Quick google shows that a Hyundai Ioniq gets around 4 miles per kWh. An average US household uses 886 kWh per month. You’d have to drive 3,500 miles a month to have the electric car use more energy than the entire household.
Yes, there is an energy cost in building the car, but there’s also an energy cost in building the refrigerator and dryer and washing machine etc in the house.
I’m sure some electric cars are worse than the Ioniq, but they’d have to be considerably worse to equal the energy used by a household.
I can't find any "average kwh for heating" numbers though. If the US number of roughly 10.000 kwh per year included heating, that could be roughly comparable to what the German average could be. Numbers that I find range from 14.000kwh for old homes with Gas usage to 3000kwh for modern homes with heat pumps.
Would make more sense than the US average being 4x while roughly using the same electronics.
Wow, that's terrible. Do Germans not have as good of climate control or something? I wonder what it would take to get German energy consumption up to a better level. It looks like wholesale electricity costs in Germany are around 4x higher than in the US.
>what it would take to get German energy consumption up to a better level
That's a good question. Prices are a good start. Consumer prices seem to be twice in G as in the US. Don't know where you get the "wholesale price is 4x in G". Most of what I can find is that wholesale is usually pretty close.
My guess of what G could do to increase consumption and thus moneys:
- Lower prices (duh). End user power is taxed heavily to subsidize industry power
- Remove mandatory energy labels on all electronics. Who really needs to know how much a TV or fridge is going to consume in power?
- Mandate "power-included" in rents. If you pay a fixed sum, you might as well leave the fridge open to cool the kitchen
- Mandate central heating and cooling. If you only pay a share of what you consume, might as well go full blast on everything
- stop subsidizing energy efficiency for new single and multi-tenant homes.
- stop building solid houses. Plywood walls are fine
And yet, america uses much more. Shouldn't that give you a pause? :)
Jokes aside, you're describing a correlation. America does not seem "more civilized" to me, you guys are just wasteful. Wasted energy does not lead to more civilization.
No; It's completely consistent with my model. America is more advanced by a huge margin. It's also evidently a more desirable place to live; the Germany-to-USA migration rate is something like 3x the other direction.
> Yes, there is an energy cost in building the car, but there’s also an energy cost in building the refrigerator and dryer and washing machine etc in the house.
I don't think you can really hand wave away that cost. My instinct is that battery, aluminum, and steel production should be very energy intensive.
The 3500+ pounds of "stuff" in your car is over an order of magnitude more "stuff" than a household appliance just by weight alone.
(Maybe we should forego the other luxuries as well, of course).
All that said I imagine the biggest direct end user energy usage would be the cost of HVAC systems running nearly continuously in inhospitable climates.
It’s not that bad. Fossil fuel burn is actually much worse. I used to think this as I thought buying used cars would be a great help but the break even point for the extra cost of building an entire vehicle is something like 2 years of driving. So building all new cars with half the fuel use could reduce overall emissions after about 4 years. Electric vehicles are worth it after 2-3 years. As long as your electric vehicles run for about 5 years, even if you make a whole new car, emissions would reduce considerably
When you look at it further, you find even an electric car uses 20-30kWh/100km at highway speeds. That basically a constant 20kW. Driving a car is just stupidly energy intensive and very little can be done about that. Trains and public transport have a huge benefit in energy use per person
Quick google shows that a Hyundai Ioniq gets around 4 miles per kWh. An average US household uses 886 kWh per month. You’d have to drive 3,500 miles a month to have the electric car use more energy than the entire household.
Yes, there is an energy cost in building the car, but there’s also an energy cost in building the refrigerator and dryer and washing machine etc in the house.
I’m sure some electric cars are worse than the Ioniq, but they’d have to be considerably worse to equal the energy used by a household.