how much electricity is used to refine gas?

At the 1'25" mark he says the vast majority of Toyota and Lexus vehicles sold in the UK are hybrids. Is that correct?

BTW, in Quebec, 97% of power is hydroelectric. In Ontario, there is no coal, and most is nuclear (>50%) and hydro (~1/4), with I think about 15% natural gas.

However, I don't know how much of the gasoline in Canada is actually refined locally. Also, I don't know what type of power generation supplies the oil refineries.

In any case, in Quebec the CO2 production from electric cars is roughly 2-3 g/km, and in Ontario it's roughly 40-70 g/km. Thus, Ontario is a decent place to drive an electric car (or PHEV like me), and Quebec is electric car mecca (or at least it would be if it weren't for the extremely cold winters).

 

how much gas does it take to make electricity? which came first, the chicken or the egg?

 

You don't generally use gasoline to make electricity.

 

I don't know who this UK guy is, but the U.S. numbers reported by DOE are more like 0.15 Kwhr per gallon of refined product last time I checked. That's purchased elec. This guy is quoting enormous power consumption by UK refineries which is a rumor we had in US too. At least in the US we can use DOE figures to get the truth.

 

Does he even give a per gallon number? I didn't think he did in that video.

 

Robert LLewellyn is one of my favorite auto reviewers. He is everything Clarkson is not and genuinely funny. BTW, he wrote a brilliant piece about the Clarkson affair.

Bob Wilson

 

it's interesting, how different things are in the uk than here. while there are plenty here who harbor all the disparaging feelings llewellyn talks about, they mostly understand that it is not acceptable in public.

 

The figure quoted in the video sounds like it is the total energy consumed converted to kilowatt hours. I think this started the rumor in the US. Some is electric, but most is natural gas and other products coming out of the crude itself that are burned for heat.

There are up stream emissions for the fuel which can't be ignored if the ones from electric generation are being quoted for plugins.

 

You don't use gasoline - but you DO use a good amount of fossil fuel. Refineries do have electric things that run the refinery. Much of the electricity is from fossil fuel. So it's kind of an irony ... needing fossil fuel to make more fossil fuel. But since much of the refinery can use it's own product (ie; generating heat) - it's not all electric energy refining the products.
.

 

Well, as mentioned, in Quebec it's 97% hydro (and 0% fossil fuels, aside from a very small amount from power purchased from other jurisdictions), and in Ontario it's mostly nuclear and hydro with about 5-15% fossil fuels in the form of natural gas, and no coal or oil.

(My wife and I live in Ontario, but my wife is from Quebec and I've spent a long time there too.)

 

Figures don't lie......but liars do figure.

 

The OPs embedded video was an episode of Robert Llewellyn's Fully Charged video podcast. Great series and lots a fun.

Unfortunately, that segment that starts at the 5:00 mark is grossly incorrect and misleading. It's actually taken from a previous episode called "Volts for Oil". I wrote about it here:

My Nissan Leaf Forum • View topic - Pollution: EV vs ICE

If you follow that link you will see that all of the key allegations that Llewellyn makes are grossly misleading.

I pick the details apart and demonstrate that when you calculate the electricity kwh per gallon of gasoline the actual number for UK refineries using UN statistical data is about 0.2 - 0.3 kWh of electricity, not 4.5 kwh.

Stated another way, only about 5% of the energy used to refine a gallon of gasoline comes from grid electricity. That's very much in line with estimates of 3.5 - 5.2% for US refineries based on Dept. of Energy statistics.

I provide links to the actual database entries at data.un.org and show how the calculation is done.

See Table 3 on page 5 of this 2011 ANL report on petroleum refining efficiencies in the United States to see that 5.2% of the energy used in refining comes from grid electricity:

https://greet.es.anl.gov/files/petroleum

I realize that this complicated so feel free to ask questions here or challenge my calculations.

Also, see this other recent discussion here on kWh electricity used to refine gasoline:

A petition to Toyota to build electric vehicles | Page 12 | PriusChat

 

unfortunately, nobody really cares.

 

Which is part of the reason hybrids haven't broken out of the 3% annual sales.
Plugins have the performance of EV driving to help their sales. Push up the performance of a hybrid, and the point of hybridizing gets watered down.

 

i don't see ev sales taking off either. you can't look at initial sales, there's always a group salivating, but the ceiling will come, just like hybrids.

 

Indeed. The only reason I bought a Plug-in is because it happened to be on the used lot, in good condition, with the top-of-the-line Technology package, for a good price.

The regular Prius with Technology package wasn't commonly available used at the time I was looking.

At least in North America, we would have to see significant changes on multiple fronts to see EV sales take off more, like improved range, improved infrastructure, sky high gasoline prices, continued EV and charger rebates, more widespread HOV lane access, etc.

 

and some places are changing hov lanes to toll roads for the well heeled.

 

You generally do use it to manufacture and build the infrastructure, do maintenance etc. so there is some hydrocarbon use involved.

 

1) Improved range. Coming in the gen IIs
Gen II volt +30% to 50 miles
bolt, gen II volt, and ford bev talk 150 miles - 200+
tesla 85d already at 270 miles which is good enough.

2) improved infrastructure
Tesla and volt, and other phevs the infrastructure is there
most other bevs charge at home or the office

3) lots of stuff thrown in here, but really most just says value.
battery prices falling faster than expected.
unsubsidiesed costs still need to come down as subsidies will end soon for tesla, gm, and nissan.