8x10^8j))=37.5%

transmission cost of 7%=34.9%

ICE efficiency typically ranges around 30% but we'll say its the max on any gasoline engine system(40% efficient) =14.0%

Transmission cost 10%=12.6%

very generous efficiency of 12.6% for the total ICE system

so the EV is 50% more efficient(chain-wise) than gas. The killer is gas requires a huge chunk of power to convert it from crude to petrol/diesel and you only get 50% back out of it anyway so add the extra costs into an already expensive side. . .

Actually. . .its way off. . .the amount of efficiency lost in the coal plant to power the refinery is just as big as it is to generate the ev-power.

Just to get the gasoline from the crude barrell to gasoline the efficiency is 20%. have to incorporate the inefficiency of the coal plant so the power supplied in coal is way more than the power delivered in watts. . .

Lets be fair!!!???
 

Hi Ernie,

I first noticed your headline and my reaction was someone was thinking that EVs were not getting a fair shake in the mpg game. Quite the contrary, it was you in control. (I was sorry to see that Ken Fry seems to have given up his reform efforts in the face of the XPRIZE final rule determination.)

Glad to see you are still a strong force for technical sanity in the "eco" or "green" world. I am convinced that there are few in this world who stayed awake during freshman physics class.

However, I have firmed up my position that the efficiency of coal fired power plants is the governing process efficiency for all plug-ins in USA or any country where the use of coal is not serverely penalized. This efficiency is 33%. Of course, the whole thing is nonsense when it comes to MPG, equivalent or not, since it just can not be upheld in logic, like adding apples and oranges.

It is more important to convert to CO2 emissions. This can be done with some rationality, though usually it is not.

The first question asked is, "What is the mix of power sources?" I maintain that this is irrelevant since only the lowest price source is relevant. All the more desirable forms of production are fully tapped out, and are not available to respond, regardless of who or how they get on line. I now realize that even California, which basically bans coal, is subject to the lowest priced source rule due to economic coupling through the natural gas market.

Economic coupling takes place when California turns off a coal plant and turns on a natural gas plant in its place. The impact of this is an increase in demand for natural gas, though slight, it is a national impact. That increase in natural gas demand would first be felt as a price increase in natural gas; however, as the rest of the power producers of North America sense such a price increase, they will be immediately motivated to increase their use of coal. The price of natural gas will then be returned to its previous equilibrium price. And that increase in the use of coal, any- and every- where in North America, will be the impact of that EV load.

So the CO2 calculation has to proceed on the basis of 33% efficiency as well as the 2X factor of coal CO2 per BTU compared to natural gas. Sure, thrown on 10% for coal transportation since that requires more energy than natural gas transportation. (If you have a better number I would defer to that.)

After all this, the electric vehicle still has merit as an efficient system where regenerative braking is made possible. The hybrid is the better way to make this work than the plug-in. And maybe more importantly, where the electric machinery enables a much more efficient car it is quite another matter. There is nothing bad about a car running on coal fired power if it uses a small fraction of the power that otherwise would be needed. So making the overall car into a low user of energy seems far the better action.

Any progresss in low rr tires?

The well to wheels analysis is complicated, but I have confidence in the NRDC-EPRI study which you can easily get at Miastrada Motors - References (I think the full report is reference (3) )

Figure 5-1 shows that converting a gasoline hybrid to plug-in results in more CO2 in a coal powered scenario than the production hybrid.

This result has confounded NRDC and the plug-in guys ever since. The conclusions of the report try mightily to spin things differently. And they assume the world is going to get off coal almost immediately, so the words can be encouraging to plug-in guys.

Here is another good link for that Argonne study:
http://www.transportation.anl.gov/pdfs/TA/273.pdf
It shows EV: U.S. kWH total Greenhouse gasses per mile at less than gas and like 1/2 of crude (page 28). No mention of biodiesel, it is really a moving target and the data is from 2002



Someone is gonna have to draw me a picture :) Where are we at with the apples and oranges?

even if we jump to co2 efficiency EV wins. . . unless you can convert crude to gas magically it always will.

It takes 138 kwhr to convert 5 gallons. Half of that power comes from the same coal to get you 66 kwhr of electricity. So you can have 138 kwhr that you can convert into essentially 82.8 kwhr or you can have 5 gallons that convert to less than 69 kwhr of useable work. 5 gallons yields 110 lbs of CO2 plus 66 kwhr of Coal CO2 plus more than double the CO2 the coal plant released from the refining process itself, while the electric only drops 85 kwhr of coal CO2 to produce more useable work.

Come on this is a no brainer. EV stomps gas all the way.

EV's also allow a greater flexibility of fuels to be used, try to run your gas car on sun, hydro or wind and what figures do you use for the losses in that? and as I pointed out before, most EV drivers I know of get at least some of there electricity from renewable's, but even with coal, the US has enough coal to last hundreds of years, we do not import coal, last I looked we were importing a whole lot of oil.

Alright I'll make it simple.

Refineries produce lots of CO2, Benzene NOx, SOx and some more exotics.

Refineries use electricity from coal plants to refine fuel.

EV. . .just uses the electricity.

Refinery uses 138 kwhr to convert 5 gallons of gas.

thats 66 kwhr of coal(I think coal is 22 lbs of CO2 per kwh) plus 80 lbs of CO2 at the refinery, plus 100 lbs of CO2 at your tailpipe to yield 51 kwhrs in a gasser.

coal power(transmission and all that crap is ignored because it has the same effect at the refineries so if you want to count it its going to hurt gas even more) needs to burn 26 kwhr of coal to get 51 kwhrs.

Seriously if you want data on this go read Thomas Friedman's book "The world is Hot, Flat and Crowded."

He spent more or less a year compiling the data on energy consumption, conversion and emissions. Its all there and thats the conclusion he came to. He also said for us to avoid a global climate catastrophe(Just for the US) we would have to build a Nuclear reactor a week for the next 30 years, ignoring the fact that developing nations will not be able to go green.

I guess the other side of that coin would be how much petrol does it take to get the coal to the plant (times %of plants using coal).

It takes very little fuel to get coal to its destination. Coal plants are always located almost side-by-side to rail. High-load freight can move an entire 240 car load one mile on just 6 gallons.

Compared to a diesel tanker that gets 20 miles per gallon on a downhill only run but can only carry much less than one car. But to be nice I'll say he can carry a full train car(its about twice more than he can carry) 20/240. . ..083 mpg. . .12 gallons per mile to transport 240 tankers of gasoline compared to 6 gallons to transport 240 cars of coal. And I was being very nice(20 mpg? train car has volumetric capacity of 3,700 F^3 while trucks have a max of 3100 f^3 in rectangular format and oil tankers always have the cylindrical form.)

Greet Model Argh
 

I expect full disdain for my negative view of the Greet model and much of the Argonne work, as well as the SAE.

That said, Argonne is capable of good work. But much of the problem of EV analysis is rooted in their failure (and SAE's) to recognize that the heat energy that can be produced by electric energy is very different from the heat energy needed to produce that same amount of electric energy. I have to say this is a national embarrassment. Surely some of these folks were awake in freshman physics class.

As is Argonne's commitment to "promoting plug-in hybrids." This is a management position of course, which is without regard to technical facts.

It is harder to explain the SAE. The only thing I can think of is that our auto industry turned into a fashion industry and the SAE is mostly interested in dressing the next "America's Top Model."

Does that stir things up a bit?

Sure, supertanker ships are part of the mix too, as are the tanker trucks driving through the city traffic. Hopefully that is all in the WTW studies though, brought to you in part by General "No EV1 for you!!" Motors ;)

imports
 

In 1980,GM estimated that the US had 27,000 billion barrels of oil equivalent(coal and shale) within U.S.boundaries.

I still don't get where people are coming off saying EV is so in efficient.

How many different ways do I have to lay out the numbers?

EV rapes gas. . .in all aspecs except for power density(its hard to compete batteries to fuel 6 pounds to several hundred)

This does not take into account natural gas. The US has something like 50% of the worlds methane ice within our continental shelf. Effectively enough to run the world for 100 years at current energy consumption rates without any other supply.

Also the US takes most of our natural gas from domestic resources(I'm pointing this out because we will be getting power from this as well.)