Cost of going XX miles on an electric motor vs. engine?

[AgaBoogaBoo]

I read a book a few months ago on nuclear energy and it got me wondering - when we start putting in more nuclear power plants, it can be built to allow for a lot more energy consumption in the form of electricity. Let's not get hung up on this though, main questions still lays ahead.

One place this will possibly be seen is in electric vehicles.

If a person charges their car's batteries by plugging their car in at night or something, how would that compare to the cost of fill up a gas of tank? I'm not really sure of how much electricity it would take to go the same distance as maybe 10 gallons of gas in a specific car and thought you guys might have some idea. How would you go about comparing this?

How does the cost of maintenence and upkeep differ between electric motors and gasoline engines? What if you factor in batteries? What kind of changes in technology will we see from batteries in the future?

I'm not trying to take this into a route of "Hybrid or not" based on prices of both options and such, but do want to see what you guys have to say on the future of this. Are electric motors a viable option? I could see it being very useful for daily commutes - maybe not so much for long drives like with semi's and such, but if you have to drive around 30-40 miles everyday and it's done by a large population in the US, could this be an option? The costs I mentioned earlier are what make me question it.

 

[theblackbox]

Electric, no. Even with the advances in battery technology, a fully electric car is still a strecth. Hybrid technology with regenrative braking or fuel cell technolgy is probably more viable.
I used to frive 53 miles each way to work, and i had a Civic Hybrid. I could make it 1 gallon each way of gas if i drove well. I sold he car with 85,000 miles on it, and it was still in great shape.
Noone can really speculate on battery replacement in hybrids, since now hybrids are going over the 200,000 mile mark without replacement, and personally, contrary to what the media represents, hybrid service is no costlier then regular service.
The first mandatory service on the civic is 115k miles, and before that all you are doing is changing oil, cvt, rotating tires and treating it like a regular car.
Since the electricity in a hybrid is a byproduct of the system, if you factor in the gas and the fuel econmy improvement, hybrids show immediate promise for alternative systems.
The problem with full electric is te size of the battery packs, the fact that if you rely on total electric, you will go through more complete charge cycles, and electric motors are stil fairly cumbersome systems. The nice thing is the amount of torue they can produce at 1200rpm.

 

[Goosemaster]

It's not the motors that get you. It's the batteries.

 

[AgaBoogaBoo]

Originally posted by: Goosemaster
It's not the motors that get you. It's the batteries.

I don't know anything about how much power it takes an electric motor to take a car maybe 10 miles or something versus the same scenario for a typical 4 cylinder or something. Are we assuming that if battery costs are not factored in, eletric motor usage is cheaper economically than gasoline?

 

[theblackbox]

the prius is capable of going about 3-4 miles before draining it's smallish battery pack on the electric engine. I have my friends prius right now, and on the highway, once you get to highway speed, there is very little draw if you use elctric only.
I can't use the civic for comparison since it is just electric assisted, and does not have a standalone electric motor.

I have still yet to see any hard numbers on battery service as i never had to deal with it nor know any other hybrid owners that had to deal with it. Electric car battery banks are much bigger then the prius or the civic. the civic only uses the equivalent of 144 c batteries pretty much.

 

[desy]

You ask? Answered!