Talk:2948: Electric vs Gas

Now I'm not a fan of gas engines, but that argument is in bad faith. Gas engines have one very big advantage over electrics: Energy density, and by extension, range. Batteries can't come close to the energy density of hydrocarbons, despite the latters' overall lower efficiency. --Coconut Galaxy (talk) 17:22, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

I think that's one of the main arguments for hybrid systems. Using a gas engine to charge an electric motor, and then using the electric motor to actually power the appliance, enables significant efficiency gains. If anything, combining the technologies enables even greater usable energy density from hydrocarbons. Hybrid electric vehicles for example are extremely efficient. Eunakria (talk) 17:43, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

Energy density, and the ability to move large amounts of stored energy from one place to another quickly and easily (aka pump gas, vs charge or swap a battery), from a thermal and maintenance perspective. (Which is not entirely unrelated to energy density.) 172.70.39.54 18:08, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

Swapping batteries (and slowly charging the batteries in the swap station) could offer comparable "charge" times to gasoline refuelling times, while also being better for battery lifespan, but would require industry coordination and standardisation re: battery packs and install location that, sadly, simply does not exist. 172.70.42.212 19:54, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

Plug-in hybrids have been superior since 1904, but the incremental capital cost is still an issue while oil is under $100/bbl. 172.71.150.129 19:16, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

Except of course that this isn't quite as simple as this. A Honda Civic (one the most popular US petrol cars) will go about 400 miles on a full tank, about the same as a Dodge Ram. Also about the same as a Tesla Model S. There's a pretty good reason this isn't a coincidence - people don't want more much more range, and a bigger tank is more weight. A Chevy Silverado full tank will go about 500miles. If you really want range, you need to look at a hybrid car. As the comic points out, the torque on a standard otto cycle engine is poor, but that cycle is deliberately designed to give more torque. Hybrids use an Atkinson cycle which is far more energy efficient, but could not provide enough torque - so you use the electric to do that. A Prius has a range in excess of 630 miles, more than any popular petrol car. So if you want range, you still want an electric engine, just store the energy in hydrocarbons. For similar reasons, diesel trains use the diesel to run generators which then power the electric motors on the wheels, and have done for decades. 172.70.162.186 (talk) 20:47, 19 June 2024 (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

Which brings us back to energy density: The Honda Civic has a similar range to the Tesla – at 10% the weight for its fuel (vs. the Tesla's battery), and one-third the volume. The comparison gets even worse for long-haul cargo, but that might be beyond the topic of this conversation. --Coconut Galaxy (talk) 13:06, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

On the other other hand, in a lot of cases an electric motor is just a gas engine with extra steps due to the current state of the power grid. 172.68.174.232 17:24, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

Not here in Washington State it isn't. Most of our electricity comes from hydroelectric dams. RadiantRainwing (talk) 23:10, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

AFAIK, no new dams are being built, and I reckon that the probability is vanishingly small that any new dam that is mooted will survive the inevitable storms of protest and get built. The trend, rather, and the political pressure, salmon fans, is to remove dams (e.g. those on the Elwha River). The existing dams are aging, their impoundment volumes are dwindling due to sedimentation, and the water for those impoundments is increasingly bespoke and is, in at least some cases, declining in volume due to climate perturbations. The population, and its energy use, is increasing. As of 2022, I read, WA was a net exporter of electricity. I would not be taking that status for granted. A few years ago, a study was published, finding that, in states where the electricity grid was dependent on fossil-fuel-fired plants, electric cars had a greater carbon footprint than gasoline/petrol cars - and this was before the major gains in gasoline fuel efficiency contributed by advances in computer tech (2007 Honda Civic hybrid gets the same city mileage, ca. 35 mpg, as a 2021 Honda Civic petrol engine, in my hands). I do not know what current assessments say about this. 172.71.150.129 04:23, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

I'd say an electric motor powered by a hydrocarbon grid still usually makes better use of gas than a typical gas engine. Gas engines that don't always run at full throttle (as in, a gas engine in an appliance) have dramatically worse efficiency than electric motors that don't always run at full throttle. It depends very heavily on use case, though; always take measurements and run the numbers before coming to a specific conclusion. Science would be nothing without empirical data. Eunakria (talk) 17:50, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

Should this have Category:Climate change? I can’t decide. Usb-rave (talk) 17:40, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

Yeah, it's better with it for people looking though the category later on, they will want to see it. 162.158.186.10 19:13, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

Honestly, with this argument the thing gas engines have going for them over EVs is the refueling time and availability. 172.69.59.175 18:58, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

That's fair. It would be nice if electric cars had been more focused-on ten years ago than the trend (trend? craze? idea? whatever.) starting now. I refuse to buy a Tesla, though. Elon is never getting my money. I'm waiting for an electric Volvo. P?sych??otic?pot??at???o (talk) 13:27, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

It's really remarkable how uninformed and unintelligent this comic is, to the point where I now doubt the veracity of his entire What If? series. 172.70.114.62 (talk) 19:13, 19 June 2024 (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

To be fair, there’s sort of an agenda here, while I don’t believe there’s one in What If? I can’t independently verify the accuracy of What If?, of course, but there is that. Usb-rave (talk) 19:18, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

I'd like to know more about the "uninformed and unintelligent" assessment. Given that not all of Randall's characters copy his exact thinking. I don't think he'd espouse much of what he has Black Hat say/do. And clearly many of his Cueballs, even being often accepted as Author Avatars, can be clearly being dumber than Randall (who is 'writing them as dumb') is. What we have is parody. And maybe you just don't see the parody in the way intended (or understood by others). Perhaps you have a completely different mindset, or are just inclined to be anti-Randall> (Even in things he's actually right about...) I don't know where the mismatch may be here, but if you're seriously thinking that there remains not one useful take-away from anything Randall has ever said, just from the possibility that his cartoon characters don't completely mesh with what you perceive as a correct worldview, then this needs looking at from a different perspective than just reassessing the whole What If? corpus. 162.158.74.24 23:15, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

The tagline for the xkcd comic does include the word "sarcasm", which should warn against over-serious or over-literal interpretations. Not infrequently, I find, xkcd ventures into the realm of the sarcastic, the opinionated, even the polemic (cf. the Hilary Clinton campaign ads), and this one states a clear opinion in favor of electric cars ... with which one is free to debate (as here, exhaustively), or disagree. All of which brings the cartoonist to the attention of the world, and thereby supports him in his chosen line of work, which, in the current state of cartooning as a profession, is no small accomplishment. As for the opinion, consider the following question: "I have a four-mile commute to work. Which is the most eco-friendly option? The electric car? The hybrid? The gas/petrol car?" Answer: the foot car. Walking the four miles is the only minimum-carbon solution under all circumstances ... except perhaps ones that allow the questioner to keep deir job. 108.162.245.4 05:39, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

Ohhh... OK. I had poor signal so this one took a while to load, and I only saw the "Gas vs. Electric" title. I thought it was going to be about kitchen stoves - ones that burn actual "gas", vs. electrical heating elements. Yorkshire Pudding (talk) 19:45, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

I actually experienced the "cons" of a less limited degree of power and not being noisy at all, today. Someone in an electric vehicle (could have been a Tesla) pulled out of a sideroad, accelerating at what seemed like a reckless rate (it was advantageous to do so, but a petrol-powered vehicle that might have taken a bit longer to switch up the gears would still have been up to speed soon enough to not get into contention with any other vehicles). And with barely more than a whine, and perhaps a bit of road-noise that might have included at one point a bit of grit-splattering. I was watching this, and knew they were pulling out of the junction (and knew for certain, moreover, that there was no traffic coming up or down the road, nor anybody crossing the road anywhere in my rather long sight). Had there been someone actually about to cross the road (within the next 50 yards or so), however, it would have been entirely possible that they would have been caught be surprise by this near-silent and suddenly fast-moving vehicle. If it was a Tesla, then maybe its inbuilt forward 'radar'/whatever would have helped bring the vehicle to a stop, or at least slow it down/stop if from speeding up enough, before any actual accident might have happened... but this is theoretical, as it just happened not to happen anything like this on this occasion... But it could have. And the paradigm for crossing the road that I learnt several decades ago of "Stop, Look, Listen, Think" has probably now started to lose out on the "Listen" bit, and possibly degraded even the "Look" and "Think" until we start to retrain ourselves to anticipate vehicles whipping around random corners that are far more silent-and-deadly then what we've all become used to. Ok, so this is not necessarily the total fault of the electric vehicles (or even the drivers, but they must have some hand in the matter), but in changing the dynamics and situational awarenesses of road traffic so much it might be considered a relatable problem. 162.158.74.24 23:51, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

I drove an electric motorcycle for a while, which put me quite exposed and aware of safety and my driving environment. The concerns about EVs being too quiet don't come across as grounded in reality. Modern ICE vehicles typically have minimal engine noise already. There are really two cases: out on the road, where half the people (exaggerating) have their earbuds in, and any engine noise is swamped by tire noise anyway. No difference between ICE and electric here. Then in a parking lot, where tire noise is not significant, and maybe pedestrians could get extra auditory cues about the vehicles around them from ICE engine noise. In that context, I personally would flip open my visor and make eye contact with pedestrians. It would be nice if drivers of full-sized cars and trucks, no matter their power source, would do more of that. Driving while inattentive is unambiguously bad. 172.69.23.204 02:40, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

Rolling noise becomes more than enough for safe audibility by about 30 km/h (below which speed collisions are relatively less dangerous anyways, though most urban streets really should have a speed limit of 20 km/h for numerous reasons including safety), and actually dominates engine noise by about 55 km/h. ICEs are loud enough to have like a dozen deleterious health effects even while idling, though the noise of a bicycle, if sufficiently constant, is enough to reach the WHO threshold. In short, electric cars only need to make additional noise below about 30 km/h for safety, and even then only 55dBA, quieter than typical speech, and even then only if there's already a lot of noise polution to drown them out. 162.158.146.33 07:23, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

Although really what they mostly need is drivers who look where they're going, and don't assume that people will just get out of their way when they hear them coming.172.69.195.124 08:44, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

Which is best accomplished using narrower streets, bollards, and other traffic easing mechanisms that make people want to slow down and pay attention rather than putting up a lower speed limit sign and just expecting people to obey it. That goes double in the US where most speed limits are assigned by looking at the speeds people are actually driving in good conditions and setting it where 10% of people woulld be speeding (and then rounded to the nearest 5 mph), meaning the sign is literally irrelevant to almost everyone. Oh, also, we desperately need to stop combining streets, which are destinations, with roads, which are thoroughfares, into "stroads" that fail at being both; that's an actual majority of your traffic easing taken care of basically in one step. 162.158.146.234 10:01, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

I wonder if the current explanation is missing the forest for the trees. My impression was that White Hat was parroting a ChatGPT-style response -- noncommittal and logically incoherent. (In fact, I missed the logical non sequitur the first time I read the strip. The style just screamed to me ChatGPT, though.) 172.71.154.9 00:55, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

This comic was posted yesterday and I'm already seeing people typing essays. I'm scared. (also electric rules gas drools nyehh) P?sych??otic?pot??at???o (talk) 13:22, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

Not too shabby a result from a stick-figure drawing posted on the Internet. Jealous? As for 'electric', nice to see your unqualified support for slave labor in the Congo and elsewhere. Get a horse! 172.68.23.73 13:40, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

Isn't a horse also a form of slave labour?172.71.242.223 13:52, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

There are several things wrong with your assessment, 172.68.23.73 (although I do wish my comics got this much attention). The first is your assumption that I know the exact methods used to gather battery materials (I don't). The second is saying I support slave labor, which I ABSOLUTELY DO NOT. The third is your assumption that I have the space, money, resources, skills, and time to purchase and take care of a horse. I don't! Slave labor is appalling, the DRC is a nightmare, and horses have more needs than I could fit into a week. Back to electric cars, though: they're generally better for the environment, they're quieter, they're more powerful, and their engine systems are really cool and fun to look at and see in action. Gas(oline) engines are loud, smelly, pollution-heavy, and subject to violent explosions in a crash. Electric is better in general. It's a good idea to manufacture them, but I agree with you on the need for changing battery material-harvesting methods. P?sych??otic?pot??at???o (talk) 17:26, 20 June 2024 (UTC)