How Will We Fuel All Those EVs? -- Sunday, March 6, 2016

Locator: 10001EVCHRG.

   

Updates

December 19, 2023: last major holdout will go with Tesla's super-charging plugs.

December 10, 2023: update. Great update.

October 21, 2023: add Toyota and BMW to the list of auto manufacturers choosing Elon Musk / NACS.

June 29, 2023: Polestar adopts Tesla's supercharging plug. 

June 28, 2023: Volvo adopts Tesla's supercharging plug.

June 12, 2023: one step closer to the "holy grail." Ford and GM partner wtih Tesla for access to Tesla's superchargers. If Stellantis follows suit, game over. 

Crashed and burned: Blink Charging, EVgo, and ChargePoint;

• Motley Fool notes Tesla partnership with F, GM; says Stellantis could be next;
• closer and closer to the "holy grail": a universal supercharger.
• see this post.

March 30, 2022: fast charging will not be more profitable than pumping gas; it's still in the convenience store where the money is made -- soda and candy. 

August 6, 2017: who will be charge all those EVs? -- WSJ. 

July 16, 2017: America's next energy crisis -- the electric grid, Forbes, July 10, 2017.

July 16, 2017: where we stand today with charging EVs -- 20 minutes of fast charging ("watching paint dry" will get you an additional 60 miles). And, with your conventional gasoline automobile you can stop at any branded gasoline station (Shell, Chevron, XOM, etc) but if you have a Tesla you have to use a Tesla charging station. No saying how the other EVs will "operate" their recharging system.

Source for the graphic:

Original Post

The "next big story": how will the growing number of EVs affect US economy? I doubt we will see many stories on this in the near future, but it will be interesting to see how this story develops. It will be filed on "the big stories" page, but not exactly sure where.

Some issues:

• the source for electricity (coal, natural gas, nuclear)
• amount of electricity required; regional differences
• impact on the grid; transmission lines
• nationwide corridors
• charging units: compatibility; fees; locations
• neighborhood transformers

From a contributor over at Seeking Alpha: how will we fuel all those EVs? 

Using a very conservative 3 miles/kWh, just the electricity used at refineries - 47,224 million kWh would be enough to propel EVs 142 billion miles.

According to EIA 1,000 cu ft of natural gas produces 99 kWh. So if the natural gas used at refineries was used to produce power, we would have 88.5 billion kWh, which represent another 265 billion miles.

In a year, US drivers drive 3.1 trillion miles. So just the purchased electricity and natural gas are enough to cover 13% of driving needs. If all the fuels used at refineries were used to propel EVs, it would be a lot more.

In fact, if petroleum is used to produce power, we get 13.6 kWh per gallon. The average US fleet economy is 25mpg.

But a pessimistic EV average is 3 miles/kWh.

So a gallon of petroleum can move the average gas vehicle 25 miles but it can move the largest EV 40 miles. If you compare the best gas vehicle - the Prius, a gallon can move it 50 miles which is roughly about as far as a gallon worth of electricity can propel the BMW i3.

So as we transition to EVs, the drop in refining oil can power at least 13% of the driving and the worst case is the oil being used to produce power to drive the EV with much better emissions controls at one central location as opposed to distributed uncontrolled emissions. But with the growth of renewables (See my 4 part series on renewable energy growth), EVs are only becoming cleaner by the day.

This seemed to be a very poorly written article. Folks pointed out that the contributor incorrectly stated the data he used was from 2015, but in fact was from 2014.

I am only posting/linking the article to get a start page on EVs impact on the US economy.