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May
30
2017

The Inconvenient Truth About Electric Vehicles
Gary Novak

An electric auto will convert 5-10% of the energy in natural gas into motion. A normal vehicle will convert 20-30% of the energy in gasoline into motion. That's 3 or 4 times more energy recovered with an internal combustion vehicle than an electric vehicle.

Electricity is a specialty product. It's not appropriate for transportation. It looks cheap at this time, but that's because it was designed for toasters, not transportation. Increase the amount of wiring and infrastructure by a factor of a thousand, and it's not cheap.

Electricity does not scale up properly to the transportation level due to its miniscule nature. Sure, a whole lot can be used for something, but at extraordinary expense and materials.

Using electricity as an energy source requires two energy transformation steps, while using petroleum requires only one. With electricity, the original energy, usually chemical energy, must be transformed into electrical energy; and then the electrical energy is transformed into the kinetic energy of motion. With an internal combustion engine, the only transformation step is the conversion of chemical energy to kinetic energy in the combustion chamber.

The difference matters, because there is a lot of energy lost every time it is transformed or used. Electrical energy is harder to handle and loses more in handling.

The use of electrical energy requires it to move into and out of the space medium (aether) through induction. Induction through the aether medium should be referred to as another form of energy, but physicists sandwich it into the category of electrical energy. Going into and out of the aether through induction loses a lot of energy.

Another problem with electricity is that it loses energy to heat production due to resistance in the wires. A short transmission line will have 20% loss built in, and a long line will have 50% loss built in. These losses are designed in, because reducing the loss by half would require twice as much metal in the wires. Wires have to be optimized for diameter and strength, which means doubling the metal would be doubling the number of transmission lines.

High voltage transformers can get 90% efficiency with expensive designs, but household level voltages get 50% efficiency. Electric motors can get up to 60% efficiency, but only at optimum rpms and load. For autos, they average 25% efficiency. Gasoline engines get 25% efficiency with old-style carburetors and 30% with fuel injection, though additional loses can occur.

Applying this brilliant engineering to the problem yields this result: A natural gas electric generating turbine gets 40% efficiency. A high voltage transformer gets 90% efficiency. A household level transformer gets 50% efficiency. A short transmission line gets 20% loss, which is 80% efficiency. The total is 40% x 90% x 50% x 80% = 14.4% of the energy recovered before the electrical system does something similar to the gasoline engine in the vehicle. Some say the electricity performs a little better in the vehicle, but it's not much.

Electricity appears to be easy to handle sending it through wires. But it is the small scale that makes it look cheap. Scaling it up takes a pound of metal for so many electron-miles. Twice as much distance means twice as much metal. Twice as many amps means twice as much metal. Converting the transportation system into an electrical based system would require scaling up the amount of metal and electrical infrastructure by factors of hundreds or thousands. Where are all those lines going to go? They destroy environments. Where is that much natural gas going to come from for the electrical generators? There is very little natural gas in existence when using it for a large scale purpose. Natural gas has to be used with solar and wind energy, because only it can be turned on and off easily for backup.

One of the overwhelming facts about electric transportation is the chicken and egg phenomenon. Supposedly, a lot of electric vehicles will create an incentive to create a lot of expensive infrastructure. There are a lot of reasons why none of the goals can be met for such an infrastructure. The basic problem is that electricity will never be appropriate for such demanding use as general transportation, which means there will never be enough chickens or eggs to balance the demand. It's like trying to improve a backpack to such an extent that it will replace a pickup truck. The limitations of muscle metabolism are like the limitations of electrical energy.

Electrons are not a space-saving form of energy. Electrons have to be surrounded by large amounts of metal. It means electric motors get heavy and large. When cruising around town, the problems are not so noticeable. But the challenges of ruggedness are met far easier with internal combustion engines. Engineers say it is nice to get rid of the drive train with electric vehicles. But in doing so, they add clutter elsewhere, which adds weight, takes up space and messes up the suspension system. Out on the highway, the suspension system is the most critical factor.

These problems will prevent electric vehicles from replacing petroleum vehicles for all but specialty purposes. The infrastructure needed for electric vehicles will never exist when limited to specialty purposes. This would be true even with the perfect battery which takes up no space and holds infinite charge.

*  *  *

1. Historical Perspective on Electric Cars, by A. Jones

2. Comparing Energy Costs per Mile for Electric and Gasoline-Fueled Vehicles.
http://avt.inl.gov/pdf/fsev/costs.pdf

3. Electricity Emissions. U.S. Department of Energy. Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy. Alternative Fuels and Advanced Vehicles Data Center.
http://www.afdc.energy.gov/afdc/vehicles/emissions_electricity.html

4. Electric Power Industry 2007: Year in Review. Energy Information Administration. U.S. Department of energy.
http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epa/epa_sum.html

5. Electric Power. U.S. Department of energy. Energy Sources.
http://www.energy.gov/energysources/electricpower.htm

About Gary Novak, Mushroom Scientist

I have a masters degree in microbiology but not a Ph.D. degree. My graduate research was on the physiology of an unusual yeast, Nadsonia fulvescens.

The yeast results explained the basic physiology of mushrooms, so I did independent mushroom research while living on social security disability due to mental pain. Mental pain is caused by memories of pain too close to the surface and contacted by distracting environmnets. It drove me out of graduate school, as complex social environments are bad for mental pain.

The yeast was very mysterious, as it formed a spore outside the vegetative cell, and cell material migrated into the spore leaving an empty shell for the rest. Yeast scientists knew something was triggering sporulation by yeasts, but they couldn't determine what it was. A. F. Croes, in the Netherlands, looked at the physiology and found indications that a peak in energy metabolism was triggering sporulation. I found additional evidence in nitrogen metabolism. Depletion of nitrogen causes a build-up of ATP, because it can't be used for synthesis without nitrogen, and the energy peak promotes sporulation.

Both the yeast that I studied (Nadsonia fulvescens) and the mushroom (the morel) are examples of extreme evolution. My work therefore moved in the direction of evolution biology.

It is now apparent that an energy peak is the basic trigger mechanism for spore formation used by all fungi and yeasts, and it explains how mushrooms form. Mushrooms show the need for an energy peak to promote formation of the above-ground structure. An energy peak is a method of determining that nutrients and cell machinery are adequate for completing the process. This physiology is visible in the composting method of growing mushrooms. After mycelium gets thick, a layer of peat moss is put on top, which is called a casing. When mycelium gets to the surface of the casing, a mushroom forms. The difference between surface and lower growth is oxygen availability. Oxygen produces ATP through respiration.

But a second mechanism is also required for mushroom formation, and it too is found in the yeast, Nadsonia fulvescens. It is the production of spores without nutrients available, called endotrophism. Endo means "within the cells," and trophism means nutrition. It is nutrition from within.

This yeast stores up energy and cell material and then transfers that material into an adjacent chamber where the spore forms. Sporulation is inhibited by a repressor substance, acetate, which is a product of metabolism. These strange characteristics result from adaptation to growing on tree sap. Most yeasts grow well on tree sap, but they can't adapt to it, because it is transitory. Nadsonia adapted by forming a spore when rain washes the tree exudate away. It maximizes growth by not allowing spores to form while nutrients are available. Forming the spore from previously stored-up material results in a shrinkage of cell mass. Since yeasts have hard cell walls, the material must move into a smaller chamber to accommodate the reduction in size. Only Nadsonia shows the migration of cell material, which indicates that it is the only yeast which forms a spore when nutrients are not available and therefore the only yeast adapted to growing on tree sap.

Mushrooms which grow in the ground (but not wood growing mushrooms) are usually endotrophic. They build up a mass of mycelium for several months and then channel the cell material into a mushroom in one or two days. The high speed process of forming a mushroom is necessary to prevent drying of tissue or damage before spores are released. Modern mushrooms including the morel do not tolerate drying, so they have to form spores rapidly. Two ancient mushrooms, the puffball and the bolete, are resistant to drying, and they form quite slowly.

When I began studying the morel mushroom, it was extremely mysterious, as it produced spores within the tissue (ascospores), as yeasts do. As time went on, I found the physiology of the morel to be exactly that of a yeast, which could only result from evolution from a yeast. The morel was excreting acid to kill bacteria and feed on them. The acid tends to accumulate on the mycelium and kill it. But yeasts will tolerate more acid than bacteria, so the morel became dependent upon excreting acid, even while too much will kill the mycelium.

The morel evolved from a yeast so recently that it does not have good control over morphology and has not yet evolved detection of gravity for vertical growth, as almost everything which emerges from the soil has. It also self-destructs as it dies off, as all bacteria and yeasts do, but which mushrooms never do. The process is called autolysis. It allows nutrients to be recycled by breaking large molecules into subunits for re-use as nutrients.

These extreme characteristics of the morel mushroom could only result from recent evolution from a yeast. Morel mushroom scientists at the universities claim the morel evolved 129 million years ago. They ridicule my work with authority in place of real science. This state of science is pervasive and required serious criticism of corruption in science. There isn't a counter-argument to these points. Corrupt authority is an isolation barrier around reality, not an alternative reality.

In 1983, I found that energy was misdefined in physics. After arguing with physicists and getting nowhere, I developed a mathematical proof of the error, which of course got nowhere also. The mathematical proof is quite rudimentary, as any high school kid who has studied physics and calculus could verify the proof. Yet physicists will not touch the subject, as such a degree of criticism is not allowed in physics.

I got into electronics designing numerous temperature controlling and measuring devices. In constructing an audio amplifier, I found that the usual design had an extremely problematic output due to an inadvertent voltage gain of about 50,000. So I designed a method of driving speakers without voltage gain, which greatly improved audio amplifiers. Of course, no one but a few hobbyists were interested.

Capacitance meters were extremely expensive and imprecise during the eighties, so I found a better way to measure capacitance. The usual way was too slow for measuring small capacitors. Meters measure the time interval required for voltage to rise, which means two measurements. A much faster way is to simply measure the current required to produce the voltage rise. Being much faster, the process can be completed during the short time interval that small capacitors do what they do. This method allows almost a millionth as much capacitance to be measured as the previous method. It probably helped engineers develop touch screen displays based on capacitance, as I was getting email from engineering students at the time.

By 1997, I had a large amount of scientific information accumulated and no better place for it than the internet. About then, global warming became a social issue, so I have been developing that subject explaining the science in terms the public can understand.

I'm a pre-1980 type liberal. At that time, liberals were promoting equal opportunity, which means creating infrastructure and solving problems for the lower classes. When the lower classes have money to spend, economies thrive. The IMF does the opposite—putting the lower classes out of work and bankrupting economies.

www.nov79.com