Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login

Well, acording to wikipedia gasoline has an energy density of 46.4 MJ/Kg and LiPo batteries have an energy density of 0.36–0.875 MJ/Kg. So if your electric drivetrain has a 100% efficiency and your gas drivetrain has a 30% efficiency then the gasoline car would be able to do 16 times more work per unit of fuel.



> then the gasoline car would be able to do 16 times more work per unit of fuel

OK, so we've got ~300 mile range electric cars.

Where are the 5,000 mile range gasoline cars?


A Tesla Model 3 has 1060 pounds of batteries. If you replace those with a 177 gallon gas tank (at 6 lbs/gal) you should be able to go 4,780 miles at 27 MPG. It’s just that nobody wants to give up that much volume (visualize a 6x6x5 cube of gallon milk jugs).

I’m not accounting for a gas engine having more heavy parts, that mostly matters in city driving.


27 MPG is abysmal. The 2024 Prius gets over 50 MPG so it could be closer to a 10,000 mile range.


I was surprised a Prius does that well beyond the range of its battery. I took a number from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_economy_in_automobiles after a quick search, though it’s about 20% worse than my aging Hyundai.


And yet, electric cars you can by today don’t have 1/16th the range of a gasoline car. So energy density is not enough.


Not enough for what? The energy densities of both LiPo batteries and gasoline are enough to make a passenger vehicle with an acceptable range. For gasoline it is more than enough and for LiPo it’s barely enough.


Sorry, got cut off. So energy density on it's own is not enough to tell you whether is viable for making a car based on it.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: