We’d be better burning gas to charge the batteries in an electric vehicle - but let’s not use gas at all.
The source below is really well written blog. Goes into the maths.
“Tank to Wheel” efficiencies:
- Tesla claims 75%, the author suspects it’s more like 70%
- Internal Combustion Vehicles are 16%
Those numbers don’t take into account the losses from the original source of the energy. These do…
“Well to Wheel” ( Embodied Energy) efficiencies:
- Natural Gas → Generator → Transmission → Car Battery → Wheels = ~30-40%
- For a conventional car this number is gated by the Tank-to-Wheel number, even if well-to-tank was 100% efficient.
Altogether:
Very basically, if we took the gasoline you put into your car and burned that in a turbine, then sent that power to your electric car, the overall efficiency of the system would double.
Double.
Source
Source
Wells to wheels: electric car efficiency