USA - Tag Archive

How many miles per gallon do electric cars get?

1 Reply Christopher Roberts

Electric cars aren’t powered by diesel or petrol, so they don’t have an official miles per gallon figure. That said, there are ways of working out how efficient they are and even give them a rough miles per gallon.

How Many Kilowatt Hours is in a Gallon of Petrol? ⛽

The US governments fueleconomy.gov website calculates 1 (US) gallon of gasoline is equivalent to 33.7 kilowatt hours of energy – or kWh.

A US gallon is 3.785 litres, whereas in Canada and the UK a gallon is 4.546 litres. This means a (UK/Canadian) gallon of petrol is equivalent to 40.5 kWh of electricity.

Each litre of petrol is equivalent to 8.9 kWh.

Toyota Prius vs Nissan Leaf MPG

The Toyota Prius was once regarded as the sustainable choice for environmentally conscious drivers, but in recent times its crown has slipped a little. This might be partly because of Toyota’s inaccurate branding, claiming that it sells “self-charging cars”, when in reality a (very small) battery is charged by recovering motion which was achieved by burning petrol or diesel. That’s how most cars charge their 12-volt battery, it’s not self-charging! 😂 It’s also because electric cars are now more viable and mainstream.

The Nissan Leaf is currently the top-selling electric vehicle of all time (at least until the Model 3’s first quarter sales are released) so let’s use that for the comparison. An “efficient” hybrid vs an electric vehicle, how do they compare?

The Nissan Leaf

The Totoya Prius achieves 62.4mpg (UK/Canada) using 4.5 litres to travel 100 miles. The Nissan Leaf by comparison achieves the equivalent of 129.7mpg (UK/Canada) taking just 2.2 litres to travel 100 miles.

This highlights the efficiency of electric vehicles.

The Leaf uses less than half the energy of the Prius (the previous “gold standard”) to travel the same distance.

Efficiency

Internal combustion engine (ICE) powered cars convert around 12-30% of the petrol or diesel they consume into forward motion powering the wheels. This is because an ICE car loses over two-thirds of its energy through heat 🔥 and the transmission of power through the drivetrain.

Even the most inefficient electric vehicles translate at least 60% of the electricity stored in the battery into forward motion. If driven using regenerative braking (to re-capture energy, rather than scrubbing it off via breaking) EVs can be around 90% efficient!

How Big is an Electric Car’s Fuel Tank?

Electric car battery and powertrain

Here’s another interesting question, if an electric car had a fuel tank, how big would it be?

The Tesla Model 3 Standard Range Plus has a 50kWh battery, so if one US gallon of gasoline/petrol is equivalent to 33.7kWh, then the Tesla Model 3s equivalent petrol fuel tank would be 1.48 US gallons – or 5.62 litres.

That’s right, an electric car can achieve a range of 200 miles (275 if driven carefully in warm weather) on less than the equivalent of 6 litres of petrol!

You can also compare cars on a cost per mile basis, which is what I’m going to write about next, with the help of the new electric Mini!

The Electric Future

1 Reply Christopher Roberts

Today I present to you the first in a series of posts on electric vehicles! Everything you’ve ever wanted to know about driving an electric car – because since September, I have been!

An electric car charging

EVs (or BEVs) are the future. Hydrogen, fuel cell, biofuel and battery electric drivetrains all offer exciting opportunities for the future, but it’s the electric car that’s gathered the most momentum so far. In the first 6 months of 2019, around 800,000 fully electric cars were sold globally, a figure that’s increasing exponentially each year. Those 800k cars added to the 3.3 million electric cars already on the road at the end of 2018.

EVs being the chosen form of future transport is largely down to one man and one company – Elon Musk CEO of Tesla. In fact, it’s the Tesla Model 3 that’s been credited by many as the driver (if you’ll excuse the pun!) of EV adoption growth.

Since its release, it’s dominated the market in the United States and was the 9th best-selling car in 2019. That’s not the 9th best battery electric vehicle (it was the most popular EV) it’s the 9th top-selling car overall! It tops its class selling more small and medium-sized luxury cars to the USA market than Mercedes and Audi combined.

Sales of electric cars in general have been rapidly gathering momentum around the world. Norway is leading the way, where 42% of new car sales in 2019 were BEVs.

The Netherlands is also a trailblazer in the electric future, with the Tesla Model 3 (a fully electric car) claiming the most sales of any car in 2019. In December, 54% of new cars sold in the Netherlands were plug-in electric vehicles (different from battery electric vehicles, as this also includes PHEVs) up from 15% in 2018.

The UKs electric market is also gathering pace, with 7.3% of cars sold in 2019 having a battery and electric motor – so this includes BEVs (100% electric vehicles), PHEVs (plug-in hybrid electric vehicles) and HEVs (hybrid electric vehicles). The BEV market share has more than doubled from 2018s 0.7% market share to 1.6% in 2019 – with 3.3% of cars sold in December fully electric. That could skyrocket next year, as Benefit-in-Kind tax (BIK) becomes 0% on EVs from April.

95% of Global New Car Sales Will Be Electric in 2030 - poll of 174 EV owners

In my final article of the 2010s, I made some predictions for 2030. One was that in 2030, 95% of new cars sold (globally) would be battery electric vehicles (EVs). I’ve polled 174 current EV owners to get their view on the 95% prediction and turns out, on the whole they agree! The majority (53.5%) think it is likely, with only 28 people saying it’s very unlikely.

You could argue that EV owners are a biased sample, as they’re already living the electric future and won’t want to go back to owning an ICE (internal combustion engine) car, but it’s important to take into account that they are living the limitations of owning an EV too. They understand the challenges of charging, range and existing (breakdown, servicing etc.) providers not understanding the technology.

Based on my knowledge of current uptake, I believe 25% of global new car sales will be EVs by 2024. Bloomberg analysis indicates it won’t be until 2028, with it taking another 10 years until EVs finally de-throne ICE (internal combustion engine) vehicle, topping 50% of sales. In my view, that’s overly pessimistic and I think Bloomberg will be surprised by the rate of acceleration this decade.

We’ll have to wait and see.

Exhaust fumes coming out of a car

Many countries have already moved to ban internal combustion engine cars, with Norway leading the way, phasing out petrol and diesel new car sales by 2025. The country is set to have all cars running on green energy in five years time. The UK has also set a target – albeit a little less ambitions – of 2040 for the ban.

Data suggests global charge point installations have started to rise significantly, 80,000 units installed globally in 2012, 180,000 in 2015 and 630,000 in 2019. Tesla currently have 1,800 Superchargers installed around the world with over 15k individual stalls (or pumps for you ICE fans!) although as these are paid for by Tesla funds, they’re exclusively for Tesla cars.

A Tesla Supercharging station witha red Tesla Model X an a silver Tesla Model S

In order for EVs to be a viable form of transport, destination charging infrastructure is critical. Unlike fossil fuel-powered cars, it’s rare you need to “fill-up” an electric car while out and about, since charging at home and work gives most people enough juice to do their daily driving. Rapid roadside chargers are important too (like Tesla Superchargers, the IONITY network, and Ecotricity) especially for those looking to do more than 200-miles, which is the range of most electric cars.

Over the next few months I’ll be sharing my experience of driving an EV, debunking EV myths and explaining key terms. Hopefully, if I do a really good job, I might even persuade you to make the switch yourself!

Mobile Phones and the Right to Search (and Privacy)

4 Replies Jonny Hankins

cnn.police

Earlier this year I wrote an article about whether the police had the right to search your laptop when you are passing immigration into the USA. The discussion has moved on however, and this week there is a Supreme Court case about whether the police have to right to search an individual’s mobile phone when they are stopped upon suspicion of having committed a crime.

Given the UK governments discussion about the stop and search powers currently in use, there are some serious questions to address here. We now carry our lives with us on our mobile devices. To call them phones is to do them an injustice, they are computers with the possibility of making phone calls. They have our medical, personal, business, banking and emotional data, and the question is whether this is public or private information if the police stop you.

Here in the USA the law has allowed police to search these devices without a warrant, although they could not search your computer in your house without a judge’s permission, and this seems to be an anomaly given changes in how we carry our lives with us.

The case before the court involves David Riley, who was pulled over for driving with expired license plates in 2009. When his car was impounded and inventoried, police found guns in the boot and decided to investigate further.

They looked into his phone and found evidence that he might be in a gang, they downloaded videos, contacts etc and some of this information was used to convict him.

Here in the US the case has been followed by journalist Nina Totenberg, and she has a fantastic account on her blog. You can either listen to her radio report or read a transcript of it. I have taken some of it below to give you an idea of how the debate is unfolding. The question is of whether a warrant should be required, but the following snippets give an idea of how wide the implications for the debate really are:

“It’s not just what can be looked at,” it’s the fact that information from cellphones can be downloaded and kept in “ever-growing databases.”

A person can be arrested “for anything,” including driving without a seat belt, and the police could search that person’s cellphone and “look at every single email” — including “very intimate communications” — as well as medical data, calendar and GPS information to learn everyplace the person has recently been.

People “choose” when they carry their cellphones with them — and thus they should have “no expectation of privacy” if they are arrested.

So some of the questions could be, when the police stop and search you, what do they have the right to look at? If you are then arrested should they need a warrant to search your mobile devices? Do you have the right to privately carry digital information?