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Comment by Kirby64 | Hacker News Reader

Except... you can recharge a lithium-ion battery many, many times before you have to replace it. You get to use gasoline one time.

The absolute best efficiency of a gasoline engine is somewhere around 40% efficiency, with most being a lot lower. So your 48MJ number is a lot closer to ~19MJ. So, assuming you can recharge a lithium battery 100 times (most are going to be capable of many times that), you're break even in terms of 'efficiency' of Li-Ion vs. gas.

Even adding in all the additional costs of product, transport, energy generation costs, etc etc, lithium-ion batteries are still better.

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Another way of putting it -- To drive 50,000 miles, a Ford F150 or similar has to consume ~8,500 kgs of gasoline:

> 50,000 miles / 20 mpg * (3.4 kg/gal)

The Cybertruck Battery weighs ~1,400 kgs, and probably lasts at least 100K miles even with poor charging practices

So you would have to compare 1,400kgs of Lithium with at least 17,000 kgs of gasoline over the lifetime of the vehicle.

If you want to be totally fair, you could include your car's share of the weight of fuels used in the electric grid. However, even charging from a fairly dirty grid is more efficient than an ICE, so this wouldn't change things much.

Except... you can recharge a lithium-ion battery many, many times before you have to replace it.

Additionally, we can already recycle it over 90%

In your metaphor the battery would be akin to the gas tank though, rather than the gasoline that fills the tank. I think my gas tank can be emptied and filled more times than a battery and it doesn't lose capacity the more it's used or when it's cold out!

My metaphor works within the confines of equivalency. Battery aging is essentially equivalent to gasoline engine/transmission mileage, as the electric motors and electronics don't meaningfully age unlike gas engines. You can't run a gas engine forever, as eventually maintenance costs will exceed the value of the engine.

Every gas car I'm aware of loses efficiency when it's colder outside. It's not as drastic as an EV, but it definitely exists. Also, gas engines tend to get slightly less efficient as they age, just as components begin to have higher friction, increased wear, worse tolerances, etc.

All my cars had worse mileage in winter.

Not enough for me to notice. I have a route that I can barely do twice without filling up be it summer or winter.

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