EV efficiency, you can feel it!

Posted Tuesday, Jun 08, 2021

I remember back in January 2009 when I purchased my first lithium-ion electric vehicle.  It was a converted Toyota Yaris with a 33 kwh battery pack.  At that time, it was the longest-range electric vehicle in the OEVA (Oregon Electric Vehicle Association).  As a driver one could feel the difference, how much less the mass there was that was rotating to create power, the linier and smoothness of the power, the effortlessness of the power and the increments of control of the power.  When it free wheeled or coasted you could feel how light the drive train was.

Then there is this concept.  An EV (Electric Vehicle) takes you down the road on a spark.  The ICEV (Internal combustion Engine Vehicle) takes you down the road on a fire.  The waste heat alone generated by EV’s and ICEV tells a big story because wasted heat is waisted energy.  Many people do not care about waste, but many people do, the more waste the less efficient.

There is approximately 33.6 kWh’s of energy in a gallon of gas.  On that amount of energy my first EV would go 125 miles at 55 MPH.  The gas version of my first EV, a Toyota Yaris gets about 45 MPG.  So, per gallon of gas energy my EV Yaris will go 125 miles at 55 MPH, the ICEV Yaris will go maybe 50 miles at 55 MPH.  The cherry on top is 99% of all EV’s are more efficient in the city than on the highway, gas vehicles are the opposite, they are more efficient on the highway than in the city.  So the gas Yaris gets 40 MPG with city driving and the EV Yaris gets 140 MPGe city driving.  The moving parts in each motor tells another story about efficiency one has over 800 moving parts one has 3 or 4, which one do you think will go more trouble free miles with less maintenance utilizing less energy per mile?  The EV has less friction because it has far less parts.  Electric motors have very little friction because AC motors are magnetic the friction points are the bearings the motor shaft runs on.  The new EV’s are a bit different and built to mimic gas vehicles so maybe you cannot feel the efficiency as well as I could in my rather rough and raw converted Yaris.  Most would agree that EV’s do their jobs with less effort than gas vehicles at least anyone who pays attention to things like efficiency and waste.

Fueling, driving, acceleration and gearbox vs transmissions are topics for another day.

 

Raymond Blackburn, Sales Manager, Platt Auto Group.

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