Why is combustion cheaper than electricity to run when it comes to heating but not when it comes to transportation?
In: 5
When you’re heating a house using gas, you get 80%+ of the potential energy out of that gas. An internal combustion engine gets 30-35% of the potential energy out of its gas.
This is because most of the energy that we get out of gas is heat, and your HVAC system is very good at taking that heat and distributing it throughout your house. On the other hand, your car doesn’t want a lot of heat. That’s a crummy byproduct that we want to get rid of, and only a portion of the potential energy is captured by the car to be used for movement.
Additionally, combustion cars have to maintain some minimum RPM or they stall out. This means that even when they’re at a complete stop, which happens a lot in cities, it is still burning fuel just to keep the engine spinning and ready to go when the light turns green. An electric car that comes to a stop can just have its engine turn completely off until it’s ready to go. This significantly increases its actual energy use per trip in comparison to a combustion engine.
Latest Answers