Biden raves over expensive, inefficient, electric F-150 pickup

[rangerrebew]

Biden raves over expensive, inefficient, electric F-150 pickup
By Craig Rucker |May 19th, 2021

If inefficiency were a virtue, President Biden is its champion.

Yesterday, President Biden test drove the new electric Ford F-150 Lightning pickup truck which Biden raves over expensive inefficient, electric F-150Ford will formally unveil at midnight tonight.

The F-150 is the best selling vehicle in America, but is the American Everyman prepared to shell out $70,000 for an electric base model and over six figures at the top of the line?  Those are the prices Car and Driver predicts.

Today’s pickup trucks are affordable.  “The F-150 carries a base price of $28,940, which is one of the lower starting prices in the class. SuperCab models start at $33,025, and SuperCrew models start at $36,650.

https://www.cfact.org/2021/05/19/biden-raves-over-expensive-inefficient-electric-f-150/

[Joe Wooten]

I had a discussion about electrification of transportation with youngest son who is a civil engineer. He has tentatively accepted the "necessity" of converting to electric vehicles. Being in the electric utility (nukes) industry I told him total electrification of the transprotation network was NOT going to happen for the following reason:

2019 US gasoline consumption - 8931370 bbls = 491225350 gallons
2019 US diesel consumption - 3080770 bbls = 169442350 gallons

BTU content of gasoline - 120286 BTU/gal
BTU content of diesel - 137381  BTU/gal

Total BTU content of consumed transport fuels - 8.237E13 BTU

Convert to Megawatts electric - 24,129,013 MW (divide BTU by 3412140)

Divide the MWe by 1200 which is the avg standard size for nuke plants in the US and you get we have to build 20,116 nuke power plants to electrify the transport network. Divide by 4 for windmills 6,034,753 needing to be built.

AIN'T.GONNA.HAPPEN.

[thackney]

I had a discussion about electrification of transportation with youngest son who is a civil engineer. He has tentatively accepted the "necessity" of converting to electric vehicles. Being in the electric utility (nukes) industry I told him total electrification of the transprotation network was NOT going to happen for the following reason:

2019 US gasoline consumption - 8931370 bbls = 491225350 gallons
2019 US diesel consumption - 3080770 bbls = 169442350 gallons

BTU content of gasoline - 120286 BTU/gal
BTU content of diesel - 137381  BTU/gal

Total BTU content of consumed transport fuels - 8.237E13 BTU

Convert to Megawatts electric - 24,129,013 MW (divide BTU by 3412140)

Divide the MWe by 1200 which is the avg standard size for nuke plants in the US and you get we have to build 20,116 nuke power plants to electrify the transport network. Divide by 4 for windmills 6,034,753 needing to be built.

AIN'T.GONNA.HAPPEN.

Joe, the fuel energy required does not equal the electric motor energy required.  It is still a massive amount of power and your point is still correct.  However, you need to take into account the efficiency of the ICE to get better numbers.  Energy to the motor is closer to the energy required at drive shaft, not the fuel tank.  Output of Power plants needed is off by a factor of 4~6?

[Joe Wooten]

Joe, the fuel energy required does not equal the electric motor energy required.  It is still a massive amount of power and your point is still correct.  However, you need to take into account the efficiency of the ICE to get better numbers.  Energy to the motor is closer to the energy required at drive shaft, not the fuel tank.  Output of Power plants needed is off by a factor of 4~6?

Yes, I purposely did not use the comparitive efficiencies to make in simpler. I wanted to give a quick estimate of the number of plants required. I also did not use the relative capacity factors which would have at least tripled the number of windmills required.  Bur even if we divide the number of nukes by 6, that is still 3353 nuclear plants that have to be built which is well beyond the capacity of ALL the nations on Earth combined. If we went with green fairy dust, it would take over 3,000,000 windmills, again beyond the combined industrial capacity of the planet.

[thackney]

Yes, I purposely did not use the comparitive efficiencies to make in simpler. I wanted to give a quick estimate of the number of plants required. I also did not use the relative capacity factors which would have at least tripled the number of windmills required.  Bur even if we divide the number of nukes by 6, that is still 3353 nuclear plants that have to be built which is well beyond the capacity of ALL the nations on Earth combined. If we went with green fairy dust, it would take over 3,000,000 windmills, again beyond the combined industrial capacity of the planet.

We had a similar discussion a few weeks back.

https://www.gopbriefingroom.com/index.php/topic,436536.msg2426886.html#msg2426886

 I used the following chart to show the magnitude of the transportation energy use compared to the entire electrical network.  But this includes more than 4 wheel vehicles, yours is a better comparison for talking about electric vehicles.