How I think it will play out

[eric_tse]

Contrary to many opinions that the sky is falling, I think the future will not be so bleak. The rising gas prices are actually strengthening my opinion, because they already force people to change their lifestyles despite the fact that gas is still pretty cheap here. So here it goes:

1. As the prices rise, the public transportation will start to

Comments

Electric Cars

[evilref]

I think it's important to understand the amount of energy that would be needed to switch over to electric cars.
A really good petrol engine is about 20% efficient, which means that assuming the electric car replacement is 100% efficient (they are rarely better than 90% in practice) then the 30MJ = 8 1/3 kWh in a litre of petrol would need to be replaced with 1.6kWh of electricity.
The USA consumes 140,000,000,000 gallons of petrol (gasoline) annually. Put that into our 1.6kWh per litre and you get a figure of 851,200,000,000kWh of consumption annually.
Unfortunately, the current USA annual generation of electricity is 3,883,000,000,000kWh annually, so any plan needs to start by adding another 1/4 extra capacity to the grid.
Except the grid is already stretched to breaking point near the cities.
The energy consumption of liquid fuels is much bigger than most people realise, and wholesale conversion to electric vehicles would have a huge impact on energy infrastructure.
Of course those extra 25% of power stations shouldn't burn oil, since burning oil is what you are trying to avoid. So what fuel should they use? Whatever it is, it had better be on every evening when the rush-hour commuters get home.

Re: Electric Cars

[eric_tse]

You are assuming the energy consumption will stay the same. But it will not - it will definitely decline, one way or the other. My point is that much of that energy consumption is really discretionary anyway.