DiscussWorldIssues - Socio-Economic Religion and Political Uncensored Debate - View Single Post - Why is GM reinventing an electric car, when they already had one 10 years ago?

**enteltcheft** · 08-03-2009, 02:45 AM

Eh if electrical cars became the norm, then we need to severly update our power infrastructure. Not to mention, this would highly increase the demand for electricity, and most plants are coal and oil...It might not be the all around savior everyone thinks.

That update of the power infrastructure is needed without electric cars, so the costs for the additional upgrades are not that big. You could configure the charges so they don't charge at peak times which are the biggest problem (the largest activity would be when the people come home from work, which is when the other consumption drops).

You can't run a car on coal and IC engines have such a poor efficency (35%, not counting anything that happens after the engine) that you can burn oil in a modern cogeneration powerplant (80%+ efficent), send it into a battery (7% loss), run an electric motor (up to 90% efficent) of that battery (80%) and still have a higher efficency.

08-03-2009, 02:45 AM	#25
enteltcheft Join Date Oct 2005 Posts 422 Senior Member	Eh if electrical cars became the norm, then we need to severly update our power infrastructure. Not to mention, this would highly increase the demand for electricity, and most plants are coal and oil...It might not be the all around savior everyone thinks. That update of the power infrastructure is needed without electric cars, so the costs for the additional upgrades are not that big. You could configure the charges so they don't charge at peak times which are the biggest problem (the largest activity would be when the people come home from work, which is when the other consumption drops). You can't run a car on coal and IC engines have such a poor efficency (35%, not counting anything that happens after the engine) that you can burn oil in a modern cogeneration powerplant (80%+ efficent), send it into a battery (7% loss), run an electric motor (up to 90% efficent) of that battery (80%) and still have a higher efficency.
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