Reasonable Electric Car

[xoxoxoBruce]

That's very true, but it's easier to monitor and clean up a few power plants than millions of cars, providing we can get the politicians out of the corporate beds. It also provides a way to run cars on coal/nuke, rather than oil.

The biggest single headache for the power companies is they can't store power. They have to make it when it's needed, so generation units have to be brought online, then idled down, for the day/evening hours.

These steam turbine driven generators can't be just started up like a gasoline engine, but must be brought up slowly, to heat soak and stabilize before ramping up to the next safe level. Then at certain rpms, the unit generates harmonic vibrations that can destroy it, so they have to come up quickly to safe spots and hold, like a scuba diver coming up from a deep dive.

For peak hours many use gas turbine peaking units, which are small units driven by what is basically a jet engine. But they burn natural gas or jet fuel... think oil.

Charging cars at night would use some of the wasted capacity, allowing the power companies to run a smoother operation.

tw will be along later, to question you on how much of the energy you put in your tank is wasted vs doing real work.