We have wasted an astronomical amount of energy from cars

Submitted by Death_Rose1892 t3_yhp844 in Showerthoughts

Gas powered cars produce a TON of power. Most cars just have a little cigarette lighter port but you could run a fridge of your car with an inverter. Just think of all the electricity we are making in traffic jams that just fizzles into nothing and gets wasted

EVERY SINGLE DAY

it's insane....

ETA: okay so it's not quite this simple but the old gas car design is still pretty wasteful.

3

Comments

You must log in or register to comment.

Andis-x t1_iuf2gqw wrote

Extra electric load will result in extra fuel consumption. Approach you are suggesting wouldn't recoup lost energy, as it actually would require to spend more energy.

The real wasted energy from cars is heat. Only 20-40% of burnt fuels energy is converted in motion, the rest is pure heat. That's why cars need radiators, to get rid of this heat.

If you want energy savings, look for a way to capture this heat and convert that to electricity or something.

Also braking is a huge waste of energy. As brakes work by converting kinetic energy, which was gained burning fuel, into yet again - heat. To accelerate again you have to burn more fuel.

That's why electric cars have regenerative breaking, where it's literally doing acceleration but backwards. Instead of spending electricity to make car go faster, you slow down car to generate electricity.

And why electric cars are more efficient, as they converter almost 100% of their "fuel" into motion. There's very little waste heat.

4

Death_Rose1892 OP t1_iuf3j0k wrote

That's all super interesting thank you! I'm glad the newer cars are thinking of things like this. I just never realized how wasteful older cars were until now. I mean I knew they were wasteful, but they are on a whole nother level than I knew.

1

redcore4 t1_iuf1uzd wrote

Thing is that running the alternator uses extra fuel. Even just using the air conditioning in the car (which is essentially doing the same as a fridge does) can add 10% to your fuel bill. Running bigger appliances can use even more fuel, and they’re typically not as efficient as the kinds of appliance you have in your home because they’re designed to be compact and convenient more than efficient.

Added to that, most countries have at least some percentage of their home fuel supply generated through much greener methods like wind or hydro power.

A better solution would be to just turn the engine off when your car is standing still - and most newer cars do this automatically anyway meaning there’s much less wasted fuel.

2

Death_Rose1892 OP t1_iuf2uha wrote

Yeah but we all drive. That energy is really only used to start the car and is just excess while we are driving around. We could be capturing it. I do actually have a battery that i charge while driving and it charges a ton while driving for work and is enough for my phone and laptop for a night. And I don't even have a better inverter installed yet. I'm not saying it's green. Just that gas powered cars are wasting a TON of electricity driving around every day. It's a waste.

1

redcore4 t1_iuf8jis wrote

I’m guessing you’re in the US? Driving everywhere like that and not driving electric/hybrid cars isn’t that normal everywhere else.

2

Death_Rose1892 OP t1_iuf990j wrote

Yes. Electric cars are on the rise but still the minority here.

Are they actually the majority there? I can't begin to afford one here. Or I'd have one in a heart beat.

1

redcore4 t1_iufasyk wrote

In cities electrics are getting a lot more popular (at least here in the UK) and hybrids and fuel-saving cars (the kind that switch off when idling) have been on the market for over a decade and are a good proportion of the domestic traffic in cities. We also have much better public transport (and fewer hang-ups about using it and investing in it) and cycling infrastructure than is typical in the US.

2

Showerthoughts_Mod t1_iuez771 wrote

This is a friendly reminder to read our rules.

Remember, /r/Showerthoughts is for showerthoughts, not "thoughts had in the shower!"

(For an explanation of what a "showerthought" is, please read this page.)

Rule-breaking posts may result in bans.

1

waffles-n-gravy t1_iuf06c5 wrote

Um, a fridge will not run off a car inverter, at least not one designed for a house. Learn about current.

1

Death_Rose1892 OP t1_iuf0jxo wrote

Maybe not a full size fridge. But the point is there is a massive amount of power wasted. You're just nitpicking.

Eta: if you store the power in the battery you probably could run a fridge for quite awhile as we use our ecoflow for small fridges and there are larger batteries than ours.

0