Electric cars output one fifth the carbon dioxide and cost about one twentieth in energy compared to their gas counterparts. I was interested in discovering whether or not electric cars offered any cut in CO2 output in our current-day infrastructure. According to their site, the Tesla Roadster uses 110 watt hours of electricity per mile. For the purpose of a theoretical comparison, let us assume that the gas powered counterpart of the Tesla would get 20 miles per gallon. Now lets zoom out.

One kilogram of coal has 24 mega joules of energy and outputs 1.83 kilograms of CO2 when burned. America is 54% coal-powered, the average plant is 31% efficient, and transmission losses of electricity are about 10%. Moving over to gas, one gallon of gas becomes about twenty pounds of CO2 when burned. A gallon of gas costs around $4.00, and a kilowatt hour of electricity is around 9.86 cents. After all of the calculations, this results in 1¢ per mile electric versus 20¢ per mile gas, 3.2 ounces of CO2 per mile versus one pound per mile.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 23rd, 2008 at 1:35 pm and is filed under Air Quality, My Wheels. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.