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Comment by heroiccocoa | Hacker News Reader

Is there actually a meaningful difference between EV efficiency worth considering though? In contrast to ICEs, most electric motors are already very efficient and the difference comes down to design choices like power and weight (range), and air/rolling resistance, not wasteful inefficiency[1]. Most Teslas have very decent drag coefficients https://www.myevreview.com/comparison-chart/drag-coefficient.

[1] Of course there is a semantic issue at play here as well: efficiency referring to both range/energy as well as power out/power in, and whether anyone actually has the right to drive a 845 hp cybertruck around in the midst of a climate crisis and global mass extinction when ~100 bhp ought to be enough for almost all commuting/leisure use.

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So unless you live in France or Sweden or some other country that had minimal fossil fuels in the energy mix for the grid, your EV is likely still essentially burning fossil fuels to get around (just burning it 10-20% more efficiently by way of a centralized plant).

It's not the efficiency of fossil fuel plants, it's this: What do you think is easier:

  a) Regulate the half-dozen coal plants in the country to clean up their shit and install scrubbers

  b) Somehow force 100k already sold ICE vehicles to install aftermarket pollution reduction doodads

_This_ is why EVs are better in the long run, as the grid moves to cleaner production, every single EV in use becomes more environmentally friendly at the same time.

I don’t disagree that it is better and easier to make cleaner coal plants en masse to reduce pollution. But you do get how that “clean coal” is mostly marketing and also has nothing to do with how much carbon is put into the air?

My point is not “we shouldn’t do evs” and more we are taking too long to electrify cars and this leaves out trucks, ships, and most trains (at least in the US). But that lack of electrification is outmatched by our inability to decarbonize the energy grid worldwide - with the decrease of % energy nuclear, it’s been met with increase in natural gas despite massive spikes in wind and solar. Additionally, since energy demands grow every year (eg electric cars now demand electricity from the grid) total energy is growing which means that despite increasing solar and wind, fossil fuel production has gained market share and total fossil fuel production has also grown. In no way is our grid energy production on a positive direction to becoming decarbonized.

Do you have a source for the 10-20%? ICEs are incredibly inefficient, and I wouldn't be surprised if the grid was twice as efficient, although I too have no source to back it up.

> The total WTW efficiency of gasoline ICEV ranges between 11-27 %,

> diesel ICEV ranges from 25 % to 37 %

> The EV fed by a natural gas power plant shows the highest WTW efficiency which ranges from 13 % to 31 %

> While the EV supplied by coal-fired and diesel power plants have approximately the same WTW efficiency ranging between 13 % to 27 % and 12 % to 25 %, respectively

https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2020SJRUE..24..669A/abstra...

What alternative would you suggest as a path to clean energy?

Nuclear is the only energy source that has demonstrated that it can displace fossil fuels.

Look at what happens to the % of fossil fuels when nuclear energy mix shrinks over time even as solar and wind increase drastically: https://ourworldindata.org/electricity-mix

Looks like maybe solar/wind are able to take market share from coal (likely because regulations and popular opinions have made less profitable), a decrease in nuclear is directly correlated with an increase in natural gas usage. That’s pretty telling to me.

Also, nuclear is the only energy source that can generate enough energy to make carbon recapture possible and doesn’t come with unsolved energy storage requirements for the grid.

Efficiency is very important in electric cars, since it is directly related to the two main metrics that consumers appear to consider when buying an EV: cost and range. A more efficient car gets a higher range for the same battery cost or a cheaper battery with the same range. And it compounds: a smaller battery reduces weight, getting back some of the range lost by the smaller battery.

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