cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/17926125
Just for comparison: the energy density of gasoline and diesel is around 10,000 Wh/kg.
Never knew about this metric before.
I’m looking forward to the instant benefits for e-bikes!
The thing is when gasoline is used to power a car about 80% of the energy is loss to heat and only about 20% is used to actually move the car on average. It’s worse when you are doing acceleration and better when cruising at a steady speed on a level surface.
Yeah, so you have to divide it by a factor of 5. Which still makes gasoline roughly 5 times as energy dense than this prototype battery, instead of 25 times.
Another problem is the increased complexity of fossil fuel vehicles, specifically in stuff like the engine, gears, pollution filters, etc. A fossil fuel vehicle is just intrinsically more complicated. Which doesn’t directly relate to the density, but it gives electric vehicles an advantage.
