Why is combustion cheaper than electricity to run when it comes to heating but not when it comes to transportation?
In: 5
Lets say it takes 10kwh of energy to drive a car.
Petrol has a lot of energy. That’s awesome, however the primary output of combusting petrol is heat. So much so that only ~30% of the available energy in the petrol is being used to actually move the car. So to drive the car, we need to feed it 34kwh of petrol to get out the 10kwh we need to actually move the car.
Electricity/electric car motors are way more efficient at that. They can be around 85% efficient. So to get the same 10 kwh to drive the car, we only need to give it ~12kwh of electricity. That is why electric cars can accomplish the same thing with less energy and are more energy efficient.
Electric heating is more expensive than gas, because gas has a lot of energy in it, and if your goal is to just convert that energy to heat, gas does that really well. Electricity can accomplish the same thing, but it just takes a lot more of it, since converting energy to heat is super efficient for both electric and gas.
Latest Answers