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Politics : Politics of Energy
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To: Eric who wrote (4066)1/8/2009 4:41:01 PM
From: Brumar892 Recommendations  Read Replies (2) of 86356
 
BTU analsyis? Ran across this in a couple of comments to an American Spectator article. Can this be confirmed or refuted?

COMMENTS
Marc Jeric | 1.6.09 @ 10:29AM
In all this discussion about electric cars and their high initial cost one thing is forgotten - and that is the energy balance. When you put 1,000 BTU's (that's British Thermal Unit, a measure of energy) of gasoline into an internal combustion motor of a car, you get about 220 BTU's worth of motion; the rest of that energy is spent on friction (tires and wind) and hot exhaust gases. To produce electricity from, say, coal or oil or nuclear fuel, it takes 1,000 BTU's of that fuel to get about 350 BTU's of electricity; then to transmit that electricity to your plug will waste another 50 BTU's. Finally you have put about 300 BTU's worth of energy into your car; and now you drive it while overcoming tire friction and wind resistance (no hot exhaust gas loss here) in order to get about some 120 BTU's worth of motion. That is plainly almost twice as wasteful of energy as an internal combustion car engine. And who will build those thousands of new coal-fired or nuclear power plants? Our environmentalists - with the help of Abu Hussein and his Democrat cohorts? Dream on!
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