How Much Electricity Does It Take To Replace Gasoline?
This was one of the major questions burning in my mind as I was doing research for The Manhattan Project of 2009.
If we took every gasoline-powered car, truck, and SUV and replaced their powertrain with an electric powertrain, how much electricity would it take to totally replace gasoline?
This is easy to figure out.
In the U.S., we use 142 billion gallons of gasoline per year. Each gallon of gasoline contains about 36.6 kilowatt-hours of energy. So, the total energy consumed by gasoline-powered vehicles is:
142,000,000,000 x 36.6 kilowatt-hours = 5,197,200,000,000 kilowatt-hours
That is, the energy in all the gasoline consumed is about 5,200 billion kilowatt-hours.
So is that how much electricity we need? No! It turns out that electric vehicles are far more energy efficient! A gasoline-powered vehicle does good to average 15% energy efficiency. I know this from taking actual measurements while doing research for my first book. A plug-in electric car, however, can easily maintain 60% energy efficiency. Since the electric car is 4 times as efficient, it only needs 1/4 as much energy to go a mile. That means we can divide the total energy used by a gasoline-powered car to see how much electricity it would need to go the same distance.
5,200 billion kilowatt-hours / 4 = 1,300 billion kilowatt-hours
Here it is. This is how much electricity we will need in order to replace gasoline.
Let’s say we want to get this electricity from a renewable source. How does this much electricity compare to, say, wind energy? For this, we take a look at the estimated wind energy potential for the top 5 states1:
North Dakota 1,210 billion kilowatt-hours
Texas 1,190
Kansas 1,070
South Dakota 1,030
Montana 1.020
As you can see, gasoline could be almost totally replaced by the wind energy of North Dakota by itself.
The coming switch from gasoline to electricity is not lost on the big utility companies. They see electric vehicles as a major new market for electricity, and especially a market that will consume electricity mostly overnight, when the utilities have a lot of excess capacity.
In the late 90’s, Southern California Edison ran a fleet of 320 electric Toyota RAV4’s from 1997 to 2002, racking up 7 million miles in evaluating the potential of electric vehicles. The result: they were quite surprised at how well they worked, and how reliable they were. One of their major concerns was battery life; the tests showed conclusively that the vehicles’ NiMH batteries could provide 130,000 to 150,000 of reliable service.
More recently, SoCal Edison and Pacific Gas & Electric are partnering with Mitsubishi to test Mitsubishi’s i MiEV electric cars in their fleets. In addition to generally promoting electric cars, the companies are hoping to learn how to develop their infrastructure to better accommodate electric cars.
1Source: An Assesment of the Available Windy Land Area and Wind Energy Potential in the Contiguous United States, Pacific Northwest Laboratory, 1991.
If we took every gasoline-powered car, truck, and SUV and replaced their powertrain with an electric powertrain, how much electricity would it take to totally replace gasoline?
This is easy to figure out.
In the U.S., we use 142 billion gallons of gasoline per year. Each gallon of gasoline contains about 36.6 kilowatt-hours of energy. So, the total energy consumed by gasoline-powered vehicles is:
142,000,000,000 x 36.6 kilowatt-hours = 5,197,200,000,000 kilowatt-hours
That is, the energy in all the gasoline consumed is about 5,200 billion kilowatt-hours.
So is that how much electricity we need? No! It turns out that electric vehicles are far more energy efficient! A gasoline-powered vehicle does good to average 15% energy efficiency. I know this from taking actual measurements while doing research for my first book. A plug-in electric car, however, can easily maintain 60% energy efficiency. Since the electric car is 4 times as efficient, it only needs 1/4 as much energy to go a mile. That means we can divide the total energy used by a gasoline-powered car to see how much electricity it would need to go the same distance.
5,200 billion kilowatt-hours / 4 = 1,300 billion kilowatt-hours
Here it is. This is how much electricity we will need in order to replace gasoline.
Let’s say we want to get this electricity from a renewable source. How does this much electricity compare to, say, wind energy? For this, we take a look at the estimated wind energy potential for the top 5 states1:
North Dakota 1,210 billion kilowatt-hours
Texas 1,190
Kansas 1,070
South Dakota 1,030
Montana 1.020
As you can see, gasoline could be almost totally replaced by the wind energy of North Dakota by itself.
The coming switch from gasoline to electricity is not lost on the big utility companies. They see electric vehicles as a major new market for electricity, and especially a market that will consume electricity mostly overnight, when the utilities have a lot of excess capacity.
In the late 90’s, Southern California Edison ran a fleet of 320 electric Toyota RAV4’s from 1997 to 2002, racking up 7 million miles in evaluating the potential of electric vehicles. The result: they were quite surprised at how well they worked, and how reliable they were. One of their major concerns was battery life; the tests showed conclusively that the vehicles’ NiMH batteries could provide 130,000 to 150,000 of reliable service.
More recently, SoCal Edison and Pacific Gas & Electric are partnering with Mitsubishi to test Mitsubishi’s i MiEV electric cars in their fleets. In addition to generally promoting electric cars, the companies are hoping to learn how to develop their infrastructure to better accommodate electric cars.
1Source: An Assesment of the Available Windy Land Area and Wind Energy Potential in the Contiguous United States, Pacific Northwest Laboratory, 1991.
Comment
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Comment by Thomas G Fruge on August 19, 2009 at 4:48pm
- He even built a car that runs on the same principle.
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I watched a video on You Tube on a Generator motor called Magniwork.
The guy claims it will power his house without being hooked up to the grid
or using fuel.
He even has a car that runs on the same principle.
He even built a casr that run on the same motor.
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Comment by Brandon Paul on August 7, 2009 at 12:07am - Well, that is a wonderful post. i think that simple procedure of changing gasoline in cars waste too much of energy. It is because energy supplies for other parts is also needed, like for example theAlternator. The alternator needs big amounts of energy for it to work since its main function is to distribute electricity all through out the engine.
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Comment by Ron Lankford on May 24, 2009 at 9:16am - Here is an example of locally-produced energy. Downtown Los Angeles has a beautiful skyline of tall buildings. Add one more skyscraper nearby in the "skid row" area, but one with no floors inside. The exterior to be covered with windows that catch the rays of the sun; then magnified with "pixelated" mirrors aimed at photo voltaic cells that produce electricity right where it is needed: DOWNTOWN.
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Comment by Ron Lankford on May 24, 2009 at 9:09am
- Great analysis, but moving the electricity from remote sources creates another huge problem. Here are two recent examples: geothermal power located in Imperial County California is stalled due to environmental concerns about the hundreds of miles of transmission lines needed to get to populated area; and solar power envisioned from the Mojave Desert is stalled due to environmentalists and our state senator complaining that," you can't spoil our desert". As Governor Arnold said, "if not in a desert, where?! The answer is: DOWNTOWN.
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Comment by Jeff Wilson on January 19, 2009 at 6:13pm -
Great question, Reuben!
The fantasy setup for the hydrogen economy is that we will send electricity to you local filling station, and they will take water and create hydrogen which you will pump into your car. These are the numbers:
1) Electrolysis of hydrogen - - typically 70% efficient. So, 30% of the energy is lost.
2) Pump the hydrogen into your vehicle. The energy required to do this is about 10% of the energy contained in the hydrogen.
3) Make electricity in the fuel cell. No matter what numbers we are being sold, 30% efficiency or so is real life. So, at this step, about 70% of the remaining energy is lost.
4) Now that we have electricity from the fuel cell, we store it in the battery and use it to propel the car.
Thus, in the hydrogen fuel cell car, we lose 3/4 or more of the energy before it gets to the car's battery charger. For a plug-in electric car, no energy is lost before you get to the car's battery charger.
To put it differently, a plug-in electric car can go four times as far on a given amount of energy.
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Comment by Reuben Gathright on January 14, 2009 at 1:15pm -
Here are the U.S. Department of Energy Field Test reports for the Toyota RAV4 EV as discussed in the excellent blog post above:
Full-Size Electric Vehicle Fleet and Reliability Test Reports
Jeff, would it be possible for you to compare energy required to produce 1Kwh of energy out of a Hydrogen fuel cell vs storing it a battery? The numbers are truly alarming and discredit any claims that fuel cells are a solution.
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Comment by Jeff Wilson on December 15, 2008 at 5:01pm
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Hi Debbie,
I was struck by what I saw when I ran the numbers. What it tells us is that this is something we really can do! That's why I was compelled to write the book(s). I want everyone to know that we really can move to viable alternative energy, and it's not as difficult as we thought.
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Comment by hugh frost on December 15, 2008 at 5:00pm - Good info, helps to visulise how it could be done.
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Comment by Debbie on December 15, 2008 at 4:20am
- This is an interesting post. I was under the impression that we would need A LOT more wind energy because gasoline per unit yields about 30 times more energy.
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