Electric Vehicles Might Not Benefit the Environment After All

Posted by Unknown on Monday July 1, 2013 @04:04PM from the just-invent-room-temp-supercapacitors-duh dept.

New submitter countach44 writes "From an article in IEEE's Spectrum magazine: 'Upon closer consideration, moving from petroleum-fueled vehicles to electric cars begins to look more and more like shifting from one brand of cigarettes to another. We wouldn't expect doctors to endorse such a thing. Should environmentally minded people really revere electric cars?' The author discusses the controversy and social issues behind electric car research and demonstrates what many of us have been thinking: are electric cars really more environmentally friendly than those based on internal combustion engines?" Reader Jah-Wren Ryel takes issue with one of the sources, and offers a criticism from Fast Company.

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Re:Depends on the energy source duh! by cheesybagel · 2013-07-02 11:19 · Score: -1, Flamebait

AFAIK electric cars themselves are more than 60% efficient. It's like 90% for the engine, 90% for the battery, and 90% for the electric power system.
ICE cars have less than 35% efficiency. That efficiency is just for the engine. When you add mechanical transmission losses and gasoline boil-off to the equation it is even less than that.