Hello, we're in Energy 101 and we've been talking about oil and oil independence.
And energy independence that centers around oil imports.
And I thought it would be a good time to talk about something we hear a lot about,
with the new technology being commercialized and coming on the
forefront. And that's electric cars.
So let's, let's look at electric cars, and what the, what they mean.
It turns out there's a lot of confusion over electric cars.
They're electric cars and they're electric cars.
All electric cars are not created equal is all I can say.
some of em been out for a while and others are new, so let's just try to
orient those. And again, the reason that electric cars
are important is their impact on oil because 70% of our oil is used for
transportation. So, if we're going to do anything about
oil independence and oil imports we need to do something about transportation.
And there's several things we can do. electric cars is one of them, but not
just any electric car but electric cars can save oil. They replace oil with
electric, electricity energy, electric energy of course so that's good because
we get electricity in the US. Not all countries but in this country, we
get all of our electricity from coal, natural gas, hydro, wind, solar and some
biomass that I don't have listed there. and, so that's good because due to the
fact that natural gas price is about 5 times per unit of energy.
That of natural gas and coal we just, it, that's makes no economic sense for
anybody to be burning oil in a electric power plant to generate electricity, when
they can burn natural gas and coal. so what are electric cars, those that run
on all, all electricity accomplish is they don't burn any oil because you don't
fill up at the filling station with gasoline, and they run off electricity,
all of the energy of which comes from these natural resources that we listed
That does not include oil, which is good from an energy independence viewpoint.
So what are some examples of the cars. There are 3 categories of electric cars.
The Prius hybrid car was the first that got the got, got the the name of an
electric car but that's really a little bit of a, or quite a bit of a misnomer.
Prius came out in 1997 in Japan, so it's, that technology has been around for what,
15 years? And is a good example of how long it takes technology in the
automobile industry, such as this, that's revolutionary to penetrate the market.
And, there's still much less than 1% of the cars on the road that are hybrid
cars. they went worldwide, the Toyota, with the
Prius went worldwide in their market in 2001, and they've been available in the
US since then and just in 2012 and 2013, they've come out with, some additional
models, so they got larger Prius, Priuses, and smaller Priuses.
But, the, the Prius particularly shines in urban traffic, and let's look at why.
first, the first key point is, is the hybrid car, like the Prius only uses
gasoline. It never plugs in to the electrical
outlet to recharge a battery. It doesn't have that capability, it runs
only on gasoline. So the, the oil that it saves is only due
to the increased miles per gallon that it gets over a conventional car that's not a
hybrid. all, it does have electricity on board
though, but it generates its own. It generates its own electricity from the
engine and times when the engine is not needed for other things, to power the car
and stores that electricity in small battery pack, a small battery pack.
Now why does it increase mile per gallon? Well because it has a breaking
regeneration system on it which is one of the key things that causes the Prius to,
and the hybrid cars in general. Most manufacturers have several hybrid
models now but it allows it to regenerate breaking energy.
Just think about it when you are. Driving around town, which is when the
hybrid really comes into its own. you you're driving down the street you
get a stop light or a stop sign so you put the breaks on.
You you dissipate that kinetic energy that you had from the car moving into
heat that heats your breaks up and that, that energy is gone.
And then the stop light turns green and you accelarate and now you got to add all
of that kinetic energy to get the car accelerated back up to 25 miles per hour,
say to accelerate it again. And then, at the next stop light, you
dissipate all that energy with brakes. Well, what the hybrid does is it, it uses
a generator. When you stop on the brake, it doesn't
use friction on the brakes to slow it down.
It cranks up a generator that loads the car down and slows it down, so it
generates electricity from the kinetic energy that is recouped from when the car
is slowed down. So it regenerates the kinetic energy of
the car, in stop and go traffic in particular.
The battery pack is used to store the electricity and then generally when you
accelerate then from the light, electricity is, that electricity that was
generated from stopping, it put back, put into an electric motor that helps drive
the wheels and accelerate back through 20 or 25 miles per hour.
So, that's a big factor. Another thing that it does it always cuts
the engine off, if you stop at a, when the car is stopped, and you have to pay
attention to even notice that. But it, the, the car, the engine cuts off
so it doesn't burn fuel when it idles, and that's a significant item also.
So, but it has a very small battery pack. if you just didn't have the engine and
you locked it out, you, you can travel less than a mile on the batteries.
If they're fully charged. So this has a very small battery pack.
So, the cost penalty of the expensive battery is not a big one.
The range is the same as a conventional car, with similar miles per galloon and
As I mentioned, it was introduced in 2001 worldwide.
The, the range is an issue because, in the all-electric car that we'll get to in
just a minute, but in here it's just a matter of how much gasoline you have in
the tank. Now the miles per gallon is typically, in
real life, in the high 30s or low 40s. other conventional vehicle miles per
gallon numbers have come to compete with the Prius and hybrids in general.
So you can buy cars that will get high 30's in typical kind of driving.
similar to a hybrid so then that's the whole point of this hybrid technology.
So, the particularly if you're in Europe when I, I, I've spent several years a
semester at a time lecturing over in Europe and they always give me a
a European diesel car turbo diesel and you wouldn't know it was is diesel until,
unless you looked under the hood. and it performed like a conventional car
cranks on cold weather just like a conventional car.
And always get over 40 miles a gallon in that car.
driving around town and driving on the Autobahn to high speed.
So there are other ways to get high efficiency in automobiles other than
hybrids, but hybrids are one of the first.
the next run in the category is the Chevy Volt.
Now Chevy Volt is really the hybrid, but we won't use that name because that's the
name given to the Prius type cars but it's a called a plug-in hybrid.
It's a plug-in hybrid, they just came out 2000 late 2011 I guess it was.
but, in this case it'll run as an electric car for 40 miles.
And then it converts to a regular hybrid operation like Prius.
And then you get home, when you get home you plug it into your wall socket or a
special recharging station that you buy if you want a faster charge, and once it
recharges overnight. Then it'll go about 40 miles, just as an
all electric car. The engine never cranks up.
The engine never cranks up over that 40 miles, unless you do some, if you want
some serious acceleration, or do something unusual.
And then, when the batteries get low, it switches to a conventional hybrid
operation, just like the Prius, burning old gasoline.
And the mileage is a, a hybrid kind of mileage gasoline mileage.
it has a medium sized battery pack. That has a lot to do with cost because
these batteries in these cars are very expensive.
the batteries in this, in the hybrid, this excuse me, the plug-in hybrid, the
Chevy Volt, is probably 10, $12,000 somewhere in that category.
the range, because it'll flip over to gasoline when the batteries run out is
the same as a conventional car, it just depends on how big a gasoline tank you
have, and this has a conventional gasoline tank.
So that's the Chevy Volt which is the plug-in hybrid.
The third type, is what you hear so much about lately, and that's the all-electric
car, which a the Nissan Leaf was the 1st 1.
I'm giving you examples here of the 1st one's on the market, there are other car
now, again of manufacturers that have models such as these, like the all
electric car. It gets all of its energy from charging
batteries from the grid. It uses no electricity whatsoever.
You never go the filling station. And by the way the plug in hybrid doesn't
go to the filling station either if you never drive more than 40 miles a day,
[COUGH] and can come back and recharge your batteries.
But it get, this one doesn't have the options for
filling up the gasoline. And so all of this electricity and energy
comes from coal, natural gas, hydro, wind, solar, etc.
It uses no electricity so this is the best winner for reducing our oil
consumption. However, the big downside is it's got a
range issue. Range fright we call it and where you're
talking about ranges of 50 to 100 miles and when you run out of battery charge,
you're stuck on the side of the highway and you've got to get a tow truck to come
get you for 75 or $100 and tow you to the nearest charging station, which might be
home. so, and then there right now fairly,
usually, always the compact cars, unless you get something like the Tesla, which
is a $100,000, $150,000 car, which is a whole other ball game.
that but I won't go into because they're specially kind, type of cars.
The technologies can do it, but they're very expensive to get longer range.
So, this, that's the all electric car, which on the oil conservation and oil
savings is the best, but it's got kept issues with, with the big battery pack
that has a high price, they're probably $15,000, somewhere in that category for
an all electric car and and by the way, if you want air conditioning or heat in
the summer or heat in the winter That's going to cut your miles.
That's the reason the mile, the range can drop to 50 miles or so from 70 to100
without any, any air conditioning or heat.
But you turn the air conditioner on, it gets the energy to run the compressor
from the batteries and if you want heat it gets the, elect, uses electricity with
the resistance heating to heat up the car.
So This is, th-, there's some trade-offs
with all electric cars, but they're great cars for commuting around the city and
never go out of the city, So by switching to all electric cars
saves oil, no oil is used, for electricity, oil, oil cars Burn electric,
all electric cars burn no oil. They the plug in hybrids saves some oil.
Electricity from the grid places the oil, that it uses and its pure electric
operation though for the first forty miles.
Okay, I hope that clears up what the electric car confusion, which is kind of
a muddy Muddy situation with all the models coming out.
Thank you.