Brooks, R. (2021, August 3). How efficient is your ev? It's complicated. IEEE Spectrum. https://spectrum.ieee.org/how-efficient-is-your-ev-its-complicated.
How Efficient Is Your EV? It’s Complicated
Some Day, Charging an EV Is Going to Be a Lot More Interesting
Image: PITINAN PIYAVATIN/ALAMY
My summary of the article:
The global trend in the world of automobile technology is the slow but steady replacement of combustion engine cars to electric cars. Many people, however, are not completely positive about this change due to the reminiscent of the smell of sound of conventional combustion engine cars. People who enjoy watching motor sports such as drag racing are especially miserable for the lack of the unique and pleasurable experience granted to them by combustion engines. With numerous major car companies and governments around the world announcing their efforts to completely replace combustion engine cars with electric cars in the next couple decades, Brooks – the writer of this article – believes that the nostalgia felt by such people towards combustion engines is indeed well-founded.
Whether or not electric cars are indeed "less damaging" to our environment is surprisingly debatable. Typically, the efficiency of electric cars are measured by MPGe, which stands for 'miles per gallon of gasoline-equivalent'. Basically, the efficiency of electric cars are measured by how much distance it could travel with the same amount of electrical energy produced (or transferred, to be accurate) by a gallon of gasoline. The reason that this unit is used rather than, for example, miles per a measure of energy (such as kWh – a kilowatthour), is to make it more convenient for people to directly compare the energy efficiency of electric cars and that of combustion engine cars. This is obvious, since humans have been using gasoline cars for more than a century and a half.
Electric cars generally have higher efficiency values than combustion engine cars because internal combustion engines convert a lot of chemical energy in oil to heat, thus losing a lot of its potential to be converted to kinetic energy that provides mechanical torque. However, electric cars have their own set of problems, one of the major ones being charging efficiency. The efficiency of chargers of electric cars depend on so many variables such as air temperature, how empty the battery is before charging, and the supply voltage to the vehicle's charging unit. This causes the charging efficiency of stations to vary from 70 to 90%. Engineers working on the field believe that this situation will improve in the future with new technology that will enable users of electric vehicles to digitally communicate with how well the car is charging under different conditions. Thus, it is prospected that the recharge efficiency value may become more important than the MPGe value for electric vehicle users.
My response to the article:
Although I do not have a strong nostalgic reaction to the replacement of gasoline cars by electric cars, I do understand how some people would start reminiscing about gasoline cars. After all, they have been part of our culture as a member of the human species for more than a century, and thus it would not be easy for us to let it go. On the other hand, upon understanding the risks that our environment faces regarding issues such as carbon emissions and global warming, I believe that the replacement of combustion engines to electric motors must happen whether we like it or not. This does not, however, mean that the process must happen as abruptly as possible, considering the cultural and economical effects this change would have on the world. A slow, steady, yet sure process must happen, and this way the people who are opposed to electric motors will gradually begin accepting them as an inevitable change for the greater good of our home planet.