Why are electric cars cheaper than petrol/diesel ones when electric heating is more expensive than gas?

Question

Why is combustion cheaper than electricity to run when it comes to heating but not when it comes to transportation?

In: 5

Answer 1

The most basic explanation is that the energy in your examples isn’t used for the same task, so different energy sources will perform differently for different tasks.

You want your wheels to turn? Electric propulsion is actually better than using heat from combustion. The tl;dr is that converting heat into kinetic energy is a rather clunky process, while electricity to kinetic energy is more straightforward, thus ultimately more energy makes it to your wheels.

You want to warm your house? Obviously the heat from combustion is more efficient than many, many coiled wires radiating marginally less heat that also wastes energy by just being transmitted into your home.