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.