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This may be of some interest to you all:

EVTV’s $20K EV component giveaway contest

Good luck!

GatewayEV will be showing 3 cars at the Green Homes Fest at Grandel Square from 11am to 6pm this Saturday (9/25).

Jeff Dale and Wayne Garver will be presenting a workshop on EVs at 3pm.  Jeff will discuss the conversion of his convertible BMW 325i.  Wayne, a physics professor at UMSL, will cover the basic science of EV components.

The fest always has lots of interesting booths and workshops, lots of good food, and activities for kids.  Hope to see you there!

Update:

Once again the fest was a great event.  A lot of interesting discussions.  Thanks to George, Wayne, Marc, and Jeff for bringing their cars out.

The short answer: 6 kilowatt hours.

Long Answer:

Some disinformation in the comments in the Post-Dispatch online forums on a story about stimulus money’s effect on the battery industry reminded me of this question that many people fail to ask when comparing the efficiency of EV’s to internal combustion engine vehicles.  In fact, I had never thought to ask until Jack Rickard discussed it on one of his first episodes of his www.EVTV.me “Friday Shows”.   He had done some research and estimated it was between 4-7.5 Kwh per gallon.  I’ll post my comment:

Your average EV can go 16 miles on 4kwh (20 miles on 7.5kwh)- so that’s on the electricity used to just to refine that gallon of gas, nevermind the energy used to extract and transport the oil, and the tailpipe emission.

Jack inspired me to ask an authoritative source (as if he isn’t?).  The DOE.  So I emailed them, and in less than 5 business days received an answer, which I will post here.

Subject: Energy to refine gasoline

Dear Mr. Armstrong,

Thank you for your December 4, 2009, electronic mail requesting a reputable source to calculate the energy required to refine a gallon of gasoline.  The energy required to refine a gallon of gasoline can be estimated based on the energy content of crude oil and the refinery efficiency of the facility performing the energy conversion; I can provide you a reputable source for both values.

In a 2008 report, Argonne National Lab estimated that the efficiency for producing gasoline of an “average” U.S. petroleum refinery is between 84% and 88% (Wang, 2008), and Oak Ridge National Lab reports that the net energy content of oil is approximately 132,000 Btu per gallon (Davis, 2009).  It is commonly known that a barrel of crude oil generate approximately 45 gallons of refined product (refer to NAS, 2009, Table 3-4 for a publication stating so).  Thus, using an 85% refinery efficiency and the aforementioned conversion factors, it can be estimated that about 21,000 Btu—the equivalent of 6 kWh—of energy are lost per gallon of gasoline refined:

The documents referenced herein are publicly available, as follows:

Wang, M. (2008), “Estimation of Energy Efficiencies of U.S. Petroleum Refineries,” Center for Transportation Research, Argonne National Laboratory, www.transportation.anl.gov/modeling_simulation/GREET/pdfs/energy_eff_petroleum_refineries-03-08.pdf

Davis, S., Susan W. Diegel, and Robert G. Boundy (2009), Transportation Energy Data Book, edition 28, National Transportation Research Center, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, cta.ornl.gov/data/

NAS (2009), Hidden Costs of Energy: Unpriced Consequences of Energy Production and Use, The National Academies Press, www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=12794&page=1

It is worth noting that refining one barrel of oil yields gasoline in addition to other products, so only a portion of the refining energy used to refine a barrel of crude is truly attributable to gasoline.  Even so, in terms of energy equivalencies, the preceding estimation is valid.

If I may be of further assistance, please do not hesitate to contact me.  Your interest in energy efficiency at the Department of Energy is appreciated.

Sincerely,

Jake

– Jacob Ward Program Analyst/PMF Vehicle Technologies Program Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy U.S. Department of Energy

For those who prefer watching TV vs. reading mathematical formulas, starting at 6 minutes in the this 1o minute video:

Due to the holiday weekend we are canceling the EV meeting this month (9/5/2010). Please come and join us next month.

Gateway EV will once again have a booth at the Earth Day Festival in Forest Park at the Muny on Sunday April 25th from 11am to 6pm.   In addition to a couple of our member’s vehicles, we’ll be joined this year by Electric Cars of Springfield (MO).  ECOS will be displaying their Fun vehicle.  Also special thanks to ECOS for sponsoring our appearance at Earth Day by covering our exhibition expenses.

Directions and map to Earth Day Festival.

We’ll see you there!

Electricity isn’t just charging up the car scene these days. Electric motorcycles are also gaining momentum and ZevMoto has your chance to demo their latest offerings. ZevMoto is bringing their ‘Zero Motorcycle Road Tour’ to Saint Louis this Saturday March 27th. The session is 9am-12pm at

La Quinta Inn & Suites St. Louis Maryland Heights
12330 Dorsett Road
St. Louis, MO 63043

Stop on by and checkout their complete line of bikes.

More Info Here

Our own Jack Rickard’s site was blogged about over on Autoblog Green today. I had the privilege of meeting Jack at the recent Tesla Motor’s Tour event we had in January. While I was talking with him it was evident he had some significant experience with EV conversions. If you haven’t checked out his site you should. It has tons of high quality videos from his previous, current, and future conversions.

The group has decided to cancel February’s meeting so we can all enjoy the Super Bowl. Our next meeting will be Sunday March 7th. We look forward to seeing your there.

Sunday January 3rd’s meeting will be moved from 2 to 3pm in order to accommodate a special guest. The Tesla Roadster Road Trip team and their Roadster will be stopping by our meeting to show off their car and chat about EVs. Tesla is attempting to break the stereotypes of EVs by driving their #750 Roadster from California to Michigan for the North America International Auto Show.

The meeting is open to GatewayEV members and non-members alike so please come and join us. Remember the meeting location has changed to Schlafly’s Tap Room.

Schlafly’s Tap Room
2100 Locust Street (at 21st)
St. Louis, MO 63103

We will be moving our monthly meeting location from Schlafly’s Bottleworks facility to their downtown Tap Room facility. This change will take effect for the January 3rd meeting. The meeting time will remain 2pm. The meeting time has also been changed to 3pm.

Schlafly’s Tap Room
2100 Locust Street (at 21st)
St. Louis, MO 63103