By Bela “Bill” Suhayda
Sugar Grove, Ill.
Ever since the advent of the electric car, the real cost, per mile, of owning one rarely has been discussed. All we’ve heard is the miles per gallon in terms of the gasoline it would cost to run such a car with only a passing mention of the electricity and the expense of recharging electric cars.
Electricity is the least efficient energy we have to run anything. It has to do with the energy conversion needed to go from fossil fuels, wind, or solar energy, into stored electrical energy in batteries.
When any kind of energy is converted to electric energy, a good portion of that energy is lost in the process. If we intend to use electric-powered automobiles, we have to face some basic realities. A home-charging system for a Tesla would require a 75 amp service. An average house is equipped with 100 amp service. On a small street (25 homes) the electrical infrastructure would not be able to carry more than three houses with a single Tesla in each home. For even half the homes to have electric cars, the system would be wildly over-loaded. You would have to rewire your house in order to recharge your car. And the price of a Tesla is $50,000 to $100,000 per car.
Our residential infrastructure is not even close to handling the load needed to recharge electric cars. So as our brilliant elected officials promote this nonsense, not only are we being pushed to purchase these vehicles, and replace our reliable generating systems with expensive new windmills, and solar cells, but we will have to renovate our entire electrical delivery system. This latter investment will not be revealed until we are so far down this dead-end road that all we will hear from those in charge is,”oooooops!” P.S.: If no one purchases gasoline, where does government make up for the taxes lost on each gallon of gas not purchased?…oooooops again!
If you want to argue with a green person over cars that are eco-friendly, read the following. Eric test drove the Chevy Volt at the invitation of General Motors and he writes: For four days in a row the fully charged battery only lasted 25 miles before it switched to the gasoline engine. Eric calculated the car got 30 miles/gallon, including the 25 miles it ran on the battery. The range, including the nine-gallon gas tank and the 16-kwh battery was approximately 270 miles. Add 10 hours to the trip for charging the battery and you have a total trip time of 14.5 hours. Your average speed, including charging time, would be 20 mph.
According to General Motors the Volt battery holds 16 kwh of electricity. It takes a full 10 hours to charge a drained battery. The math to calculate the cost of charging this battery is as follows: $1.16/kwh X 16 kwh battery= $18.56 for a battery charge. It would cost $18.56 per charge for 270 miles. So it would cost $.74/mile to role down the road one mile.
And how do we generate electricity? By burning coal. And how long has the planet been warming most recently? More than 2,000 years, 1,800 years before we started burning oil and coal.
Who sells us the metals for the production of batteries? China. Who sells us solar panels? China. Who is building hundreds of coal-fired generators to power its country? China.