Quote:
Originally Posted by biker1
No, in Florida it is about 80% for natural gas and coal - mostly natural gas. There is little nuclear power in Florida, about 12%. There is also not much renewable - less than 5%. Except for a couple of reactors being built in GA, nuclear appears to have no future in the US. While that could change, I would not count on it.
When electricity is produced by coal and gas, electric cars are much more efficient than gas cars in terms of the amount of energy consumed. Why is this? The generation of electricity in power plants is pretty efficient and transmission losses are small because of the high voltages used. Electric motors are typically 95% efficient in converting electricity to motion. There are some small losses involved in recharging batteries. Gas cars are only about 30% efficient in converting the energy in gasoline to motion. Electric cars take more energy to manufacture but recoup it quickly.
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I'm not sure what your point is, as sources give different percentages from different studies and time spans. All sources show natural gas as the main current source of electricity and most show coal as the second. Electric car champions never want to talk about that.
Electricity is mainly produced from fossil fuels, thus electric cars are mainly fossil fuel burners that are not green. Add to that the environmental cost of strip mining for battery materials and you have an argument that electric cars are more damaging than modern ICE cars.
My point about nuclear energy (again, in case people missed it):
Electric cars make environmental sense when this country realizes nuke power is the best option for power sources.