re: If tomorrow morning every vehicle in the US were electric would we use less energy??

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As a matter of efficiency, yes. Power plants are more efficient than your car's engine.

So assuming everything is equal, yes we would use less energy.

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You can't just stop at the power plant but even then this isn't necessarily true. Factors you have to consider:

1) Coal plants are only about 30% efficient. Same range as an automobile.
2) Simple cycle NG plants are just plain combustion processes like a car/jet.
3) How much energy does it take to mine, transport and maintain the coal yards. They require constant turning, especially in summer, to prevent fires.
4) How much energy does it take to extract the NG, process it, clean it, and transport it? This requires taking into account pipeline energy costs/construction and construction energy costs for building power plants for that matter.
5) If we start talking solar or wind, forget about it. They don't compete in the whole lifecycle world.

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Let's just jump to nuclear fusion.

Seriously that's the holy grail.

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Fusion is a nice technology but it is already obsolete. Zero point energy has been used by previous civilizations and the military has been using it for a few decades (see wikileaks emails).

The basic concept for zero point energy is that all time and space in the universe is connected. The medium by which they are connected is a dimension that essentially houses energy for the universe. You can build small devices that tap into this energy that can transport massive amounts of energy in just about any form you wish (AC, DC, etc.). This is better than fusion, even cold fusion, because it requires no fuel and no real process.

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That may answer part of your question, but I agree anything Honda makes is going to be well engineered from screws to paint.

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The Ford was an SUV and it was HEAVY...and VERY expensive relative to its non hybrid counterpart....if you've ever drive a diesel excursion it lumbered around worse than those behemoths. The Saab was a little sedan and was sloooowwww....the ford was about a 2005 and the Saab a 2016 rental.

I have been convinced that Honda makes the best small engines EVER. I've had one bad experience with a Honda outboard on a small panga in Costa Rica so I have always dismissed Honda out of hand as an outboard....but I have a big water duck boat that I have no use for but needs repose ring and I am going to consider Honda when I start shopping. This CRV has me convinced that they are worth a look....

Meh - probably more than a smidgeon less.

Why? Economy of scale. It is easier to produce electricity in bulk at powerplants, generally, than it is to refine gasoline from inputs. Secondly, while not zero, there will be a negligible cost to transport that electricity to the point of charge for all these newly created electric cars in your hypothetical. I mean, you won't have thousands of tanker trucks hauling refined gasoline around to thousands of gas stations. That alone will save quite a bit of energy (and put a bunch of good ole baws out of work, to boot).

It would also accelerate, I think, conversion of homes to solar power. Again, why? Because it's one thing to drop that money to supplement your home electric bills. It may make more financial sense if it's replacing your electric bill AND gasoline bill. In the aggregate, that may also reduce overall energy consumption.

But, hey, it is an academic exercise, so I could be all wrong. The shift to oil->electrical plant->grid from oil->refinery->gasoline might not yield significant efficiency. That increased demand which will have to be met to charge electric car batteries (which will be pretty significant).

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Super-conductive materials at ambient temperature is the Holy Grail of energy generation efficiency.

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The holy grail is eliminating the need for transmission and being able to generate in a distributed fashion.

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I have nothing to back it up on but my gut says no. Just swapping out the order of input imo. Would it produce less pollution?

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Almost the correct answer. Energy consumption remains at the same level, pollution is exchanged from C02 to all the extremely hazardous materials used to manufacture high tech batteries. Y'all know that shite is going to find it's way into the ecosystem at some level, not unlike the nuclear waste sites. There will be some real challenges dealing with all the heavy metals/material that's used to manufacture this "green" alternative.

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I think you are going to see boat engines turn over to electric power sooner as boats are great for solar, wind, and even hydro energy already.

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I wouldnt trust that for a long time. I have a friend who has a 3 year old Bad Boy Buggie and that piece of shite battery will die at the exact moment he is the farthest away from the camp house. Meter says fully charged then bang it goes dead.

Maybe for a little boat on a pond, but no way would I go out very far with an electric boat.

However I will say the last time I was in Jost van Dyke we were on a sail boat that had solar panels to charge a set of batteries that ran the refrigeration and electronics. It worked well and I was impressed, however we never were out of sight of land. He did however have a small diesel engine that could do it if the solar failed.

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energy density and material costs

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the new polymer technology looks like it solves that. Read this article LINK, the gains come from replacing the electrolyte with a conductive plastic derived from soft contact material. It shows the ability to boost energy density somewhere between 1000-10000x (depending on how well it scales up). Current supercapacitors have energy density of 5 watt-hours/kilogram, whereas lithium batteries have 100 watt-hours/ kilogram. That's still very low compared to gas, but with other efficiency technologies it lets current electric cars go 250-300 miles/charge. Even at the lowest projected increase that puts these new supercapacitors at 5000 watt-hours/kilogram. This let's you either drastically reduced the size and weight of the power pack, drastically increase range with same weight per pack, or use this in much heavier applications like trucking. And unlike lithium batteries it can go to fill charge in a few minutes instead of all night, effectively removing the barrier to widespread adoption of electric vehicles, convenience. If it turns out to be 10000x, then you have energy budget to spare for the same weight for things like ac and heating. Again, this is all dependent on taking lab results into a manufactured product, but it looks very promising. A company, SuperCapacitor Materials Ltd, has been formed to develop it into products, first application will likely be cell phones, laptops. Imagine getting a full days charge in a few seconds.

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ETA: Just noticed this thread is 5 pages. Nevermind

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That's alright, nobody is really reading the thread. It has been mentioned no fewer than five times that we shouldn't forget about energy loss in power lines. Does nobody realize that electricity transmission efficiency is around 94% on average? That's pretty fricking good, and it's not really a point to be harping on in this discussion.

The point the anti-electric crowd seems to miss is the cost of input fuels. If we stick with ICE vehicles, we will be pumping oil and paying the cost for every gallon we burn. Whereas, with an electric vehicle, the "fuel" can come from sources with unit input costs of zero. Yeah, we will be burning coal/NG/etc. for a long time, so some fuel input costs will remain for a while. But electricity can be generated in numerous ways, and many of them have zero fuel or input costs. Solar, wind, hydro, tidal, thermo, etc. Why is it such a bad idea to diversify our energy sources? Producing a product with zero input costs is a very attractive proposition, and all it will take is some investment in technology to lower plant production costs or improve efficiency to make them competitive with cheap fossil fuels over the long run. Or we can just wait for fossil fuel prices to rise to the point that alternatives are competitive.

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Does nobody realize that electricity transmission efficiency is around 94% on average?

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Two things- The numbers I saw said around 10% once you include distribution.

Second, that is what it is like now. I have to imagine that loss would get worse if you start charging EVERY CAR in american through the grid. Though maybe not if people charge their cars at night?

Of course, we would have to take out the costs of transporting fuel to stations too.