An interesting fact I learned is that internal combustion engines are so inefficient that you could charge an average electric vehicle using a coal powerplant, and even with all the energy lost to transformers, power lines, charging, etc, it'd still be more efficient than an average gas powered car, even if you ignore the entire petroleum refinement and distribution process.
@malwaretech Rule of thumb was equal thirds shaft, radiator, and tailpipe at wide open (so well adjusted highway driving). Much worse any pother operating point.
@malwaretech Off the line with the throttle near the floor is the most efficient, but you can only do that for a couple seconds before you are at speed. And if you don't shift right you will get to high RPMs which are far worse (all automatics assume you make max power and will use high RPMs, but a manual driver might shift right if they are careful)
@malwaretech two stroke motors in ideal situations are more efficient than regular four stroke engines. However it is almost impossible to get a two stroke engine into that ideal situation and anything outside of ideal they do horribly. Even when in the ideal situations they pollute horribly, and unlike four strokes it is much harder to clean that pollution up.
@malwaretech Yeah. And that demonstrates how amazingly energy dense gasoline is; even with all of that inefficiency, gas cars (and likewise ICE airplanes, and the like) can easily have range that far exceed electric with motors that run into the high 90's percent efficiency.
They don't call oil black gold for nothing. Even when used incredibly inefficiently, it still pack in more energy per unit volume or mass than anything else practical to use.
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