Quote:
Originally Posted by Gdeaver
When looking at all electric vehicles, most tend to not look at the over all system. If you include the losses at the power plant, electric transmission, and charging losses, electric vehicles are not very attractive from an over all perspective. Their environmental impact is very good at the localized level, but their over all environmental impact is not as attractive.
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Perhaps not, but we can make electricity that uses fewer non-renewable resources than 87 octane does (consider solar, hydroelectric, and wind). If we lose X percent of electricity from a solar farm due to losses in the system, I can live with that--as they once sang on Broadway, the sun'll come out tomorrow. If we lose Y percent of oil, we're out that amount for a few million years.
With time, the systems that get electricity to the outlet will be optimized when it's cheaper for the producers of power to do so than just to generate more raw electricity. What that magic number is will vary from area to area and by method of production.