John & Angela wrote:
RCMAN46 wrote:
The USA electrical grid is a long ways off to power a very large number of cars.
Currently the USA uses about 3,913,000,000,000 kWh of electricity per year with very little extra capacity.
Electric power consumed in USA
Approximately 143,370,000,000 gallons of gasoline is consumed by the USA each year.
USA gasoline consumed
Using the EPA 1gallon of gasoline equals about 34 kWh comes to 4,862,000,000,000 kWh per year.
I'm not up on the capacity of the US grid. However looking at the province of BC as an an example, on the BC hydro website they estimate that if tomorrow morning we woke up and every gas and diesel burning vehicle were electric, the increased demand on the grid would increase by 19 percent. Present over capacity is 31 percent and this is expected to grow. The average electric vehicle uses the equivalent of a house hold electric water heater on an annualized basis. Lots of misinformation out there. Electric vehicles are not right for everyone and every situation but they work well in many situations. I think the towing role in North America will be dominated by gas and diesel vehicles for at least another decade.
Did a little research and it appears the 34 kwh number the EPA provided does not take into account efficiency of the gasoline engine which at best is 30%.
From that it would require about a 37% increase in the USA electric generating capacity. Not sure the USA has that much and due to environmental issues not likely to grow much in the future.
This is for gasoline only.
