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Electric vs Gas

Title text: An idling gas engine may be annoyingly loud, but that's the price you pay for having WAY less torque available at a standstill.

Explanation

This explanation may be incomplete or incorrect: Created by a HYDROGEN INTERNAL COMBUSTION ENGINE RUNNING A GENERATOR. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.

Internal combustion engines (ICEs) have long been the most common technology used to propel motor vehicles. In US vernacular, the most common vehicle fuel is known as "gasoline", or "gas" for short, leading to these engines being referred to as "gas engines". Gasoline is a product of petroleum refinement, leading to the name "petrol" being used in other dialects.

Electric motors would seem the more well-suited method for propelling a vehicle, and as early as 1885 were an actual form of motor car engine with which the fledgling internal combustion engine had to compete. Despite this early popularity, over most of the 20th century electric motors were sidelined in everyday car design, as supplying the electricity was considered to be impractical for most forms of transportation. Modern forms are rapidly rising in popularity, and now constitute 18% of all global vehicle sales. Randall is a strong proponent of electric vehicles (EVs).

In this strip, White Hat claims to be comparing the pros and cons of electric motors and gas engines. The joke is that every point he makes goes in favor of electric motors. Despite it being posed as a dilemma, it may be very clear which side of the debate White Hat is promoting. On the other hand, it may indicate that one of the things we might consider a pro in electric motors (the instantaneous power now available, exceeding that of many non-electric engines) he would consider a problem — perhaps more accurately, a problem with the drivers of such vehicles — recklessly using the enhanced capabilities to accelerate to high speeds at all opportunities, whether safe to do so or not.

The strip offers the following points in favor of electric motors:

• "Cleaner and more efficient". ICEs produce and vent harmful combustion products and toxic chemicals, while electric motors produce no emission byproducts at the point of use. The efficiency of both gas and electric motors vary, but the typical ICE vehicle in the US converts around 25% of available energy into motion, while the typical electric vehicle is in the neighborhood of 80%. Even when considering inefficiencies in the source production and transmission and storage and release of energy, battery-driven electric vehicles are generally more efficient than internal combustion propelled vehicles[1]. It should be noted that all of this refers to the motors only, and ignores how the fuel and electricity are produced, or the wider environmental impact of the vehicle.

• "More powerful". Electric motors are able to deliver a lot of power from a small motor if an ample energy supply is available, and can do so 'on demand', often far quicker than a fuel-powered engine that has to put its power through a gearbox in order to service a wide range of road velocities, from standstill to the eventual top speed. Due to battery limitations, short or partial runtime use cases (such as dragsters, hand tools, yard tools, toys and electric scooters) net the most benefit from the small size of a high-powered electric motor.

• "Annoyingly loud". ICEs, by their nature, produce significant noise. Despite noise attenuation measures such as mufflers, they contribute significantly to urban noise. Properly designed electric motors are nearly silent (even if the rest of the vehicle is not). In particular, turbocharger blowoff valves make particular noises that are completely lacking in an all-electric vehicle being driven at a similar performance level. This might legitimately be considered a problem, though, when everyone is used to a rapidly approaching vehicle providing a very noisy warning of its approach. EV makers have sometimes added fake ICE noises to appeal to older drivers, and in the U.S. and some other countries, EVs are required to have warning sounds at low speeds for pedestrian safety. At highway speeds, the noise of tires against the road is much louder than a properly muffled ICE, so the intrinsic quietness of EVs is irrelevant in that context.

• "WAY less torque available at standstill". ICEs need to continually operate within a specific range of rotational speeds, which means that a complex system of transmission gearing is needed to convert this motion into the specific speeds needed at the wheels. When starting from a standstill, this means that torque must be applied to the wheels relatively gradually to avoid stalling the engine. In addition, when a vehicle is standing still, the motor is typically idling at (very) low speed and must be sped up before it produces significant acceleration. Electric motors, in contrast, generally produce their peak torque when at a standstill. This results in electric vehicles having significantly better acceleration and engine responsiveness. Again, this could cause a legitimate problem with drivers changing from ICE to electric motors, because the new cars accelerate more than the driver is used to and provide different feedback. The audible clues of gear changes, whether from automatic or manual systems, are part and parcel of what many people have grown up with and come to rely on in anticipating what might need paying attention to.

The strip offers no points in favor of internal combustion (gas) motors, even those framed as if they were such.

It should be noted that White Hat is deliberately confining his arguments to electric vs gas motors rather than electric or gas-powered vehicles. Doing so ignores the basic reason why internal combustion vehicles have long dominated transportation in certain specific countries: hydrocarbon fuels are a very dense and fairly easy to handle form of energy storage. Providing electrical power to a moving vehicle requires either that the vehicle remain in contact with a power line (as with an electric train or a tram) or else to carry a high-capacity battery (and the ability to recharge that battery in a reasonable amount of time, while stationary). More popular in the USA is a hybrid system, where a combustion engine provides at least some of the power to an electric motor, which was impractical until comparatively recently. Other methods, such as hydrogen fuel cells (a form of "combustion" that can be used more directly to form electricity), have been proposed, but remain niche, due to various barriers to adoption, or experimental.

A more comprehensive comparison would include many more factors, both against and in favor of electric cars.

Issues raised with electric vehicles typically include:

• Higher cost of purchase (primarily due to the cost of batteries and, in the USA, now a 100% tariff on Chinese EVs), although partially offset by lower costs of operation
• Long charging times compared to refilling a gas tank (there are some approaches which mitigate this by operating either very high powered chargers or a battery swap model, rather than charging in-car, but these are not widely adopted)
• Relatively limited range (100-400 miles per charge as of 2024)
• Shortened range in hot weather and significantly shortened range in cold weather (although ICE vehicles also have this problem)
• Limited charging infrastructure in some places (although ICE vehicles also have this problem)
• Higher vehicle weight, and resulting higher particulate emissions (from tires, but not brakes, because EVs use of regenerative braking reduces wear on their traditional brakes)
• Reliance on various mineral and metal extraction industries in the building of batteries
• Issues disposing of/recycling batteries at end of life
• Increased demand on electricity production

Other real (or asserted) pros of electric cars are also not mentioned:

• Lower costs of operation (partially offset by higher costs of purchase)
• Can "fill" them at home or while parked without having to stay with them (partially negates the "long charging times" con)
• Higher reliability
• Lower carbon footprint, and reduced dependence on the fossil fuel industry

Rapidly evolving technologies, government policies, and economic realities are changing the relevance and seriousness of these points over time. As of the publication of this strip, the "pros" of EVs do not seem to be universally convincing, as ICEs remain far more popular than EVs in most countries (EVs constitute a majority of new vehicle sales in only four countries: Norway, Iceland, Sweden and Finland). That said, EVs didn't exist as a viable industry 20 years ago, so the current reality reflects rapid and ongoing growth, suggesting that the perceived advantages of EVs are gaining increasing social currency.

The degree of adoption is also likely to impact the viability of different vehicle types. Infrastructure in most countries has long been built around an assumption of ICEs, so things like fueling stations and ICE-qualified mechanics have traditionally been widely accessible. As EVs becoming increasingly dominant, this could shift, with EV charging infrastructure becoming easier to find than ICE fueling stations, and ICE mechanics potentially becoming more difficult to find. There's typically a certain level of inertia in the adoption of any new technology.

In the EU, the sale of new ICE cars is banned from 2035 in an effort to move to EVs, and other jurisdictions are adopting similar policies.

Especially in the United States, this topic is highly contentious for political, economic, engineering, and tribal reasons (as a quick look at the edit history of this page will confirm).

Trivia

The etymology of "gasoline" (commonly abbreviated to "gas") is disputed: it may refer to the gaseous state of matter as, though gasoline itself is generally liquid, it readily emits volatile vapours. Otherwise, it has been suggested to have derived from "Cazelin"/"Cazelline", originally a lamp-oil, sold by a man called John Cassell in the 19th century and much copied (including by the "Gazeline" brand) as the market and supply of such fuels expanded. In non-American english, the octane form of motor-fuel (i.e. non-diesel and excluding aviation fuel) is called "petrol" (derived from "petroleum", or 'oil of the rock'), with similar "electric vs petrol (vs hybrid)" comparisons. The registered brand name "Petrol" (sold as a solvent, before being repurposed for use as vehicle fuel) could not be trademarked as it was already the common generic term for equivalent products. The unrefined crude mineral oil from which many different hydrocarbon products can be refined is still more widely known as petroleum. Vehicle fuel may now be partly or wholly composed of non-fossil-fuels to distance them from some of the traditional arguments against petrol/gas consumption, leave other considerations unchanged but possibly introduce further issues.

While ICE vehicles have, to date, proven more popular than electric equivalents, worldwide, bicycles have been outselling cars at least WWII.

Transcript

[White Hat, with his palm raised, is talking to Cueball.]

White Hat: Electric motors and gas engines each have their pros and cons.

White Hat: On one hand, electric motors are cleaner and more efficient. On the other hand, electric motors are more powerful.

White Hat: So it's hard to say which is better overall.

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