Morelli Shape

[Patrick]

Originally Posted by miket

Do you think i should pay $6.74/gal equivalent for an electric vehicle? Lets start a poll and ask people on the street.

I pay $0.10/KWh, so 33.7 X .10 = $3.37/gal. Gas around here is about $2.85/gallon right now. Roughly equivalent.

If an EV gets 250Wh/mile (not an unreasonable number), then it goes 4 miles per KWh, and costs 10/4 = 2.5 cents/mile. My Prius gets about 50 mpg, so $2.85/50 = 5.7 cents per mile. I think these are the kinds of numbers most people will care about. How much does it cost me per mile to drive my car? Is the reduced cost worth the tradeoffs in other areas that I need to make to drive an EV?

[miket]

Originally Posted by miket

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

Learn to read frank. x prize mpge isnt reasonable or usefull except for distorting numbers. Its totally incomplete and useless for making an informed decison on between a gas an electric vehicle. Maybe you like making distorted comparisons. Reality is that the price of electricty does vary , carbon footprints vary. If you wanted an average than the xprize mpge is so so far off the mark its just stupid. There are better averages. If you would rather people do their own individual conversions than there would be accuracy. The current mpge formula only applies when your defrosting your windows.

[Frank Lee]

I've never looked into how the X-Prize mpge system is configgered. Maybe it is ****ed.

You got something better? Your example was more than 100% off for me...

[miket]

Yes patrick those are the real numbers and not the mpge silliness.

[RobertSmalls]

Originally Posted by Frank Lee

I've never looked into how the X-Prize mpge system is configgered. Maybe it is ****ed.

You got something better? Your example was more than 100% off for me...

I've got three things better.

24KWh/gal - cost equivalence at $0.12/KWh and $3/gal
16KWh/gal - by CO2 equivalence
15KWh/gal - by life cycle energy content



If I understand miket correctly here, he considers direct BTU equivalence to be an EV-inflating number, and he's proposing cost equivalence in ... Saudi Arabia? ... as an EV-deflating figure. Maybe you should use $3/gal vs. the price of electricity for an off-grid solar customer instead.

I think that's silly, but if you want an arguably justifiable EV-deflating figure, consider the potential of each fuel for heating a house. The house could be equipped with a furnace with an AFUE of .95 (humor me and pretend it could be run on gasoline), or a heat pump with a CoP of 3.5. You arrive at an unflattering, and perhaps unfair, 9KWh/gal.

So there you go, whether you're heating a house, generating electricity, or turning a shaft, electricity is a form of energy that has been "improved" 2-4 times beyond what its KWh content would suggest.

I would encourage everyone to take any direct BTU mpge figures they encounter and divide by two.

[nmgolfer]

Originally Posted by Patrick

I pay $0.10/KWh, so 33.7 X .10 = $3.37/gal. Gas around here is about $2.85/gallon right now. Roughly equivalent.

If an EV gets 250Wh/mile (not an unreasonable number), then it goes 4 miles per KWh, and costs 10/4 = 2.5 cents/mile. My Prius gets about 50 mpg, so $2.85/50 = 5.7 cents per mile. I think these are the kinds of numbers most people will care about. How much does it cost me per mile to drive my car? Is the reduced cost worth the tradeoffs in other areas that I need to make to drive an EV?

Exactly Patrick ... you've got it! An electric motor is far more efficient (and reliable) at delivering shaft horsepower than any ICE. Bring on the plug-ins.

[Jim Bullis]

nmgolfer and everyone who is thinking about 10 cent electricity,

Brace yourselves; we are in for some real surprises here if either we go to plug-ins in a big way or we impose a requirement on electric power generators to capture 'carbon'.

First, the electric motor efficiency has very little effect on the overall efficiency of operating a power system. The heat engine losses, wherever they occur, are the overwhelming cause of loss in any system.

Second, the cheap electricity that we now enjoy is anchored by the price of coal under any stable governmental system, thus excluding California where we give 11 to 13 cent electricity to most of us at the welfare level of use called 'baseline' usage. For those who really need electricity the price jumps to 29 cents, then 30 cents, then 50 cents. For all of us, that first welfare handout comes at the expense of those who use a lot of electricity. I suggest that when the people of Bakersfield figure out that their air conditioners are no longer affordable, they will be sharpening their pitchforks for our government.

And when the fact that the EVs charged at night in Portola Valley (not a low rent district) will be using power at welfare level pricing, that could be used for running air conditioners in Bakersfield, we might reasonably expect discontent to be expressed.

[Frank Lee]

Cali is smart with that pricing strategy and my "COOP" utility is dumb as ****.

You see, with MY utility the less you use, the more they charge per kwh.

And they have the audacity to send out a newsletter every month extolling the virtues of conservation.



My monthly fees, taxes, and other miscellaneous **** on the bill are more than the cost of the electricity I use!

Where's the incentive to conserve, when I can double my usage and only pay a little bit more? Even worse, there are several price break points where, if usage is increased enough, you get a reduced cost per kwh. Use even more and pay less!

I wintered in Cali last year and spoke to PG&E reps at a bidness fair. I praised them on the correctness of their system vs the asinineness of the midwest's.

Jim, perhaps you should go through your house and ask yourself why you are using so much power instead of biatching about it.

[Jim Bullis]

I forgot the part about 'carbon' capture, the cost of which has been estimated in a recent EPA report. For the capture part alone, forgetting about the cost of transporting it and pounding it down a hole, the number range given runs up to $95 per ton of CO2. Of course, they do not know that a ton of CO2 represents only 12/44 ton of carbon, so for cheap coal, having half its weight as carbon the element, we are talking about an effective cost of using that coal of around $200 compared to about $20 now.

So we need to rethink our expectations for cheap operation of electric vehicles.

[miket]

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