How much electricity does an electric car require?

Question

How much electricity does an electric car require each day to charge its batteries? Hence how much extra electricity capacity must be added nation wide to switch to electric transportation?

Answer 1

If we take tlbs example of 5kW-hr daily as typical, (and it seems low to me) that is a steady power of 5000W-hr x 1day/24hr = 200 watts average over a day.

There are 300 M autos in the US, so that comes to 60 GWs of power.

US power capability is about 1000 GW, so it would have to be increased by 6/100 or 6%.

But i suspect the actual number is higher.

different approach

550 gallons is annual use per vehicle, x 300 M vehicles is 165000 M gal of gas.

energy content of gasoline is 125000 BTU/gal or 37 kw-hrs/gal

37 kw-hrs/gal x 165 G gal = 6000 Tw-hrs annually

6000 Tw-hrs x 1day/24hr x 1yr/365days = 700 Gw in a  year

So this way we get that annual power usage has to be increased by 70%.

Since electric motors are a lot more efficient than gasoline engines, I think we can reduce that by a factor of 3, to get an increase of 23%.

Still a lot of power plants.

Answer 2

i think it is 12 volts direct current 150 ampere (a battery). it depend upon the consume of the motor of that car, it use the direct current motor not a alternate current motor because the alternating current motor is much consumable to the batteries. If it is the car had a charger like for example of Solar panel board which put up the roof of the car, it can easily charge to the battery and it will run miles away (that is my idea). There are so many options of running a car in an electric source like for example of the inverter's.

Answer 3

It depends on a lot of factors -- how much a person drives, whether it is for a long trip, or commuting in the city, whether the car must accelerate rapidly, whether there are lots of speed changes involved, etc. etc.

I'll give you my example>

I must commute 12 miles to work (and 12 miles back).  It takes 20 minutes each way.  Most of that travelling is on a freeway at a steady speed.  I own a car with a 100 HP engine, so I could probably get by with an electric car with a power in the range of 50 to 100 HP, BUT, that does NOT mean that all of that power is utilized, all the time.  When at highway speed, I am using approximately 5 to 10 HP of the maximum (I know this from materials and calculations I have done in the past -- way beyond the scope of this answer).

10 HP * 20 minutes * 2 ways = 18 MegaJoules of energy.

That's just the energy it takes for me to commute back-and-forth to work every day.  That isn't much -- it's the same as 5 kWhr

A 1 hour trip to a nearby city (and back) might use as much as 100 MegaJoules (27.7 kWhr).

Keep in mind that you need to speak in terms of energy (Joules), and not power (Watts), because I can charge my (hypothetical) electric car fully in 1 hour using energy at 10 times the *rate*, as if I were to take 10 hours to charge it up.  Same energy... different power.

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