Jed you made an excellent point here, as amazing as it may seem no
additional generator capacity would be needed (if your maths are right which
they seem to be).
Michel
----- Original Message -----
From: "Jed Rothwell" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Thursday, March 16, 2006 10:28 PM
Subject: Re: Simple comparison electric car versus gasoline
Horace Heffner wrote:
We may get away with that for a while, but sooner or later the states have
to find a way to pay for the road maintenance currently paid for by gas
taxes. Meanwhile, the lack of road taxes on electricity is a great and
automatic incentive.
I had not thought of that. However, the Federal road maintenance highway
tax is only $.18 per gallon, or 0.8 cents per mile for the average car.
You could replace it with a mileage tax based on the odometer reading, or
a simple flat fee per vehicle.
The above map only shows current electric prices, not the incremental
cost of new electricity. It reflects much old capital invested in
dams, etc.
New electricity from wind power or large-scale solar in the Southwest is
presently expensive but if it is developed on a large scale it will soon
become dramatically cheaper.
As vehicles are converted from petroleum to electric power the incremental
demand will cause new the electric rates to come more closely in line
nation wide.
Actually, electric vehicles use such a small amount of electricity, I
doubt that any additional generator capacity will be needed. Some
additional fuel will be burned and fissioned, of course. Here is 2001 data
from the Annual Energy Review 2002:
Average annual mileage (miles per vehicle): 11,766
Miles per day: 32
Electric vehicle consumption per mile: 0.3 to 0.5 kWh (Wikipedia)
Electric energy per day: 16 kWh
In other words, recharging a car would be like plugging in a 1.5 kW
electric room heater for just over 10 hours. If every US household did
this from 9:00 p.m. until the next morning, it would put no strain on our
generating capacity. It would be a problem with everyone did it at 3 p.m.
a summer afternoon, but not at night. In many houses you could probably
turn off a half-dozen lights and a television to save most of this power.
If the car dealerships and grocery stores a few miles from my house would
turn off half the lights they leave burning all night, they would save
enough electricity to power every car in the County!
- Jed
