Morelli Shape

[miket]

miles per gallon equivalent which is just a terrible way of saying plug to wheels joules per meter only pretending to be more usefull.

If the monetary securyt or environmental costs aren't primary considerations what is your primary consideration frank?


edit: The limted internal efficiency of a medium range small land vehicle is only of interest to a pure scientific hobbyist if those direct and indirect engergy costs don't matter.

[Frank Lee]

You tell me how to put a price on two commodities that have frequent fluctuations that aren't in unison.

If we stick to the energy units conversions, we can add prices when we desire to that at whatever those prices may be at that moment in time.

[miket]

Im going to ask CT light and power if they can send a monthly bill for GE (gallons equivalent) instead of kWH.

[Jim Bullis]

It looks like I hit hard at Autopia, and the article by Mike Duoba of Argonne that I responded to was completely taken down. I guess my patience is wearing thin, especially since I see innovation as a topic of National importance, so much so that we have to get it right. I have been at this three years and simply will not let it go by unchallenged:


Re autopia article on

Mike Duoba and Argonne National Laboratory,
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Shame.
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Shame for contributing to the xprize bogosity of MPGE which seriously misguides everyone looking for ways to reduce CO2. I am sure you know, that when the energy basis of electricity at the heat engine where it is produced is included in the MPGE calculation, that the electric cars would achieve about a third the MPGE that is here proclaimed.
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Shame. Shame on you and all the others who tolerate this bogosity.
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Shame on all those who actually learned physics, where the Second Law of Thermodynamics clearly tells that a kWhr of electricity can produce a kWhr of heat but a kWhr of heat can not produce anything close to a kWhr of electricity, but fail to speak up in the face of this widely used trickery in promotion of electric vehicles.
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One can understand how a legislator such as Nancy Pelosi thinks "science, science, science" will guide us to innovation when she hears repeatedly from supposedly knowledgeable folks like Xprize officials backed by Argonne National Laboratories, numbers that proclaim nonsensical MPGE achievements by electric cars.
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No person that allows this nonsense should be allowed to keep their diplomas from any institution higher than high school, and maybe even high schoolers should know better.
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Clearly it has to be difficult for venture capitalists to sort through the bamboozlement; and thus we have coming forth well funded projects for plug-in cars and facilities enabling such plugging-in.
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Even at our EPA, there seems to be no understanding of this, as we now see their plan to rate cars by grade letter with phony MPGE as supplementary data.
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As I said to the Xprize officials in the beginning, "You are doing great harm", with this kind of thinking. And it seems to be all pervasive.
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Shame on Argonne and SAE for not standing on this.
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And all that understand this should also understand how this undercuts real innovation. In the case of the Xprize, the electric vehicles represent truly trivial innovation. And that gets rewarded and made to look like great achievement by the numbers announced.
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Shame on the Xprize.

[miket]

Whats the point of adding prices or costs after a useless energy conversion of the original quantities instead of just adding prices to the original quantities? I dontt get how that makes the energy conversion usefull??

[miket]

I agree with Jim, there may be no perfect conversion but xprize style mpge doesnt even attempt to be good.

[Jim Bullis]

Miket,


Those cost issues matter to us all, but they vary from state to state based on political chicanery, so it is not possible to compare vehicles using such numbers.

I guess my comment on Autopia got through after all, though it is down some in the cue.

[miket]

If the xprize style mpge is based on carbon it assumes that our grid is 2/3 carbon neutral. Ridiculous. I know people like to say that our grid will be like that in the future but hey so will liquid fuels.. The conversion seems unfair to me.

For comparing gas to gas or electric to electric the mpg or kwh will give me relative costs. Comparing between the two to find relative costs does change depending on where you live. I know my electric rates and gas prices, i think most people do, so monetary cost for where i live is easyfor figure. Co2 or environmental or political costs arent' so easy but still important.

MPGE conversions should either be based on reasonable though imperfect conversion assumptions or shouldnt bother be used.

[RobertSmalls]

I have a maxim, "KWh can not be made equivalent to mpg".

I mean that there's no single, universal conversion factor, because everyone has different priorities and a different time-frame of interest.

@Jim: I really doubt it's ignorance at work at the EPA. Anyone with a good understanding of thermodynamics is aware of the flaws in direct BTU equivalence methods. I believe it is a concerted effort to drive early adoption of EVs (which have national security benefits, etc.) despite their modest environmental benefit.

In the case of the X-Prize, I again propose an ulterior motive: to generate exciting numbers like 200+mpg(e), in order to capture the imagination of young folks and get people to demand more than the 50mpg cars that are on the market today.

[miket]

Robert I 100% agree with your conclusions.

If my ulterior motive was to trash electrics with truly awful sounding numbers i could honestly say that $6.74 worth of electricty is equivalent to a gallon of gas. Doesn't that number game sound inspiring? 33.7KWh x $0.20/Kwh.