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Electric vehicles x gasoline
Electric vehicles x gasoline
Electric vehicles make perfect sense if they are powered by renewable sources such as hydraulic, solar and wind.
A 50 kWh battery allows a medium-sized electric car to travel 300 km (200 miles). In other words, it makes 6 km/kWh.
A gasoline-equivalent car does 10 km/liter. The lower calorific value of gasoline is 8.4 kWh/litre. This results in 1.2 km/kWh.
If the battery is charged using an open-cycle thermal power plant, its efficiency is 30%. Taking into account the transmission and distribution losses and power theft (more than 10% of all supply in Brazil), it comes to 20%. So, what was 6 km/kWh ends up being 1.2 km/kWh.
Converting our current fleet to electric makes sense if renewable sources are used to charge the batteries. Or at least the biggest chunk of the power matrix.
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