efficiency of charging electric car with gas generator?

That's not entirely true.

What you are describing is a little bit more complicated and due to other reasons.

Hybrids tend to show their better efficiency when the car has to stop and start frequently.

But the important fact of the matter is that their energy flow mainly does NOT involve burning fuel to produce electric power. That is something which you neglect to consider.

Mostly, fuel is either burned to drive the engine of the car, or electric power from the already charged battery is used.

If you never charged your hybrid car from a separate source, the fuel efficiency would be significantly lower.

 

Hybrids are more efficient in fuel cost. And, that certainly holds true for hybrids that don't allow charging the battery from some external source.

They just allow for superior efficiency in using gas.

There are a good number of cars on the market where there is a hybrid and non-hybrid version of the same car. You can compare mileage for those two versions, knowing that car shape and other factors are not involved, and where there is no "plug-in" option.

Consumer Reports and other analytical organizations report the better mileage of hybrids at highway speeds as well as city use.

 

I think you have a point here in that the exact full definition from electric generation to power at the wheels makes a difference when comparing that to running a standard gas engine car.

On the other hand, I think your explanations haven't pointed to the reasons that the fuel cost per mile of a hybrid is lower and the fuel cost per mile of an ev is lower than that.

Also, if the electric generator isn't riding along with you in the car, then it is really just competing with home electricity cost. I really don't believe you can buy a gas or diesel generator on the market that will generator electricity for less cost than local utilities charge. If lowering home electricity cost is the objective, then solar is probably the best direction, as home solar has become cost effective.

 

Yes they have. Because a hybrid is using electric power that came from an outside charging.

That is different from what you are arguing for, which is generating all that electric power from the vehicle's own engine (although hybrids can do just a little bit of this).

Hybrids apply this electric power most during times of initial acceleration, which is where conventional engines have the least efficiency.

Furthermore, hybrid vehicles are usually designed to be lighter weight and strive for better efficiency in the first place, which does not necessarily have anything inherently to do with them operating as a hybrid in their design.

For all these reasons, I believe your argument is mistaken.

 

That has some issues. When the sun is out, the car is often out being driven on the road. When the car is parked at night, there is no sun.

Trying to store this energy creates some huge extra complications, impracticalities and expense, if the battery that you are trying to charge is not in the same place as those solar panels.

Of course you could do it, but the economics would not work out as well as this idea sounds on the surface.

 

It actually adds 2 conversions. The one you mentioned along with the energy it takes to get it out of the ground and refined before it goes into the generator

 

Almost all hybrids today can not be charged by an external power source. They don't plug in.

My hybrid Toyota Rav4 has exactly the same body as models that are gas only. And, once again it can not be plugged into an external source of power.

The fact that it gets FAR better mileage than the non-hybrid versions does not come from differences in body or other features and it doesn't come from external power.

Besides that, the hybrid version has better acceleration.

Sorry - you need to rethink SOME of what you've been saying.

 

There are two different solutions to this.

First, the solar you generate during the day when you aren't at home can go back out on the grid to be used for other demand. You get credit for that power.

Next, there are home-sized batteries that allow a homeowner to be even more independent of the grid.

How you want to account for the benefit of solar is pretty much a personal decision, but it isn't the case that you need to plug your car into your solar array.

 

I think your comment here is deflecting from the actual issue that I raised.

I see. I knew it would inevitably come down to this.
So let me understand you. You are saying that you want to use solar panels, to charge a battery (during the day) that then in turn will charge another battery (in the car, at night) to then drive the car.

You do understand that charging this extra battery will create a whole other step of efficiency loss, don't you?
Not to mention cost and environmental impact concerns (assuming these will be giant lead-acid batteries in the house, because that's the cheapest option).
Lead-acid batteries typically have a 30% charging efficiency loss. There are additional complications trying to use a battery to charge another battery, which you do not realize.

By the way, I think garage spaces in homes would probably have to be redesigned to accommodate this extra battery space. You don't seem to realize how big a lead-acid battery bank would have to be to be big enough to be able to charge the large battery bank of an electric car. Including added space to deal with safety concerns.

These ideas might seem simple... until you actually start trying to think them through.

If it's so "simple", why don't you try doing it? Maybe then you'll start to have some clue how complicated it is.

And I doubt you're going to do environmental impact calculations to compare the negative impact of this giant lead-acid battery bank (energy used, pollution caused, realistic lifespan of battery and disposal life cycle) to the benefit from reduction in use of fossil fuels.

 

There is a step there. However, if you want to attack that, you need to show the actual efficiency differences in the full chain that starts with buying gas or electricity and ends up moving the car.

For instance, siphoning off power to drive the various pumps, drive train features like transmissions and differentials and the overall friction of a gas engine has to be included - compared to the efficiency of an electric motor tied to an axle.

I don't believe you have come anywhere close to doing that.

Current technology for house batteries is not lead acid.

Battery efficiency and environmental impact is an issue, and there is continuing progress being made on this front.

You can look at the Tesla house battery. Plus, these batteries can be mounted outdoors.

I don't know of any hybrid or full EV that uses lead-acid batteries, though there may be some.

???

Are you aware that pretty much every auto manufacturer is working hard toward moving to EV? Plus, there are serious new entries, like Tesla was at one time. Take a look at Rivian.
https://rivian.com/ They have HUGE funding, plus Amazon has a contract to buy every electric van they make into the future. But, you could buy their electric pickup.

I don't know how the Rivian pickup compares to the fully electric Ford F-150.

Look at high end cars such as Porsche, because acceleration matters to their customers, and gas just can not do it.

Here are 14 ev entries. https://www.truecar.com/best-cars-trucks/fuel-electric/luxury/

No. No lead-acid.

Yes, there is environmental impact from current EV car batteries.

And, there is environmental impact from gas cars. Fully 2/3 of our total oil usage goes to transportation!! Think what it could mean to cut the total oil industry pollution in, say, half while changing our balance of trade and reducing the world conflict driven by oil.

We need to clean up our cities from automobile pollutants that are taking lives.

And, battery technology is receiving a huge investment today.

 

Well, let's not jump ahead of the bus, shall we? Doesn't make sense to do something now if the technology is not there yet.

I am looking at a website. They sell both lead-acid and lithium ion batteries. The alternative to lead-acid seems more than 3 times as expensive as lead-acid.
Solar Battery Banks: Battery Banks for Home - Unbound Solar formerly Wholesale Solar

In fact if you want to have a battery bank powerful enough to charge the battery bank of an electric car, and lead-acid is not an option, it is probably going to cost you almost as much for those batteries as the cost of your electric car. These batteries do not last forever either.

Bear in mind that the battery bank in a Tesla electric car is 100 kwh.
Now, take a look at the Lithium Ferro Phosphate battery bank on that website. 32 kwh will cost you $27,000. You will need at least three of those, probably four.

 

People like you just have emotional ideas and never bother to do the math.

It takes far more energy (pardon the pun) and effort to go into the details of addressing your ideas than to just brush them off and ignore you.

I think people like you should be forced to use your own money to make your ideas become a reality. Force people into long-term debt if they can't pay.
The next time they have another stupid idea they might think twice.

 

I'm not sure what you are waiting for here.

EVs don't depend on home solar or home batteries - that is a separate issue.

The power for EVs costs less per mile than the power for gasoline cars. That is here right now.

Electric cars do not depend on home generation of all the needed electricity - or ANY of it.

Electric cars can be fueled by plugging them into your home. And, that is a cheaper source of fuel than is gasoline in most places in America.

Solar, etc., is a way to bring down the price of electricity to below what local utilities charge and to make one far more impervious to power outages. As you noted the payoff is not instant, especially if you go "all the way". And, of course there are different ways of viewing the advantage a Texan would have had if they had been more independent of the failed Texas electricity grid. In many cases, serious damage was incurred by those who lost power.

Again, you aren't thinking about what the various system components are and how they cooperate, thus you are missing that the technology for cars is FULLY here today.

 

What I have presented is on the market today.

This isn't about me, other than that I notice a whole lot of Teslas as I drive around.

And, I DID present the math comparing the fuel cost per mile of equivalent cars on this board. Electric battery EVs like Teslas and the many others win. Hydrogen EVs come in second. Maybe they will get better, and they may be more environmentally responsible, but distributing a new fuel type is a huge issue - even just for plug-in electric vehicles, let alone that it is hydrogen that must be distributed. Also, hydrogen cars don't have an obvious way of collecting brake energy, which is a big issue.

 

So tell us why you are not doing this.

 

Break energy is a factor, but it is a small factor compared to the other issues. Again, you are viewing things out of proportion.
Just in case you do not realize, it is impractical to be able to capture all of that break energy; only a portion is recaptured back. This has to do with efficiency and the amount of time before the car needs to come to a complete stop.
Designing an electric motor to also function as a generator to recapture break energy also adds complications, and no doubt additional expense and a little bit of weight.

 

Did you factor in the additional cost of an electric car (which is mainly the cost of the battery bank), or the cost of a replacement electric battery bank when the car eventually gets older?

How about the cost of upgrades to the electrical grid to allow for increased capacity?

No? You didn't?

How about figuring what the cost of electric power is going to be once none of that electric power is produced by burning fossil fuels anymore?

Oh, don't forget equivalent taxes on that electric power to make it equivalent to the additional cost from the tax on fuel.

 

It's going to be easier to make the sell to other people if you are doing it first, and also keeping a detailed record to show everyone else how much money you are saving.

 

I see you have already lost track of the original context of our conversation.

Let me refresh your memory and point out YOU were the one who suggested this, as the solution to a problem I pointed out.

Okay, so no home home batteries. What is your solution to the issue of solar panels not being able to charge cars because the cars are not at the house for most of the day when the sun is out??

 

I agree with a lot of this. But, car manufacturers are seeing capturing brake energy as important. Today's hybrids do that - not just ev only.

As you point out, charging a battery takes time, and there isn't much time available for capturing brake energy in most situations.

One solution being used is to use capacitors to capture brake energy. Capacitors charge almost instantly and with little overhead. From there, the battery can be charge over a longer period of time.

 

What I did was purely oriented to fuel cost comparison. I picked vehicles that were as similar as possible. I used prices at the pump and prices of electricity as home owners are charged. I think that covers the tax issue.

Fossil fuel will produce a percentage of our total electric load far into the future. The only question is how much. imho, buildings should all be built with solar, as today's solar will pay off over a lot less time than the mortgage on the building. Plus, the wind farms rapidly growing from Texas to Canada as well as other places are a testament to the competitive nature of clean energy. I think we'll need nuclear, too.

 

I did compare the cost of vehicles, too. EVs are coming down in price and will continue to do so for a number of reasons related to competition, to covering the cost of initial engineering investment, to availability of used vehicles.

But, you would have to own your ev for a good number of years to fully pay off the difference. And, I'd point out that cheaper fuel cost is not the only cool feature of these cars. They also save in maintenance, are clean in the garage, are quiet, can be fueled at home, have faster acceleration, etc.

I think Toyota's first full ev car is going to be sold at a price point above $150K. But, surely that is because Toyota can't afford to enter this market as an also-ran when features are compared to Tesla and others. They are trying to leapfrog the industry.

It will be interesting to see how the electric Ford F-150 pickup will be received.

 

Assuming of course your battery doesn't break down on you, your car does not get into a major accident or get stolen, which is an issue to think about for those who live in certain high-crime neighborhoods in homes that do not have garage space.

Speaking of which, how are people suppose to charge their electric cars when they have to park on the street?

 

Excellent! We have someone here now who knows what he's talking about!

Germany will soon be stuck with buying imported LNG because of the Ukraine 'thing'.

Would what you postulate for American consumers also likely be true in the EU? I'm trying to help my German friends understand what is about to happen to them economically (and they aren't one bit happy)....

 

How much do you want to bet electric power costs will skyrocket as soon as everyone is forced to convert to electric cars?

There are multiple reasons this will happen. (Expanding capacity of the electric grid, collecting taxes on electric power to pay for roads after the tax on fuel becomes obsolete, the higher cost of renewable electric power generation which will become imparative since electric cars don't make environmental sense if we're still burning fuel to provide energy for them)