Electricity is quite a lot cheaper than gasoline or diesel in every place I've ever looked. Otherwise people would be generating their own electricity using gasoline or diesel generators but they don't outside of emergencies because it ends up being absurdly expensive per kWh.
This thread contains a ridiculous number of excuses and mental gymnastics over why something can't possibly work, when quite obviously it does work for a great many people and can work for many more.
There seems to be a fallacy that we must put all our eggs in one basket so to speak, and settle on one single technology to meet all our needs. Electric cars are simply another available tool for the task of getting around, they're a tool that will work for some people and not others but we are nowhere even close to saturating the market of those for whom it is practically ideal. Once that happens then we can talk about what makes the most sense for those where it is not so clear.
There are a lot of other things beside the fuel costs that mitigate against this, such as the first cost of a diesel or other IC generator,plus ancillary bits.
A generator that can handle most household uses 24/7 will be a fairly specialised device, hence will be expensive.
Fuel tanks need to meet Govt specifications, so will also be costly.
Add to that pollution laws, & the fact that Local Government Authorities would be very unlikely to permit such an installation, in the first place.
It works the other way, too .
The enthusiasts for electric cars, wave away real concerns, with "you will just have to adapt", or "you can have another long distance car", or "you can hire a car", or "sleep over at your destination" & so on.
People have real financial reasons for not doing these things.
There are a lot of other things beside the fuel costs that mitigate against this, such as the first cost of a diesel or other IC generator,plus ancillary bits.
A generator that can handle most household uses 24/7 will be a fairly specialised device, hence will be expensive.
Fuel tanks need to meet Govt specifications, so will also be costly.
Add to that pollution laws, & the fact that Local Government Authorities would be very unlikely to permit such an installation, in the first place.
I don't buy that for a second. If it were economical to generate power that way then everyone would have one, they would be mass produced in huge quantities and costs would drop. As it is you can get generators really cheap these days, most of my neighbors have them and I hate the cheap ones, power goes out and within 10 minutes I can't hear myself think over the din. The nice quiet inverter generators are much better but even so it's easy to work out the cost per kWh and it's not even close to competitive with what I get from the utility. Just for fun let's run some simple numbers here based on the Honda EU2000i I occasionally borrow from a friend. This is a high end inverter generator about as efficient as they come.
Fuel capacity is 0.95 US gallons of gas (petrol) and that is rated to run 3.4 hours at rated load of 2kW so 6.8 kWh per tank or 7.2 kWh per gallon.
Gasoline prices fluctuate frequently but currently in my area regular is about $2.91/gallon, so that means electricity generated by burning gasoline is about $0.40/kWh, ignoring the additional cost of collecting and transporting the fuel to my home. Electricity from the utility costs me a bit less than $0.09 per kWh so less than 1/4th the cost of generating it myself.
I think it's reasonable to assume that a really efficient diesel generator could perhaps double the fuel economy, resulting in a modest savings even factoring in the higher cost per gallon of diesel but still substantially more expensive than utility power.
QuoteIt works the other way, too .
The enthusiasts for electric cars, wave away real concerns, with "you will just have to adapt", or "you can have another long distance car", or "you can hire a car", or "sleep over at your destination" & so on.
People have real financial reasons for not doing these things.
Nobody is saying that everyone is going to have to get an electric car or that it makes financial sense for everyone, or is convenient for everyone and that's fine. If everyone had them then we would have another set of problems but that doesn't mean there are not benefits to having a lot more of them than we do currently. It also doesn't mean that a lot of people could not easily adapt and make very minor lifestyle adjustments. I've lived long enough to see multiple waves of new technologies where each time older people bitched and moaned about how terrible they were and how they wouldn't work and this or that just wasn't possible, only to see people quickly adapt. While it's hard to believe, there are actually still numerous people who cling to incandescent light bulbs and find all manner of excuses why modern replacements are not suitable despite the fact that I've somehow got by without using incandescent lamps for general illumination for more than 20 years. People swear CFL and more recently LED bulbs are not any cheaper to run despite the fact that basic arithmetic plainly shows otherwise. It's simply a resistance to change and an emotional belief that anything new or "green" is some kind of liberal commie conspiracy or something.
Now as much as I love my older cars, it's just a simple fact that humans are going to have to adjust and adapt at some point because the current model of extracting oil from the earth and burning it to drive around in hundreds of millions of individual cars is not sustainable. Sooner or later oil will be scarce enough that we will have to find other options, whether that is alternative energy sources or much greater reliance on mass transit. We're on track to have 10 Billion people soon and more and more of those people are wanting modern conveniences.
My point was that it wasn't a reasonable comparison.
Your little Honda generator, or any other economically priced generator would not work 24/7 to replace the convenience of Mains power.
Something which really did the job is going to inevitably be larger & more of an industrial unit.
Nobody is going to make a special one just for those few nutters who want to supply their own power.
Ironically, someone living in a remote area would probably find such a setup useful to charge their electric car!
I.C. cars already exist in their thousands, & as long as people can find fuel, will continue in use.
How much does the price of electricity impact the cost of an electric car?
The reason I ask is because the price of electricity may be going up a lot here in the US soon as the LNG export facilities come online.
How much does the price of electricity impact the cost of an electric car?
The reason I ask is because the price of electricity may be going up a lot here in the US soon as the LNG export facilities come online.Or the price of gas could go crazy high. Like 2 times as much as now. Or even higher than that. Or even reach the same level as all the Europeans are paying for gas. Imagine that. Imagine paying 6.5 USD/gallon, like we pay here.
How much does the price of electricity impact the cost of an electric car?
The reason I ask is because the price of electricity may be going up a lot here in the US soon as the LNG export facilities come online.Or the price of gas could go crazy high. Like 2 times as much as now. Or even higher than that. Or even reach the same level as all the Europeans are paying for gas. Imagine that. Imagine paying 6.5 USD/gallon, like we pay here.And still the economy is booming. Gas and energy prices in general don't really matter that much because increasing energy prices just drive inflation.
How much does the price of electricity impact the cost of an electric car?
The reason I ask is because the price of electricity may be going up a lot here in the US soon as the LNG export facilities come online.Or the price of gas could go crazy high. Like 2 times as much as now. Or even higher than that. Or even reach the same level as all the Europeans are paying for gas. Imagine that. Imagine paying 6.5 USD/gallon, like we pay here.
How much does the price of electricity impact the cost of an electric car?
The reason I ask is because the price of electricity may be going up a lot here in the US soon as the LNG export facilities come online.Or the price of gas could go crazy high. Like 2 times as much as now. Or even higher than that. Or even reach the same level as all the Europeans are paying for gas. Imagine that. Imagine paying 6.5 USD/gallon, like we pay here.
Which is why it's good to have a variety of different energy sources. With a mix of gas, diesel and electric cars on the road, a drastic price increase in one fuel source has less overall impact. If the price of gasoline goes through the roof I can get a ride from one of my friends with electric cars. If the price of electricity goes up drastically they can get a ride from me.
How much does the price of electricity impact the cost of an electric car?
The reason I ask is because the price of electricity may be going up a lot here in the US soon as the LNG export facilities come online.Or the price of gas could go crazy high. Like 2 times as much as now. Or even higher than that. Or even reach the same level as all the Europeans are paying for gas. Imagine that. Imagine paying 6.5 USD/gallon, like we pay here.I'd love to pay $6.5 USD/gallon here.
Currently petrol is around £1.20 per litre (1.20 x 4.546l/usgal x exchange rate ) = $7.53/gallon
Think the main point with most such developments is that letting market forces decide is almost always better than distorting the market with taxes, subsidies, etc. If the battery car can fulfil a role then it will sell.
We've seen how boiler scrappage schemes spawned a massive scam market in the UK, with phones jumping off the hook day in day out with illegal recorded message telesales scams. Whatever the original intent, crooks are very quick to latch on to these schemes and use them to fleece gullible or vulnerable people. Most of the scammers were of course cowboy outfits who would probably have done an unsafe gas installation anyway.
Think the main point with most such developments is that letting market forces decide is almost always better than distorting the market with taxes, subsidies, etc. If the battery car can fulfil a role then it will sell.
We've seen how boiler scrappage schemes spawned a massive scam market in the UK, with phones jumping off the hook day in day out with illegal recorded message telesales scams. Whatever the original intent, crooks are very quick to latch on to these schemes and use them to fleece gullible or vulnerable people. Most of the scammers were of course cowboy outfits who would probably have done an unsafe gas installation anyway.
Never forget the Law of Unintended Consequences.
There is also the risk of prematurely promoting a new technology, only to have a better version come along shortly afterwards. That really does no-one any good, least of all the planet as it creates not one but two monster junkpiles of perfectly serviceable goods.
".vast numbers of people would buy a boiler for $400 that cost them $600 a year in fuel to run rather than spend $800 on a more efficient boiler that consumed half as much fuel."
The reverse is more the case. People are being persuaded to scrap conventional boilers and replace them with condensing types on the grounds that this will save the planet. Or, something. The truth is that the energy saving is small, while the waste produced by all this scrappage is large. Of course, the real motive is that the installers profit from it. Legislation also forbids the scrapped boilers from being redeployed, ensuring a monster scrap heap.
I think we have to beware of the same syndrome arising with battery cars. The scrappage of huge numbers of conventional cars will mainly benefit the auto makers, and we then have to consider whether these firms are directly or indirectly influencing the politics for their own gain. They may for example be funding the Green Party to promote their own interests. (Exactly what they accuse Big Oil of doing, in fact.)
A: What makes people think that the personal automobile in almost any form will remain popular, or even legal, say 100 yrs from now?
B: People shouldn't extrapolate today's economic conditions into the future where they may not even remotely apply.
C: Suppose the next 1859-like ("Carrington class") solar storm occurs causing loss of spent fuel cooling capacity, "loss of the ultimate heatsink" in dozens, perhaps hundreds of nuclear power plants around the globe, all at the same time, and meltdowns a few hours to days later, in some significant proportion of them..
A: What makes people think that the personal automobile in almost any form will remain popular, or even legal, say 100 yrs from now?
B: People shouldn't extrapolate today's economic conditions into the future where they may not even remotely apply.
C: Suppose the next 1859-like ("Carrington class") solar storm occurs causing loss of spent fuel cooling capacity, "loss of the ultimate heatsink" in dozens, perhaps hundreds of nuclear power plants around the globe, all at the same time, and meltdowns a few hours to days later, in some significant proportion of them..
A: Try making any journey by public transport that is not either To or From a city center, and you will see why it has to be. To get 60 miles you may have to travel 100 to the nearest city, passing your destination on the way, and then travel 40 back again in the direction you came.
B: Too true, and applies in spades to the mass deployment of wind turbines and the like. Fusion will almost certainly be perfected before '100% renewables' is reached n 2050 or wheneveri. At which point they become scrap. Scrap with a fair proportion of non-recyclable content, too.
C: That is probably an exaggeration, but it IS a valid reason why we should build no more reactors with pressurised water cooling or zirconium fuel cladding.
What they will do is create huge taxes on older cars, or continually require new capabilities in cars allowed on the roads which only the newer cars have.
What they will do is create huge taxes on older cars, or continually require new capabilities in cars allowed on the roads which only the newer cars have.