how much electricity is used to refine gas?

Good, but so far not good enough IMO. I personally won't be buying a pure EV any time soon, and I'm probably the most likely in my neighbourhood, being the only one in my entire neighbourhood with a PHEV.

In fact, a pure EV isn't even on the radar for us at the moment. Our next car will likely be the 2016 RAV4 Hybrid.

BTW, those ranges aren't really true ranges, when you're talking about Canadian winters.

 

Well done, Jeff.

I tried numerous times to debunk the foolishness especially rampant on the Volt forums that just the energy waste from making petrol would motorize the world if only everybody had an EV. I'm glad at least a couple of people have clued in a bit from your posts.

The basic issue, as you have stated, is that people read kWh and think it must be electricity. Particularly in the US where general scientific literacy is almost nil and metric units (when recognized) are viewed with suspicion, it is really hard to debunk nonsense. Perhaps we should switch to MJ when discussing energy.

 

lolz.

IMHO for Canadian winters you want a high ground clearance phev, possibly with awd, or a long run bev.

I guess we are at the outlander phev, which will arrive in north america sometime next year or the tesla model X. Both of those will probably cost much more than a rav4 hybrid, but .... maybe your next car when batteries and choices improve.

 

I noticed during a trip to Mexico several years ago that the nutritional label on my Coke bottle showed MJ in place of calories. Even better, in line with emerging transportation trends, maybe it should have used kWh....

I just had around 500 food calories, 2.1 MJ, or 600 Wh for brunch but an intake of only 0.6 kWh looks best. I'm either very efficient or I'm not getting much work done.

 

If the Outlander PHEV comes in at $40k (I am talking US market of course), and with about $8k of IRS/CA credit/rebate will make it even cheaper than a Rav4 hybrid AWD.

 

outlander phev will get about $7250 of us and california tax credits if I have the battery size right. I have no idea on it's pricing or the rav4 hybrid.

A few years ago most cokes in mexico went to the US formula using corn sweateners. The coke imported from mexico into the US is still all cane sugar. I hope you didn't drink that much mexican coke. A half liter bottle has about 200 calories or 0.23 kwh.

 

Well then clearly we should run our cars on Coke
I doubt that shit costs the company more than a couple pennies a liter

 

Erm it depends on your interpretation of majority I guess.

I also understood it was 1in4 new Toyotas are hybrid and that's confirmed here;

Hybrids Brings Success For Toyota UK - HybridCars.com
Toyota UK Sales Fueled By Hybrids - HybridCars.com

In 2015 it's been 24% of all Toyota sales and in 2014 it was 22%. A growing and significant percentage but not a majority.

The percentage inreases rapidly for Lexus though with 90% of all models sold being hybrid.

European demand for Toyota & Lexus Hybrids jumps 29 percent in 2012 | Hypermiling | Fuel saving Tips | Industry News | Forum

That's understandable considering they don't offer much in the way of diesels unlike Mercedes, Audi, BMW etc and there isn't much demand for a 4.0 litre petrol car with fuel costing $8 a US gallon.

So overall and combining Toyota and Lexus it appears the majority of combined sales are hybrid.

 

We might be able to make ethanol with it.