This is hard for people to understand. Generating electricity and moving it over power lines into a battery to be used in an EV motor is just very efficient. Extracting/refining gas, putting it on a boat, then truck, then exploding it in a car where 80% becomes waste heat is very inefficient.
I love these visuals! Thanks for sharing. Those are great.
They are, aren’t they!
FWIW, this is less abysmal for diesel engines.
Also, this ignores heating issues with EVs in colder climates - for ICE it's just the waste heat that gets recycled, for EVs either you drive cold or use up precious energy to heat yourself (hopefully with the AC unit acting as a heat pump, but still).
This is a red herring. The energy required to heat (or cool) the interior is a tiny fraction of total.
No, it's not. That really depends on the outside temperature and your personal comfort zone. E.g. this site estimates some 15% efficiency loss in -7°C even with a heat pump: motorwatt.com/ev-blog/howt...
15% of a small amount is not a significant difference. Quoting from the article: However, modern EVs equipped with advanced thermal management systems can maintain up to 97% of their range even in sub-zero temperatures.
No, that's not "15% of a small amount", that's 15% or so of the range, which is rougly the same as the percentages on the picture. 97% is quite great indeed, but almost unbelievable TBH. Also, it's stated for 0°C, not -7.
Gas cars throw away 60% energy every single day. EVs lose 15% on the one coldest day of the year. I live in Toronto and I lose more energy cooling my EV in August than I lose heating it in January. And that’s because I’m lazy.
Prerty sure that is accounted for in the visuals…
📌
Stealing these.
This is really interesting. thinking for a while what to do vehicle-wise, esp bc our old ethanol conversion on gas doesn't seem to work anymore. Always had old cars Don't drive every day 1 big trip/month (c. 350 km 1 way) Low winter temps & snow Semi-regularly tow trailer Maybe biogas (used car).
When the solid state batteries show up here, that kind of range will just not be anything you will think twice about.
yes, looking forward to better solutions. But, the fact is that the most I've ever paid for a car is still under 3000€, so I'm obviously not a person who will buy a new EV unless it is what I want: no frills, long range & long lasting, handles cold climate, reasonable corporate responsibility.
If not now, then wait a few years and there’ll be a great range of second hand EVs which can meet all your needs (including cost).
How many miles a year do you do?
We have biogas made of waste products, but no new biogas cars being brought into the market in EU. The secondhand market has high availability, so that's on my radar for now. I think many people here outside of cities would be more inclined to hybrids bc reasons I listed + crisis preparedness.
Biogas is outdated tech - that’s why there’s no new biogas vehicles on the market. But EVs are brilliant for crisis preparedness! They can power homes for days if not weeks!
Yes, this is a good point! OTOH, not sure how great they are in an evacuation-due-to-invasion situation, and that is probably the main crisis people are thinking about in this neck of the woods.
If you’ve got home charging and solar panels, then your car would be charged up virtually all the time.
honestly, I don't know. Don't drive that much and not every day (not necessarily even every week), but I have those long trips. One issue is style of EV cars. Little shopping baskets or expensive sports cars. Need a basic, affordable wagon that also pull a trailer and has a good range.
MG 5 has proven to be a reliable wagon. There are two battery sizes: 52.5 kWh which were later upgraded to 61 kWh. I’d recommend the latter.
Wagon style is popular in Finland (and probably other parts of Europe) as a practical design. But that's not really what's on the market in EVs, unfortunately. Skoda says they are planning some Fabia-Octavia style EV, but I don't think they have it, yet.
The Skoda Enyaq is pretty nice - though no idea about its towing capabilities. Likewise the MG5.
@graemecobb.com is brilliant at suggesting EVs to meet people’s needs.
Agree- it's about the closest I've seen for us, but.. we have 2 everyday cars: ethanol converted Skoda- cost under 3000€ several years ago, Berlingo diesel cost 500€ last year. Enyaq starting 45 000 € 😂. So, it's just a different world.
