Oil Production Energy vs EVs

Max Dunn — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 08:54:00 -0700

One of the factors that we often forget when comparing Electric Vehicles (EVs) to gas powered cars is that it takes a lot of energy to extract and refine oil into gas.

For instance, in California it takes about 14kWh of electricity to get a barrel of oil out of the ground, and about double that to refine it. About half a barrel of oil gets refined into gas, which means this 20 gallons of gas takes about 21 kWh of electricity.

It also takes a lot of natural gas to refine oil, and if this natural gas was used instead to produce electricity, it would produce about another 20 kWh of electricity.

Therefore in a typical gas car that 20 gallons will last 400 miles. But if we just left that barrel of oil in the ground and used the electricity and natural gas for an EV instead, we could go about 120 miles or about 30% of the distance of the ICE car.

So the next time a comparison is made between the efficiency of gas cars and EVs, remember even before the gas gets into the tank, we are already giving up 30% of the energy that we could have used to power an electric vehicle.

"Oil Production Energy vs EVs" by Max Dunn

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 07:27:38 -0800

Here is an EV World article that says it takes 8% to 12% of the energy in a barrel of oil to refine it to gasoline: America’s Irrational Petroleum Dependence

Eschew Obfuscation: Oil Production Energy vs EVs

Oil Production Energy vs EVs

"Oil Production Energy vs EVs" by Max Dunn