Anybody happen to know the effective thermal power of a standard gasoline pump?
Like, X gallons per minute * Y joules per gallon of gas = Z kW of potential energy delivered to the vehicle
(this would then have to be scaled by motor efficiency to be a realistic comparison to EVs/EV chargers in terms of, e.g. miles of range delivered per minute of fueling/charging)
Standard petrol pump can do about 50 litres per minute.
Energy in 1 litre of petrol is about 33MJ.
My basic maths would ~27MW of energy transferred each second.
Assume 30% engine efficiency, still talking say 9MW.
Which seems at least an order of magnitude over the best EV charger.
@intrbiz That's about the order of magnitude I was expecting.
So ~27 MW thermal, ~9 MW usable? What's the efficiency of a typical EV (in terms of power into battery to actual energy moving the vehicle)?
@azonenberg EVs seem to get quoted at about 75% efficiency.
Not sure about the charging losses, but I suspect at higher rates it's not that good.
As good as EVs are getting, the energy density of Petrol is likely still an order of magnitude greater.
Would be nice to see more battery swap approaches to rapid charging, admittedly mechanically complicated.
@intrbiz Yep.
For emergency response I still see ICE having the edge for a while especially in rural areas without the ability to easily dump megawatts of power on short notice.
Related: I'm amazed that e.g. fire engines don't have a "battleshort" mode for the DEF system. Apparently they're generally using stock diesel engines and emissions regs require them to have a DEF system with limp-home interlock, meaning if you run out of DEF or the system malfunctions you get the engine crippled on you.
Given that the pollution from a burning building compared to a diesel engine is probably quite a bit worse, if the lights and sirens are active it should be possible to override the trouble code. Then when the emergency is over you can limp back to the station and go out of service until you've refilled the DEF tank or repaired the engine or whatever.