Are Electric cars the answer to a long term transition off of oil ?

Question

Today we are now seeing just how bad of an idea Ethanol is turning out to be. With food cost on the rise ( in particular corn) , many are feeling the pinch of the very bad idea of using your food supply to drive your car , especially those in underdeveloped countries who don't even own cars . Maybe we shouldn't make the same mistake twice , this time , with electric cars. Here is my thought.... To say that electric cars are the solution is to admit that all or most people would be driving them . Well.... that's 100,000,000 drivers ! There is NOW WAY our grid could handle that extra demand , not even a third or sixth of that . Half of the energy on the grid rite now comes from coal ( bet you didn't know that ) so , to put everyone in an electric car or even just ten million would be to increase the demand for coal by MILLIONS ! Once again ... bad idea ! Seems to me that electric cars can only be a temporary option for a few until better ideas are made affordable.

Answer 1

Electric cars won't solve much of anything because battery technology isn't capable of the job.  But electric buses and trains might: powered off overhead trolley wires, they're quite efficient and the technology is a hundred years old and we're good at it.  

As to the amount of energy used for transportation vs the amount of energy that the electric power grid can supply, I'd suggest that you do your calculations very carefully, and be sure of your sources.  I'm not saying that you're incorrect, but I've done the calculation several times and keep coming up with different conclusions.  One fallacy is to assume that all of the petroleum used in, say, North America is used for transport fuel.  It turns out that it isn't, though a lot of it is.  What you have to do is figure out the energy content of the fuel used and its rate of consumption.  This will give you transportation energy flow per second, in watts.  Then find out what's delivered by the North American power grid, again in joules per second, where 1 watt = 1 joule per second.  

Most of the time when I've done this it turns out that the extra load on the grid is not particularly onerous, but I've made other calculations that seem to indicate otherwise.

Answer 2

One of the advantages of electric cars is that they are compatible with many types of ENERGY sources. The electricity can be generated by nuclear, fossil fuel, solar, wind , wave, etc, and any other energy source that may be developed in the future. The problem with exceeding the current capacity of the grid is an issue but not all 100 million cars would be converted overnight, so there is time to address that.

Answer 3

Not at this point because electric is hard to store and it takes a lot of batteries and the charge life is relatively short...

Answer 4

TyH and Brian are both right. There isn't a single solution to the problem but electric cars are certainly a step in the right direction. The best way to power an electric car is the grid, using solar, wind and hydro power, possibly nuclear if they can make that more efficient. Most energy is solar-derived; uranium came from the sun at some point, solar and wind are obviously dependent on sunshine, even fossil fuels and ethanol required sunlight to store energy. The most efficient way to use that energy is to just turn it into electricity without growing a plant or digging coal or uranium, all of which need to be processed to become energy - sunlight, wind and hydro don't.

The argument about the number of cars we'd have on the road is different. What do you suggest? The US is not Europe, it's a very big place and mass transit requires greater population densities than we have here. Passenger rail has faded but it could be revived with some effort, but the need to have your own car is now deeply ingrained in most Americans and they won't want to change unless there is an incentive such as cheaper tickets, faster transport, better accomodations than airlines give us.

Many places now have light rail for rapid transport between neighboring cities. A long time ago we had trolleys in every major and most smaller cities, before the car companies got them removed. We could bring that back as well but that's a local solution whereas a revitalized national rail system is obviously a nationwide solution. If people only drove locally when light rail wasn't available or they had access to cheap taxi services, the problem would be radically reduced. And it all could be run with stored solar power with better battery systems or capacitors.

Answer 5

I suspect the best answer is a portfolio of solutions, including electric, improved mass transportation, hydro, solar and (in my opinion) nuclear.

Answer 6

NO The Left would like U and most of us just workers just walk. Gore is afraid U will use up the fuel for his plane.

Answer 7

Studies have shown that if electric cars are charged at night when power demand is low, it won't significantly increase the demands on the power grid or require more power plants to be built.

"The best-case scenario occurs when vehicles are plugged in after 10 p.m., when the electric load on the system is at a minimum and the wholesale price for energy is least expensive. Depending on the power demand per household, charging vehicles after 10 p.m. would require, at lower demand levels, no additional power generation or, in higher-demand projections, just eight additional power plants nationwide."

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/200...

A switch could be installed to charge EVs when power consumption is low and/or at a certain time at night in order to solve this problem.

Also, EVs create lower emissions than gas cars and even hybrids even with the current US power grid of ~50% coal.

http://www.pluginamerica.org/images/Emis...

Answer 8

Ive came upon the same answer as you just buy an hydro electric car it recharges itself

Answer 9

Even though I have to agree that reducing our 'foreign' dependence on oil is extremely important for the sake of our national security, anything which can reduce our dependence on oil without necessarily having to drill for more of it should atleast be considered.  

Having vehicles, trains and other forms of transportation which are capable of performing efficiently and they don't require use of gasoline can be a good thing, so long as the energy required for charging those vehicles is actually independent of fossil fuels to begin with, that has to be for sure, otherwise what is the point?  

Also, only the most efficient batteries should be used and a real solution for removal and disposal of those batteries needs to be taken very seriously or they will be one more thing which harms the environment.  

I'm all for a cleaner environment, fuel efficiency and fossil fuel independence but we need to have a sensiblie way of getting there.  But it is possible.  No one expected us to be using much in the way of fossil fuels fifty years from now regardless, so something else has to happen obviously.  

This is the sort of technology which is most promising and is furthest along already today.

PS - I agree, Ethanol is not a solution, it ultimately only adds to the problems.

BTW - everything begins somewhere, we can't change anything this huge overnight, but we should at least get the ball rolling already, eventually we'll get there.

[EDIT}

Pushing for electric/hybrid vehicles while at the same time pushing for adding cleaner energy to our grid to make up for it, is not only brilliant, it will give us back our freedom, strengthen our economy and help reduce pollution among other positive things.

Look at it this way also, coal, natural gas, hydro and wind and nuclear are the primary sources for power plants in the United States, not oil.

Solar panel farms, wind farms, solar towers, underwater hydro current generators, and the mother of them all, thermal energy generators could all but eliminate fossil fuels as an energy source, but at the very least, we could begin to end our dependence on foreign oil and price gouging in a relatively short amount of time with the help of the auto manufacturers and more excitement about going green and just getting on the ball.

The fastest way to immediately begin reducing our dependence on oil is by reducing our consumption of it.  Electrics and Hybrids do just that, as do making plastic bottles from other sources like ‘Primo Water’.

So again, what this country really needs is an increase in grid output which can handle an influx of electric/hybrid vehicles and other technologies which would make the switch to electric.

If everyone would focus more on this angle, our dependence on oil would quickly diminish, our economy would bounce back, and ExxonMobil would no longer be the most profitable corporation in the world, and just maybe, the sheiks would have less influence over our economy and price of gas.  Sounds good to me.

Taking it a step further, and producing power from ‘clean’ coal, wind, solar, hydro, etc. and we could likewise, really make a huge and positive change in reducing pollution and CO2 emissions.