Another Way of Looking At It...

[omgwtfbyobbq]

Yup. Well to wheels efficiency for EVs is something like ~35%, while ICE powered vehicles average ~15%. Efficiency of use I guess, i.e. turning all that energy to useful work. Because generation at one large location can be so much more efficient than distributed generation, EVs have a big leg up.

Wrt gasoline prices, according to this page, refineries make ~50 cents per gallon, which seems to match up with your price of $2 at the refinery gate. Then we add on taxes, ~33% in CA acording to that website, then distribution fees (i.e. gas in Mojave is way cheaper than gas 200 miles away), and we have gas at ~$3/gal. The real crummy thing about it is gas is really inelastic on the short term, meaning it would take something like $6/gal to cut demand by 10%, so any and all decreases in supply, or increases in consumption, can really drive the price up. This is where the American gas guzzler comes into play. If a financial institution that owns a lot of oil stock, can increase demand enough to push against this short term inelasticity, even though their shares of GM or Ford may drop in price, their shares of Exx0n-Mobil, BP, etc... Will jump by a much larger amount. This is also why alternatives can hurt profit from oil so much, and why various companies fought the CA ZEV mandate so much. If 3% of all new cars don't use gas, that would hurt profit margins right now by that elasticity proportion on the world market, which could knock the price way down. A 10% drop in consumption for a year would probably drop the price per gallon down to it's baseline of ~$1.30/gallon. The worst part is, the guys who actually extract the oil, like my cousin, are supposedly still getting paid ~$6/barrel by the oil companies. They are getting paid exactly what they were getting paid a few years ago, none of this increase in profit is trickling down to them, and they are pissed. Why do you think Chavez wants to nationalize all the oil? If they're doing the same thing over in Venezuela that they're doing here, the government/people are getting ripped.

Now, the thing is, government isn't going to go after Big 0il, 1nvestment Firms, and Americ4n Car Co's for privateering because they have tons of money, and the government makes more via tax if that group of rich mofos profits more. And we can all just go out an buy more fuel efficient vehicles if we want to, which is true, to an extent. Otoh, without more taxation pf gas, or tougher CAFE standards, manufacturers can build fleets with averages that will suck up any slack in supply, driving the price up and up. That's called good bidness!

This isn't something that's isolated, other companies may behave in similar fashion. Take Appl3 making the Ip0d for an example. They probably could've spent zip, zero, and zlich on ads for the damn thing, and made a lot of them for ~$30-60 bucks per player. But, if no one knows about it, or it flops for some other reason, or if it just does o.k., they won't be able to maximize profit. They pick a price point and a certain amount to advertise thanks to input from market research, and base the price on what they feel will make them the most profit, as opposed to what's most affordable for the consumer. It's just how some bidness be imo.

[Bill in Houston]

I never thought of elasticity the other way around. If consumers could just get their stuff together and drop consumption 10 or 20 percent, then the price of gas would plummet. Hmmm.

[omgwtfbyobbq]

I'm pretty sure it's commutative over the same range, so if price doubles because of a 1% drop in supply, and all things being equal, supply increases 1%, price should drop back down to whatever it was initially. It won't drop past the price floor, but elasticity should work both ways,

[darelldd]

Originally Posted by Bill in Houston

Do the math and I think that you will see that that cannot be correct. How many kWh would it take to go 30 miles?

I am curious as to how you see that this *cannot be correct* if you don't know how many miles you can drive an EV on a kWh. (the answer, BTW is about 4 miles/kWh).

I have done the math - as many of us have...with the sketchy info that we have - and I can certainly drive at least 30 miles on the energy input to make a gallon of gasoline. That energy input certainly comes from many sources, as OMG pointed out (and knows well!)

The fact still remains that the oil industry is the SINGLE biggest consumer of electricity. It takes GOBS of electricity to make gasoline. And even if we did use fossil fuels to power our EVs, we'd still pollute less. Even with conversion losses hurting the cause, the efficiency of EVs is orders of magnitude better than a mobile ICE. And turning fossil fuels into electricity can be much cleaner than turning it directly into motive force in a mobile application.

[darelldd]

Originally Posted by omgwtfbyobbq

Yup. Well to wheels efficiency for EVs is something like ~35%, while ICE powered vehicles average ~15%.

Unless I'm mistaken, that 15% for ICE is the average of *tanks* to wheels efficiency of our current cars. The tank to wheels efficiency of an EV is above ~ 95%. So if we've talking about well to wheels, I think that an ICE vehicle must be quite a bit lower than 15%.

[omgwtfbyobbq]

Originally Posted by darelldd

Unless I'm mistaken, that 15% for ICE is the average of *tanks* to wheels efficiency of our current cars. The tank to wheels efficiency of an EV is above ~ 95%. So if we've talking about well to wheels, I think that an ICE vehicle must be quite a bit lower than 15%.

It's yet another dumbass example of how the way we measure things impacts our perception of them imo. In this case, by riding around in big vehicles at high speeds, for significant time periods, the average car in America does operate at ~20% efficiency (I think it's actually ~18-19%), with the peak being ~35%. But, this is somewhat disingenuous, because a Fjord Expl0rer at 80mph and ~30% engine efficiency will still get worse mileage than a H0nda Acc0rd at the same speed and ~20% efficiency, even if the Fjord's well to wheel efficiency is higher.

Since well to wheels doesn't include the efficiency of using however much vehicle to transport just one human, by having lots of big vehicles moving quickly, the apparent efficiency of the average car, according to the well to wheels calc, is inflated. I could have a small little pod akin to the 1L prototype that got 300mpg, but if the engine is only operating at 10% eff, my well to wheels efficiency is going to be worse than the Fjord's.

[darelldd]

Originally Posted by Bill in Houston

Here's what I am thinking. A barrel of oil costs something like 60 bucks, or about $1.50 per gallon. A gallon of gas costs less than $2 at the refinery gate. 9kWh of electricity would cost, umm, a little less than 50 cents, I think, for a large refinery? That would mean that the refinery is barely breaking even. Which, right now, is not the case. So that is why I can't make it all go together.

What will help make ends meet for your math is the fact that while the oil industry IS the biggest electricity purchaser from the grid, they also make lots of their own (by burning whatever flamable left-overs that have sitting around ) They make lots of electricity on-site for several reasons. One is expense and another is that the grid couldn't handle the demand.

So the bottom line here is that their electricity is CHEAP. Much cheaper than you are imagining.

[darelldd]

Originally Posted by omgwtfbyobbq

It's yet another dumbass example of how the way we measure things impacts our perception of them imo.

Absolutely! And we're awash in that kind of thing.

When people wish to talk bad about EVs, what's the first thing they say? They mention that that we're just moving the pollution from the tail pipe to the electric plant. The assumption is that the only pollution caused by a gas car is at the tail pipe - completely ignoring the upstream pollution of gasoline, while focussion completely on the upstream pollution of electricity.

And then there's my recent favorite of comparing the EPA mpg rating of a given car with the *real world* reports of a car like the Prius. Everybody loves doing that!

In mild defense of the apples to oranges folks, it does get terribly tricky to compare things like the pollution from creating gasoline to the pollution of making electricity. So many freaking variables (even to the point of what you call "pollution.") that it is difficult at best.

I always enjoy reading your stuff, OMG.

[omgwtfbyobbq]

Yup, definitely. VOCs alone could be discussed w/ no resolution for some time. And then there's favorable treatment of industry. So CA will ban small diesel cars, but still allow the sales of "heavy duty" diesel pickups, which will both be used for the same thing nine times out of ten.
Thanks btw!

[Bill in Houston]

Originally Posted by darelldd

So the bottom line here is that their electricity is CHEAP. Much cheaper than you are imagining.

Well, I went with 9 kwh for 50 cents, which is about 1/3 what you and I pay, huh?