Frank, et Listers,
Back in the '60's and 70's I worked at General Atomics in San Diego which
was working primarily in the nuclear energy area; fission for short term,
fusion for long term. I was appalled then and still am now at the way the
"experts" lie to the public about "clean & safe" fusion energy from sea
water, etc., etc. Seems this "clean and safe" energy is still another
twenty years or so off and there haven't been many fission power plants
built in the U.S. lately either. France produces most of its electricity
from nuclear power, a necessity since their coal ran out three or four
decades ago. In the U.S. we still have enormous reserves of coal.
Unfortunately, most of it lies under some of the most scenic country in the
world. Electricity from coal is about the cheapest method, but of course it
pours tons of bad stuff into our atmosphere and tears up the countryside in
the process. There are no simple solutions, and certainly this includes
electric vehicles. I haven't done a detailed analysis, but the electric
generation plants themselves aren't very much more efficient than your
Tiger's engine. A real good electric plant might be 35% efficient overall
in converting fossil fuel into electricity. Transporting it, especially
long distances like from the Four Corners Plant to San Diego, you lose
maybe 50%. To my knowledge, there is no significant storage of electricity
in the distribution system, except a little in L.A. where they pump water
back uphill at night and then let it generate power during peak periods,
but overall, a very slight amount. Then there is the conversion of
electricity to chemical energy in the battery, then the conversion back to
electricity. Again, more losses. And finally, the electric motors convert
what little electric power is left to work. I'm very inclined to believe
those that say that electric power is actually more polluting and certainly
more wasteful of our fossil fuel resources than gasoline power. Of course,
the "clean" electric energy idea has lots of appeal. Put together the
combination of unscrupulous politicians, greedy technologists, and a
gullible public and the outcome is predictable.
OK, OK, I'll get off my soapbox. BTW, don't know what made me think of it,
but you'll need about 400 horsepower at the rear wheels to turn a 1/4 mile
at 124 mph. Probably burn about a quart of gas doing it too.
Bob
At 07:00 PM 11/2/98 -0800, Frank Marrone wrote:
>Todays internal combustion engines are extremely clean. We have probably
all heard the urban legend that exhaust of a new car tests cleaner than LA
air. I wonder if it is true. The problem with internal combustion engines
is that there are way too many of them!
>
>I think you can conclude that electric vehicles pollute worse than
internal combustion if you assume that the electricity is generated by a
remotely located fossil fuel plant. You have to burn the fuel and
pollute, you loose power due to transmission, you loose power due to
storage, you loose power due to conversion to movement. With internal
combustion you burn the fuel and use the output directly thus
(theoretically) eliminating losses due to transmission and storage.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>----------
>From: Timothy Beloney[SMTP:TBeloney@Wyse.com]
>Sent: Monday, November 02, 1998 9:01 AM
>To: Frank Marrone; alpines@autox.team.net; tigers@autox.team.net
>Subject: RE: No Tiger Content
>
>That's an interesting point. Who'd think that generating electricity would
>cause as much pollution as combustion?
>
Robert L. Palmer
Dept. of AMES, Univ. of Calif., San Diego
rpalmer@ames.ucsd.edu
rpalmer@cts.com
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