On December 13, 2016 at 12:00, Ernie Gilman said...
This:
[Link: theguardian.com]. Mentioning that
I'm no expert, but for years this has seemed to be an obvious thing that nobody talks about.
One of the first reports I heard about hybrid cars had the reporter gushing about the huge economy of the vehicles. The example was some guy who plugged in his hybrid car at the end of the day, thus extending his gas mileage to almost a hundred miles per gallon. What a knuckle-headed assertion!
Of course that's a ridiculous idea, since using electrical power is just an additional way to power the car and it doesn't change how much distance the gas part of the equation provides. But until now I haven't seen a simple explanation, for the people as it were, noting such things as the fact that charging at a Whole Foods might just be using coal-fired power to pimp out your ride.
It's especially misleading not to realize that clean air in Los Angeles that results from using Four Corners electricity... is not clean air. It's just Los Angeles having found a technical way to make its smog appear somewhere else.
Two items:
First:
It's not a "knuckle-headed assertion", there *IS* a distinct MPG rating system that takes into account the mileage that came from the alternate fuel source vs the traditional MPG rating that calculates the fuel economy of the traditional fuel based drive system.
MPGe = miles per gallon equivalent, and it is combined with the typical MPG to give you a hard number so that you can the economy ratings of one hybrid vs another. Obviously something like a Prius or a Civic Hybrid scores a lot higher in MPGe than a Lexus RX450h.
Second:
Most electrical utilities allow you to choose a 'green energy' option on your bill, at approximately a 10% surcharge over the regular rates. This is supposed to mean that the accumulated quantity of energy used by all of the customers who choose this option is supplied to the grid system by the hydroelectric, wind, and solar generation facilities vs the coal or nuclear options. This helps fuel (all puns intended) the growth of the green energy facilities on the supply side.
