The 100 Mpg Car That Isnt - Road to the Middle Class

OUR LIBERAL media friends are getting all excited about the birth of the 100 miles per gallon car. There are even people driving around with stickers advertising their triple digit gas sippers. Here’s a characteristic gushy article on the topic from MSNBC.

But wait a minute. These gas sipping miracles aren’t really getting 100 mpg. If their owners were corporate advertisers they would be getting sued for false advertising.

This phoney-baloney way to get to 100 mpg relies on buying an expensive conversion kit, including more of those expensive metal-hydride batteries, and plugging your car into the electric outlet. You don’t really get 100 mpg from the total energy input into the car. You get 100 mpg on the gasoline you buy, augmented by “free” power from your home electric outlet. Only you get to see the cost of the free power on your electric bill.

You could say that you are saving because you are charging the car using off-peak power during the night. But if you are a liberal environmentalist you do not believe in market prices, you just look at the difference in overall energy use.

Let us look at that. The key is to think about losses.

If you are charging your hybrid at home then you start with coal. There are losses at the generating plant, say 30 percent. Then there are losses in electrical transmission, say 15 percent. Then there are losses in charging your battery, say 20 percent. Of course, you are saving because you are not paying road fuel taxes.

If you are running a hybrid then you are saving from the smaller gasoline engine (if you have a Prius; Camry and Highlander hybrid owners forget it) and from the energy saved by recapturing energy in regenerative braking, about 50 percent. But you have the energy losses in charging the battery, which are substantial.

And of course if you have converted your hybrid into a plug-in hybrid it has cost you something north of $10,000. Try amortizing that over the life of the car.

OK. Now let us do the math, with our handy-dandy energy price calculator.

If you put “3.00” into the gasoline price field you will see that it is equivalent in energy to 8 cents per kilowatt hour. How many of you folks out there are paying more than 8 cents per kilowatt hour to your electric utility?

Just checking. Because you see, if the price of gasoline goes back down to, oh, $2.00 per gallon, then the 100 mpg car isn’t going to look too good, is it?

Sphere: Related Content |

Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.

TAGS

Action

The incentive that impels a man to act is always some uneasiness... But to make a man act [he must have] the expectation that purposeful behavior has the power to remove or at least to alleviate the felt uneasiness.
Ludwig von Mises, Human Action

Chappies

“But I saw a man yesterday who knows a fellow who had it from a chappie that said that Urquhart had been dipping himself a bit recklessly off the deep end.” —Freddy Arbuthnot
Dorothy L. Sayers, Strong Poison

China and Christianity

At first, we thought [the power of the West] was because you had more powerful guns than we had. Then we thought it was because you had the best political system. Next we focused on your economic system. But in the past twenty years, we have realized that the heart of your culture is your religion: Christianity.
David Aikman, Jesus in Beijing

Churches

[In the] higher Christian churches… they saunter through the liturgy like Mohawks along a string of scaffolding who have long since forgotten their danger. If God were to blast such a service to bits, the congregation would be, I believe, genuinely shocked. But in the low churches you expect it every minute.
Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm

Civil Society

“Civil Society”—a complex welter of intermediate institutions, including businesses, voluntary associations, educational institutions, clubs, unions, media, charities, and churches—builds, in turn, on the family, the primary instrument by which people are socialized into their culture and given the skills that allow them to live in broader society and through which the values and knowledge of that society are transmitted across the generations.
Francis Fukuyama, Trust

Class War

In England there were always two sharply opposed middle classes, the academic middle class and the commercial middle class. In the nineteenth century, the academic middle class won the battle for power and status... Then came the triumph of Margaret Thatcher... The academics lost their power and prestige and... have been gloomy ever since.
Freeman Dyson, “The Scientist as Rebel”

Conservatism

Conservatism is the philosophy of society. Its ethic is fraternity and its characteristic is authority — the non-coercive social persuasion which operates in a family or a community. It says ‘we should...’.
Danny Kruger, On Fraternity

Conservatism's Holy Grail

What distinguishes true Conservatism from the rest, and from the Blair project, is the belief in more personal freedom and more market freedom, along with less state intervention... The true Third Way is the Holy Grail of Tory politics today - compassion and community without compulsion.
Minette Marrin, The Daily Telegraph

Conversion

“When we received Christ,” Phil added, “all of a sudden we now had a rule book to go by, and when we had problems the preacher was right there to give us the answers.”
James M. Ault, Jr., Spirit and Flesh

Democratic Capitalism

I mean three systems in one: a predominantly market economy; a polity respectful of the rights of the individual to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and a system of cultural institutions moved by ideals of liberty and justice for all. In short, three dynamic and converging systems functioning as one: a democratic polity, an economy based on markets and incentives, and a moral-cultural system which is plural and, in the largest sense, liberal.
Michael Novak, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism

Drang nach Osten

There was nothing new about the Frankish drive to the east... [let] us recall that the continuance of their rule depended upon regular, successful, predatory warfare.
Richard Fletcher, The Barbarian Conversion

Education

“We have met with families in which for weeks together, not an article of sustenance but potatoes had been used; yet for every child the hard-earned sum was provided to send them to school.”
E. G. West, Education and the State

mysql close 0

Energy Price Conversion Calculator (thanks to Robert Collette)
Crude Oil	Gasoline	Natural Gas	Electricity	Coal
$	$	$	$	$
$/bbl	$/gal (w/o tax)	$/mmbtu	$/Kwh	$/short ton