Electric Cars vs. Gas CarsBY GREYSON HOBBS

This graphic illustrates the main differences between gas and electric cars. It shows that while gas powered engines produce greenhouse gases and pollution, electric cars have no tailpipe emissions. The fuel used for gas cars comes from OPEC and is a non-renewable resource, as opposed to electric cars that get their fuel from utility companies. Even though electric cars do save you 10 cents per mile, they take almost eight times as long to refuel, and go less than a third of the distance of gas cars.

While gas cars can save you money in the short term, electric cars save a lot more money in the long run. Based on this graphic, it costs around 2,100 dollars to fuel a gas car the first year you own it. A solar electric car on the other hand, cost 8,000 dollars for the first year to initially buy the solar panels. Then after fifty years of owning the cars, the gas car cost 275,000 dollars throughout the life of the vehicle. The electric car; however, only totaled at 12,000 dollars.

Driving a gasoline car can cause you to spend a large amount of money on fuel for the car. Depending on the miles per gallon of the vehicle you could spend hundreds of dollars on fuel just for one month. Even though some gas cars can get thirty or more miles per gallon, they still use over a hundred dollars worth of gas a month.

This graphic compares electric vehicles to both fully gas powered vehicles and hybrid (gas/electric) vehicles. It shows that even though hybrid vehicles do cost a lot less money to fuel, it does still cost almost twice that of fully electric vehicles. It also shows that fully gas powered cars cost more than three times the cost of electric vehicles, and just under twice the cost of hybrid vehicles.

Through an experiment it was proven that some of the electric cars that do produce CO2 emissions have a 5.261 percent chance of producing a higher amount of CO2 emissions than gasoline cars.

In terms of fuel cost between gas and electric cars, there is no comparison. Electric cars cost much less than gas. The average price of a gallon of regular gas is 3.863 dollars, and the average cost of one kWh of Electricity is .1153 cents.

Electric cars are not the cheapest in every way however. Once every five years the battery for an electric car, which costs 9,428.55 dollars, needs to be replaced.

This graphic makes electric cars out to be the more expensive of the two just because of the battery of electric cars needing to be replaced, but it neglects to include the cost of maintaining a gas engine which can also be costly.

Gasoline prices have varied greatly throughout the years, and sometimes it has hit prices that are almost too high to pay. Electricity on the other hand, has stayed within the same general price range. The highest electricity has ever been was one dollar and fifty cents, and the lowest its been is around ninety-five cents. The price of gas; however, has had a lowest price of one dollar and twenty five cents a gallon, and gone all the way up to four dollars and twenty cents a gallon.

The graphic shows the estimated total cost of ownership for different kinds of vehicles, including: gas, diesel, biodiesel, electric, and more. Based on the chart, regular gas vehicles vary the most in costs and are the only ones effected by medium energy prices. Diesel and Biodiesel vehicles look to be about the same in total cost of ownership and can vary a few thousand dollars based on energy prices. Electric vehicles that get a tax credit have the lowest total cost and are effected the least by energy prices. Electric vehicles that do not get a tax credit on the other hand, are about the same total cost as some of the regular gas vehicles, but their cost is not effected by varying energy prices.

The graphic shows more differences between gas and electric vehicles. Like the first graphic, it shows that electricity cost about ten cents less and that electric cars go about a third of the distance of gas cars. This graphic also includes the greenhouse gas emissions of each car. Gasoline cars emit about a pound of CO2 every mile. Electric cars that run with electricity from coal produce just short of that, at 0.8 pounds per mile. Then cars that run on electricity from renewable resources produce zero emissions per mile.

This is an advertisement for Ford’s line of electric, hybrid, and gas engines. Their EcoBoost engine runs on gasoline but claims to be up to twenty percent more fuel efficient than similar gas engines. The Fusion Hybrid, runs on both gas and electricity, and claims to get seventy-eight percent better fuel economy than similar four-cylinder cars. Then they have an electric engine that is supposed to get the electric equivalent of one hundred miles per gallon.

This graphic shows the average cost to drive twenty-seven miles in an average compact gas car compared to the average cost to drive an electric vehicle. The cost to drive the gas vehicle has gone up constantly since mid 2009, but the cost to drive the electric vehicle has stayed fairly constant for the last ten years.

Environmentally, electric cars produce zero tailpipe emissions. Although electric cars charged on the grid can produce tailpipe emissions, they emit fifty-four percent less emissions than regular gas vehicles.

Regular electric cars are not the only option as opposed to gas cars. There are also HEVs (Hybrid Electric Vehicles), PHEVs (Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles), and FCEVs (Fuel Cell Electric Vehicles).

This graphic includes a surprising fact about the CO2 emissions created by electric cars. It says that concentrations of CO2 have increased since 1960. This is because of the means by which people get the power for electric cars. The power produced from coal and other sources produces CO2 emissions. Whereas, powering an electric car with natural resources, such as solar or wind power, produces no CO2 emissions.

The cost of ownership is more than just paying to buy a car. It is the cost to maintain and fuel the vehicle as well. As displayed by this graphic, combustion engines always cost more and more the longer that you have them. Hybrids are right after them, and gain about a thousand dollars in additional costs per year. Electric cars appear to be the most expensive, but they keep a fairly constant cost. Plug-in cars, like electric, have fairly constant additional costs, but they stay about two thousand dollars lower than electric cars.

Another way to look at the advantage of electric versus gas cars is the efficiency of the vehicles. Gas cars use only about fifteen percent of fuel energy to move the vehicle. That means that for every two gallon of gas used, only around a liter of it went to moving the car. The other five and a half liters was wasted on just keeping the engine running. Electric cars on the other hand utilize eighty percent or more of their fuel energy to move the vehicle. So less than twenty percent of the energy is wasted in electric vehicles, compared to the eighty-five percent wasted in gas cars.

This graphic is a screenshot of a calculator that compares the average cost of a gallon of gasoline in your state and the average cost the electric equivalent of a gallon of gas. It shows that on average, one gallon of gasoline costs more than three times the cost of an electric gallon of gas.

This graphic takes a satiric approach of advertising electric cars compared to gas cars by trying to say that you save so much money with an electric car that it is pretty much flowing out of the car.

Due to the high population and excessive traffic found in Los Angeles, California, Children there have ten to fifteen percent lower lung capacity than children in cleaner, less crowded cities. Electric vehicles would greatly reduce this problem, and improve health for the citizens in Los Angeles because of their much lower emissions.

Other than the emission advantage of electric vehicles, they are also almost maintenance-free other than the occasional battery replacement, because they do not require the same upkeep as gas cars.

This graphic provides a great visual representation of Carbon Dioxide emissions in electric, hybrid, and gasoline vehicles. It shows that there is about a seven-hundred gram per mile difference between the highest emission car (Maybach 62) and the lowest emission car (Toyota Prius). This is a drastic difference when you think about the fact that you could go four miles in the Prius and still not emit the same amount of Carbon Dioxide as the Maybach in just one mile.

There are many ways to compare the costs and efficiency differences between gas and electric vehicles. The most direct is fuel cost differences. In a comparison between two similar sized vehicles, one electric, one gas, it showed that the electric car only cost two dollars and sixty-four cents to go the same distance as the gas car which cost fourteen dollars and twenty-five cents.

It is also interesting to compare and electric car to electric household appliances. A hair dryer for example, takes fifteen hours to use the same amount of energy that is required to fully charge a Nissan Leaf.

This graphic takes the approach of trying to appeal to the viewers logical sense. It attempts to try and get you to question why you would think that environmental groups would spend their own money to work with the majority of the world scientists if they are not trying to do what is best for the environment and for everyone else. It also attacks big oil companies in by talking about how they spend their unreasonable profits to bribe anyone who can actually stop them from making more money.

Aside from all the previously mentioned advantages of electric cars, it is hard to say that you would not want an electric car when these look as awesome as they do. Other than the price tag on the three of these, I would choose one of them over most gasoline cars any day.

Sources:

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