Assuming your electrical power comes from a diesel power plant, what is the equivalent miles per gallon of diesel fuel for an electric car? If that doesn’t make sense, I’m trying to find out how many kilowatt hours of electricity one gallon of diesel fuel produces, and how many kilowatt hours it takes to fully charge an electric vehicle. I believe the range of an electric car is about 90 miles.
Of course it depends on the car, and I know there are a lot of other variables involved, but I’m just looking for rough numbers.
Err,
the Honda Insight is a hybrid. The gas engine and some kind of new fangled gizmo also charges the batteries when braking and they only get somewhere around 65MPG. I would not think a full electric car would when you break it all down be that much different.
but, then again I have been very wrong on occasions.
But, hey I felt like sharing my WAG!
There is currently quite a competitive game amongst Honda Insight owners about who can get the best gas milage. With careful driving, you can get amazing mpg. The Insight’s dashboard has a cumulative MPG indicator so it’s easy to tell if your mileage is improving or degrading.
Currently the top per-trip MPG is claimed to be 103.8mpg, and the best car-lifetime MPG is 84mpg. Check these out:
Dunno if this answers your question, but check this DOE/EPA website (choose “electric vehicles” obviously). They give MPG of the cars, with the following explanation:
What that doesn’t factor in is the efficiency of the power plant and transmission lines in delivering that energy to your house. However, it’s a good place to start, and I’m sure someone who knows a thing or two about powerplants could fill in the missing info.
There are some other benefits to electric cars besides pure MPG efficiency. Mostly, it’s a lot easier to clean up emissions from one big smokestack at the power plant, than from thousands of tailpipes that probably aren’t maintained as well, have to be light enough to be driven around, etc.
And in fact, electric power plants don’t use deisel engines (except maybe for small emergency back-up generators to cover a building’s worth of power), but typically steam turbines. Most plants being built these days use natural gas for fuel, not oil or coal. One of the motivations is that natural gas burns much cleaner than oil or coal, so it’s easier to meet emissions requirements.
And of course, some power plants don’t use fossil fuels at all: hydro, wind, etc.