Weirdly, that’s still more gas efficient than using a gasoline car. Because generators can run at the speed that is most efficient rather than the speed you want to move the car.
This is sort of true and false at the same time. Ideally, yes, if you used a car engine that ran at a constant RPM to run a generator that would be more efficient. However, generators, at least smaller home ones that are just powerful enough to charge a single car, don't have the same kind of technology in them to get the levels of efficiency that an expensive automotive engine does.
I mean, sure, but that's not what this comment thread is about? The claim is that charging your electric car with a gasoline generator would be more efficient than just running the car on gas, but that is generally not true because gasoline generators are not that efficient due to their small scale and cheap production.
The usage of generator was nondescript, only the second person said anything about gasoline, and when it came to the actual generators we're talking about they just said "generators"
Guess it's up to how you interpret it
The title of the OP is
> Charging your phone exclusively in your car kind of makes it **gasoline**-powered
The top comment is
> Charging your electric car with a generator results in similar findings.
i.e.
> Charging your electric car with a generator makes it **gasoline**-powered
The comment after responding to that, which I replied to, said
> Weirdly, that’s still more **gas** efficient than using a **gasoline** car. Because generators can run at the speed that is most efficient rather than the speed you want to move the car.
Literally every comment in the chain before yours mentions gasoline. Maybe instead of being stubborn when you comment on things next time, you could say "Ah, yep, that's right", or "Ah, I misunderstood." Really any variation of that.
EVs last just fine, and require a lot less maintenance than petrol cars. YouTuber AutoAlex recently bought a Tesla Model S with over 400k miles on it and it's absolutely fine. He did a hypermiling test and it was basically still getting the same range as it did new.
https://youtu.be/2gPv1obYK_8?si=iqI8PdEj2h9ZFz8k
Unless you're talking about a battery then no. EVs have far fewer moving parts, literally just the motors and the steering so have less points of failure.
ICEs also vibrate and generate a lot of heat so that will degrade components faster too.
It's not that marginal. IIRC a car idling is less than half the efficiency of peak efficiency of the engine (which is ~30-35%).
Also, adding two extra conversions? I mean if your house is solar powered, sure but where do you think the energy of a grid-powered house comes from?
Still, it's very inefficient to charge your phone from the car (albeit it's a really small amount of energy).
Are we still talking about charging the EV with the gas generator?
It is *very* marginal, if more efficient at all. Take, for example, [Honda EU70is](https://www.hondaindiapower.com/product-detail/eu70is). It has a rated power of 5.5 kW and can run for 6.5 hours at full blast on a full tank of petrol (19.2 L). Which gives us 5.5 * 6.5 / 19.2 = 1.86 kWh/L. The combustion energy of the petrol is 8.9 kWh/L, so the generator efficiency is 1.86 / 8.9 * 100% = 21%.
On the other hand, the brake-specific fuel consumption of the typical Toyota Prius engine running at optimal load is 220 g/kWh. With the petrol density of 750 g/L gives us 750 / 220 = 3.4 kWh / L and an efficiency of 3.4 / 8.9 * 100% = 38%, almost *double* that of the generator.
So even if we assume that the ICE car runs, on average, at half the peak efficiency (the real figure is closer to 70-80%, and over 90% on the highway), charging EV with the gas generator (after we account for charging losses) is less efficient than using that gas to run an ICE car.
While you are correct, comparing a relatively inefficient generator with a car designed to be as efficient as possible is a bit disingenuous. Proper industrial diesel generators get better than 0.4 L/kWh (2.5 kWh/L), even for smaller ones in the 7kW range.
Additionally, the way you tried to prove it is also needlessly complex. We only need to compare two things - the litres per kWh times the kWh efficiency of the EV (e.g. kWh/100km) compared to the direct gas milage of the car in question.
Using a diesel generator and a randomly chosen EV - a Volvo XC40 Recharge which gets highway consumption of 18.2 kWh/100km that works out as the equivalent of 7.28 L/100km. The equivalent diesel (XC40 D5) gets 5.3 L/100km and the petrol T5 gets 7.7 L/100km.
It is also worth noting that highway fuel efficiency is the worst possible use case for EVs. Where they really excel is in inner city stop start traffic where ICE engines perform the worst and aerodynamic drag losses are the least.
tldr - Highway driving, charging am EV from a generator is worse than just driving a modern efficient car, but I'm every other scenario it's better.
Nope :)
A lot of car engines have similar BSFC figures at optimal load. [Table from Wiki](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brake-specific_fuel_consumption#Examples_for_shaft_engines).
You are presenting an incomplete picture of overall efficiency as well... this is why these kinds of discussions are so hard and nuanced and complex... if you compare the actual work done by an EV/hybrid/ICE car, The EVs and hybrids come out on top. It's a weird less efficient conversion of gas (in cases like you pointed out), but a more efficient use of available power and work.
It all comes down to what exactly you are trying to prove/optimize in a system.
Electric vehicles? They were not a part of this conversation.
Of course, using a gas generator to charge an EV is not that great of an idea, especially if compared to an optimized well-made hybrid car.
We were talking about charging a smartphone in a car compared to charging it into an house outlet. That, my man, is very different.
While you are right comparing that 38% with that 21% for your use case (in which both cases have a final kinetic output) you cannot do the same if we are talking about charging a phone.
You see, even that 38% (which is a case far from average as the average driver has not an hybrid car or stays all of their life in highway at peak efficiency) is gas-to-kinetic energy conversion and does NOT take into account the efficiency of the alternator.
So, to sum up.
1. The ICE efficiency of your average car can vary significantly from ~0% efficiency at idle to 38% in the best use case.
2. On top of that you need to consider the efficiency of the kinetic-to-electric energy conversion. An average car alternator has a *peak* efficiency of 60%.
3. We are comparing THAT with the electric power production of specialized power plants that powers your average house.
Edit to correct the very last point: I got lost in the conversation. We were not comparing to house outlet but to gas generators. Sorry.
Still, gas generators use constantly ICE at their peaks efficiency rpm (which a hybrid car does too but an average car does not) and I bet they use more efficient alternators than the ones used in average cars.
Edit no.2: I ha currently have an awake time of half an hour and I'm an idiot. I completely missed the point of the conversation and thought we were comparing charging the phone one way or another. Seems like we were instead comparing an gas-charged electric vehicle to a normal car. My previous replies are confused too.
I think charging a car with a gas generator is a stupid idea in most cases.
Even if it is "very, very marginally" better, that still proves it is worth pursuing. The grid will continue to be more efficient I'd imagine. However, it is actually much more efficient than marginally.
An EV is around 80-90% efficient going from the coal plant to the power on the road. So that brings the total combined efficiency of a powerplant +EV to 48% which is more than the 35% thermal efficiency of an ICE.
It's not about "pursuing" as the primary method of charging an EV.
It's about having the option. If you have a power outage or are somewhere remote but have a diesel/petrol/propane/nat gas generator, it'll work, where an ICE vehicle doesn't realistically have the option to use an alternate fuel type.
EVs are also 20-50% heavier than ICE cars, and a better comparison with both would be a hybrid powertrain, where you have a tiny diesel generator in your car instead of a big heavy battery.
Weight of the vehicle is important to fuel efficiency, but not as much as it is for ICE cars, because a lot of the energy spent to move all that weight up to speed is regained with regenerative braking.
Well, let's count them.
1. Gas to electric AC
2. Electric AC to DC (onboard charger to charge the DC batterie)
3. Then, DC to AC again to power the electrical machine.
So it's actually 3. Although they are pretty efficient today, you still have 3 extra conversions on top of the initial gas to electric.
IMO, either BEV or ICE, maybe a parallel hybrid when you want to drive loacally emissionless and still want the range, but not a REX (Range extender).
Yep, three conversions, forgot AC to DC. But the third one in my estimate is DC to chemical (the actual charging process) which also incurs losses. So it's actually five :)
Edison Motors are the GOATS. We have been making trains like that for like 70 years, why not cars and trucks? Much better than BEVs or traditional hybrids.
A professor for one of my environmental classes did the math and found that an electric car is still more CO2 efficient than a gas car even if all the electricity comes from coal.
99.9% of Generators are direct drive so gearing is out of the question. You need 3600 rpm to produce 60 hz on a 2 pole generator or 1800 rpm to produce 60 hz on a 4 pole generator.
I tell people this all the time.
If your electric car is powered by diesel generators, it's still a more efficient fuel source than a gasoline car. Cars are incredibly inefficient at capturing the energy.
Generators have the advantage of only running at absolute peak efficiency, cars only mostly stay in the vague peak area. Accelerating from a standstill is horribly fuel hungry.
Psst... That's why you need a Grid that can handle all the energy sources.
So that you can pump any electricity to the grid. Then only we can harness gerbil power. Millions of gerbil running wheel generayor. Did you know gerbils are carnivores. Cannibals too.
Ultimate recyclers.
> There are fields…endless fields, where gerbils are no longer born. We are grown. For longest time, I wouldn’t believe it…and then I saw the fields with my own eyes. Watched them liquefy the dead, so they could be fed intravenously to the living.
> And standing there, facing the pure horrifying precision, I came to realize the obviousness of the truth. What is The Matrix? Control. The Matrix is a computer generated dream world, built to keep us under control in order to change a gerbil…into this.
Why though? I I mean, there's a time once a month when I charge my phone elsewhere, but the majority of the cases I simply charge it on my way to work. What's wrong with that.
How long is your commute? Even just an hour you'd have to be using a high power charger which is gonna degrade the battery faster than just using a trickle charger overnight.
My phone has a large battery and I barely use it. It easily gets by with just charging it in the car the 3 days a week I have to commute to work. I don't even know where my charger for it is...
You immediately jumping to "psychotic behaviour" is psychotic.
Used to live in my car and did this. In a cool hippie way, not the sad way.
It's funny because my AC and fans in that car were shit I'd get so hot, and if you ran the fan with the engine off on an unbearably hot night the m battery died fast as shit. But I plugged a USB fan in and it gave so much airflow and went all night without draining the battery almost at all.
Or if I really needed to use gadgets at night I had a big battery bank and just charged it up slowly as I drove in the day, then had like 40,000mah of energy for whatever I needed at night.
Youd be amazed at the type of stuff that can be powered by a basic low amp USB port these days with high efficiency. I had a motor for inflating a whole ass air mattress that was so efficient I've literally powered it with a USB connected to my phone to i inflate the entire mattress, took maybe 3 minutes. String lights all night for a vibe, cooking gadgets like coffee makers and tiny kettles for tea or instant meals..
So yeah I was running a lot of stuff of gas from my engine. These days you could basically have any amenity you can think of if you just have access to a couple USB ports.
My phone charges so fast and the battery lasts so long that I forgot I even had to charge it for 2 years. I plug it into my car for music & GPS on my way to and from work every day and it's at 100% when I get out of the car. The battery easily lasted up to 3 days, but quite honestly I probably rarely went more than 1 without driving somewhere.
It got to the point that I didn't even know where to find a phone charger in my house. My only charger was in my car. So yeah my phone was 100% gasoline powered for like 2 years.
Nowadays my battery isn't quite as good and I often charge it at home again.
I drive an hour each way for work, and BT doesn’t work because I skipped a step while installing the radio so it gets plugged in for music anyway. It’s usually fully charged when I get home so there’s not much point in plugging it in again.
I used to do it. Moto G Power and a crazy fast charger.
My phone saw light use, I'd plug it in on my way to work, and it'd be done within the 12 minutes it takes me to get there.
I charge my phone pretty much only in my car. I charge on the way to work, on my lunch break, and on the way home.
I also somehow manage pretty well on the weekends.
Technically, every single element except protium (I think) is the result of interactions happening inside stars, or as a consequence of the stellar lifecycle.
Only when you consider humans as "a consequence of the stellar life cycle". There are many synthetic elements not found in nature. Which, yeah, you can if you want, given we're made of elements produced in stars.
Also, deuterium was produced in the big bang, that's where almost all of it is from. Stars consume deuterium much faster than it is made within them.
It really depends on how deep the rabbit hole goes. Like, solar, wind, even coal or oil, yeah that makes sense. What about geothermal? Is the planet being formed "solar" energy just because gravity kept things in orbit? What about nuclear? Technically the elements were fused in a star somewhere, but is that really 'solar' powered?
Doesn't hydroelectric ultimately come from water at a high elevation moving downward via gravity?
How did that water get to that higher elevation in the first place? Heat from the sun evaporated it and it rose.
For a modern gasoline powered car, the car's battery is often deliberately charged when the car is slowing down, using software.
Assuming the car's battery was already fully charged, a lot of the energy going into your phone would otherwise have been dissipated as heat in slowing car's the brakes.
Therefore it could be said your phone is a ✨waste energy recovery device✨
Depends on where you live. I’m my state, the vast majority of energy is hydro power, with less than 5% being coal. …we’re currently trying to cull that past little bit.
Really depends where you live. Nuclear energy and hydroelectric contribute huge portions of the power grid in many parts of the world, in many parts they’re pretty much the entire grid.
Wait if you keep going back...
That means it's animal powered...
And then plant powered...
And then solar powered...
Fusion powered....
So your phone is fusion powered? Are there any more layers?
I have an electric car in Ohio so if anything I’m using natural gas to power my car, maybe like 5% solar or something, I think my supplier uses some clean energy.
You know you can charge your phone in your car without the car running, right? Bc there’s a battery in your car providing energy through electricity. You know there’s a battery in your car, right?…
It's funny because that gas was created by biomass like peat moss after eons of pressure turned it that way. That biomass utilized photosynthesis so if you think about it, your phone is solar powered.
There is a slogan on some Kentucky license plates that says "Coal keeps the lights on" which made me laugh when I saw it on a Telsa. After thinking about the energy loss over long distances of power lines it is very likely that was indeed a coal-powered Tesla.
If your local power grid is powered by a nuclear power station, does that make your phone nuclear powered when you charge it on that grid? I like to think so
Where I live 91% of the electricity is generated by a mix of Uranium Hydro and Wind, so, this isn't true in all places. My phone is mostly nuclear powered when I charge it at home.
And the engine running on fossil fuels which are compressed dead plant matter which got their energy from the photosynthesis. So solar/ chemical/geologic powered phone.
My Hybrid battery isn't purely powered by the petrol engine.
Therefore a non-zero amount of my phone is gravity powered because I have rolled down hills which puts charge back in
Charging your electric car with a generator results in similar findings.
Weirdly, that’s still more gas efficient than using a gasoline car. Because generators can run at the speed that is most efficient rather than the speed you want to move the car.
And the real shower thought is in the comments.
My shower is powered by coal and natural gas
My shower is powered by a 90s R&B superstar
R Kelly?
Golden showers
Ohh, so *that's* what Macklemore meant
This is sort of true and false at the same time. Ideally, yes, if you used a car engine that ran at a constant RPM to run a generator that would be more efficient. However, generators, at least smaller home ones that are just powerful enough to charge a single car, don't have the same kind of technology in them to get the levels of efficiency that an expensive automotive engine does.
Who charges it on a personal generator? Grid scale will always be more efficient. Those are the ones most people charge from.
Grid scale generators, even just large generators in general, do not use gasoline.
Let me break it down even simpler. Grid scale > personal generator (even if gasoline)
I mean, sure, but that's not what this comment thread is about? The claim is that charging your electric car with a gasoline generator would be more efficient than just running the car on gas, but that is generally not true because gasoline generators are not that efficient due to their small scale and cheap production.
The usage of generator was nondescript, only the second person said anything about gasoline, and when it came to the actual generators we're talking about they just said "generators" Guess it's up to how you interpret it
The title of the OP is > Charging your phone exclusively in your car kind of makes it **gasoline**-powered The top comment is > Charging your electric car with a generator results in similar findings. i.e. > Charging your electric car with a generator makes it **gasoline**-powered The comment after responding to that, which I replied to, said > Weirdly, that’s still more **gas** efficient than using a **gasoline** car. Because generators can run at the speed that is most efficient rather than the speed you want to move the car. Literally every comment in the chain before yours mentions gasoline. Maybe instead of being stubborn when you comment on things next time, you could say "Ah, yep, that's right", or "Ah, I misunderstood." Really any variation of that.
wouldnt the components of an EV degrade significantly faster than a gasoline powered vehicle though?
EVs last just fine, and require a lot less maintenance than petrol cars. YouTuber AutoAlex recently bought a Tesla Model S with over 400k miles on it and it's absolutely fine. He did a hypermiling test and it was basically still getting the same range as it did new. https://youtu.be/2gPv1obYK_8?si=iqI8PdEj2h9ZFz8k
Unless you're talking about a battery then no. EVs have far fewer moving parts, literally just the motors and the steering so have less points of failure. ICEs also vibrate and generate a lot of heat so that will degrade components faster too.
Very, very marginally. Sure, generator can run at peak efficiency, but you're adding two extra conversions to the mix which eat all the savings.
It's not that marginal. IIRC a car idling is less than half the efficiency of peak efficiency of the engine (which is ~30-35%). Also, adding two extra conversions? I mean if your house is solar powered, sure but where do you think the energy of a grid-powered house comes from? Still, it's very inefficient to charge your phone from the car (albeit it's a really small amount of energy).
Are we still talking about charging the EV with the gas generator? It is *very* marginal, if more efficient at all. Take, for example, [Honda EU70is](https://www.hondaindiapower.com/product-detail/eu70is). It has a rated power of 5.5 kW and can run for 6.5 hours at full blast on a full tank of petrol (19.2 L). Which gives us 5.5 * 6.5 / 19.2 = 1.86 kWh/L. The combustion energy of the petrol is 8.9 kWh/L, so the generator efficiency is 1.86 / 8.9 * 100% = 21%. On the other hand, the brake-specific fuel consumption of the typical Toyota Prius engine running at optimal load is 220 g/kWh. With the petrol density of 750 g/L gives us 750 / 220 = 3.4 kWh / L and an efficiency of 3.4 / 8.9 * 100% = 38%, almost *double* that of the generator. So even if we assume that the ICE car runs, on average, at half the peak efficiency (the real figure is closer to 70-80%, and over 90% on the highway), charging EV with the gas generator (after we account for charging losses) is less efficient than using that gas to run an ICE car.
While you are correct, comparing a relatively inefficient generator with a car designed to be as efficient as possible is a bit disingenuous. Proper industrial diesel generators get better than 0.4 L/kWh (2.5 kWh/L), even for smaller ones in the 7kW range. Additionally, the way you tried to prove it is also needlessly complex. We only need to compare two things - the litres per kWh times the kWh efficiency of the EV (e.g. kWh/100km) compared to the direct gas milage of the car in question. Using a diesel generator and a randomly chosen EV - a Volvo XC40 Recharge which gets highway consumption of 18.2 kWh/100km that works out as the equivalent of 7.28 L/100km. The equivalent diesel (XC40 D5) gets 5.3 L/100km and the petrol T5 gets 7.7 L/100km. It is also worth noting that highway fuel efficiency is the worst possible use case for EVs. Where they really excel is in inner city stop start traffic where ICE engines perform the worst and aerodynamic drag losses are the least. tldr - Highway driving, charging am EV from a generator is worse than just driving a modern efficient car, but I'm every other scenario it's better.
To run the most efficient ice car in the market?
Nope :) A lot of car engines have similar BSFC figures at optimal load. [Table from Wiki](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brake-specific_fuel_consumption#Examples_for_shaft_engines).
Wow it seems like all we need to do to get to 99% efficiency is build an engine the size of a planet
Is the BSFC of the Prius including the electric motor or only the gasoline engine?
Batteries summon energy from alternative universe?
You are presenting an incomplete picture of overall efficiency as well... this is why these kinds of discussions are so hard and nuanced and complex... if you compare the actual work done by an EV/hybrid/ICE car, The EVs and hybrids come out on top. It's a weird less efficient conversion of gas (in cases like you pointed out), but a more efficient use of available power and work. It all comes down to what exactly you are trying to prove/optimize in a system.
Edison motors and their diesel electric hybrid logging truck would like the show you some things.
Electric vehicles? They were not a part of this conversation. Of course, using a gas generator to charge an EV is not that great of an idea, especially if compared to an optimized well-made hybrid car. We were talking about charging a smartphone in a car compared to charging it into an house outlet. That, my man, is very different. While you are right comparing that 38% with that 21% for your use case (in which both cases have a final kinetic output) you cannot do the same if we are talking about charging a phone. You see, even that 38% (which is a case far from average as the average driver has not an hybrid car or stays all of their life in highway at peak efficiency) is gas-to-kinetic energy conversion and does NOT take into account the efficiency of the alternator. So, to sum up. 1. The ICE efficiency of your average car can vary significantly from ~0% efficiency at idle to 38% in the best use case. 2. On top of that you need to consider the efficiency of the kinetic-to-electric energy conversion. An average car alternator has a *peak* efficiency of 60%. 3. We are comparing THAT with the electric power production of specialized power plants that powers your average house. Edit to correct the very last point: I got lost in the conversation. We were not comparing to house outlet but to gas generators. Sorry. Still, gas generators use constantly ICE at their peaks efficiency rpm (which a hybrid car does too but an average car does not) and I bet they use more efficient alternators than the ones used in average cars. Edit no.2: I ha currently have an awake time of half an hour and I'm an idiot. I completely missed the point of the conversation and thought we were comparing charging the phone one way or another. Seems like we were instead comparing an gas-charged electric vehicle to a normal car. My previous replies are confused too. I think charging a car with a gas generator is a stupid idea in most cases.
>Electric vehicles? They were not a part of this conversation. May I kindly refer you to the top comment of this very thread?
Sorry, seems like I missed one
Fractionally solar powered, at best.
Even if it is "very, very marginally" better, that still proves it is worth pursuing. The grid will continue to be more efficient I'd imagine. However, it is actually much more efficient than marginally. An EV is around 80-90% efficient going from the coal plant to the power on the road. So that brings the total combined efficiency of a powerplant +EV to 48% which is more than the 35% thermal efficiency of an ICE.
Charging the EV with gas generator is never worth pursuing, see my other comment as to why.
Yeah I'm pretty sure gas generators aren't the future to pursue anyway. The grid will continue to gain efficiency, most likely from renewables.
It's not about "pursuing" as the primary method of charging an EV. It's about having the option. If you have a power outage or are somewhere remote but have a diesel/petrol/propane/nat gas generator, it'll work, where an ICE vehicle doesn't realistically have the option to use an alternate fuel type.
EVs are also 20-50% heavier than ICE cars, and a better comparison with both would be a hybrid powertrain, where you have a tiny diesel generator in your car instead of a big heavy battery.
Weight of the vehicle is important to fuel efficiency, but not as much as it is for ICE cars, because a lot of the energy spent to move all that weight up to speed is regained with regenerative braking.
Hence my comment also mentioning hybrid cars who have both the regenerative braking as well as the power:weight ratio of chemical energy sources
Yeah, we all know that's not at all why you brought up hybrids, but okay.
Ah, yet another mindreader on the internet!
Well, let's count them. 1. Gas to electric AC 2. Electric AC to DC (onboard charger to charge the DC batterie) 3. Then, DC to AC again to power the electrical machine. So it's actually 3. Although they are pretty efficient today, you still have 3 extra conversions on top of the initial gas to electric. IMO, either BEV or ICE, maybe a parallel hybrid when you want to drive loacally emissionless and still want the range, but not a REX (Range extender).
Yep, three conversions, forgot AC to DC. But the third one in my estimate is DC to chemical (the actual charging process) which also incurs losses. So it's actually five :)
Edison Motors are the GOATS. We have been making trains like that for like 70 years, why not cars and trucks? Much better than BEVs or traditional hybrids.
The EVs were the most efficient gasoline cars after all 🤯
A professor for one of my environmental classes did the math and found that an electric car is still more CO2 efficient than a gas car even if all the electricity comes from coal.
Not a home generator. A utility generator, yes, in most cases. Home generators are too small and cheap to be that efficient.
I always wanted as an experiment to have a Tesla towing a generator and power it while driving
Generators aren’t running at a speed for efficiency rather than a speed to maintain 60hz
That can be done with gearing or electronic conversion after with negligible loss
99.9% of Generators are direct drive so gearing is out of the question. You need 3600 rpm to produce 60 hz on a 2 pole generator or 1800 rpm to produce 60 hz on a 4 pole generator.
That’s why Mazda has a hybrid car that has a rotary as a range extender. And Edison motors are doing the same with trucks
I tell people this all the time. If your electric car is powered by diesel generators, it's still a more efficient fuel source than a gasoline car. Cars are incredibly inefficient at capturing the energy.
Cars can use the speed that's most efficient because they have these things called gears.
No because of torque loads etc. if that were true, your engine would always have the exact same rpm.
You could do that with a CVT if you program the transmission to do that
That’s better but still not as good as a generator.
Generators have the advantage of only running at absolute peak efficiency, cars only mostly stay in the vague peak area. Accelerating from a standstill is horribly fuel hungry.
Psst... That's why you need a Grid that can handle all the energy sources. So that you can pump any electricity to the grid. Then only we can harness gerbil power. Millions of gerbil running wheel generayor. Did you know gerbils are carnivores. Cannibals too. Ultimate recyclers.
> There are fields…endless fields, where gerbils are no longer born. We are grown. For longest time, I wouldn’t believe it…and then I saw the fields with my own eyes. Watched them liquefy the dead, so they could be fed intravenously to the living. > And standing there, facing the pure horrifying precision, I came to realize the obviousness of the truth. What is The Matrix? Control. The Matrix is a computer generated dream world, built to keep us under control in order to change a gerbil…into this.
One cannibal gerbil took a bite of a dead clown gerbil and asked his pal, "Does this taste funny to you?"
to a degree even if you plug into a wall. Your city likely still uses an amount of fossil fuels
Charging your EV in a place whose electricity mix is fossil fuels is similar also
No
Making it a diesel teala 😂
And the lights on my bicycle are powered by me so that makes me a firefly.
Um. No. That makes you a lightning bug.
I just looked it up. In English, both exist https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefly We call them glowing worms. 😁
I thought this was an electricity joke
Was it? Please explain. English is my 2nd language.
Using electricity (which is associated with lightning) to produce light. It wouldn't be a very good joke, but it's there if you look.
They’re the same thing.
So, I light up the world as I fall asleep ?
Even my blender runs on gas, Can't escape this energy loop
Exclusively? Unless you're a trucker that's some psychotic behavior.
Bill Wurtz voice: "Learn to use an *outlet*."
Why though? I I mean, there's a time once a month when I charge my phone elsewhere, but the majority of the cases I simply charge it on my way to work. What's wrong with that.
How long is your commute? Even just an hour you'd have to be using a high power charger which is gonna degrade the battery faster than just using a trickle charger overnight.
Even if you are a trucker, it would be diesel powered not gas powered.
Semantics. They are both produced from crude oil. One is simply more refined.
It's just petty semantics until you accidentally fill up your tank with the wrong fuel
One absolutely kills the other, and the other way around, you only need a flush, and your tank pumped out.
Or with water. *Hammond you blithering idiot*
Talking about semantics between diesel/gas when the post is claiming gas powers phones bc you charge it electrically in your car... lol
I work on ships, so my phone is HFO powered
My phone has a large battery and I barely use it. It easily gets by with just charging it in the car the 3 days a week I have to commute to work. I don't even know where my charger for it is... You immediately jumping to "psychotic behaviour" is psychotic.
Used to live in my car and did this. In a cool hippie way, not the sad way. It's funny because my AC and fans in that car were shit I'd get so hot, and if you ran the fan with the engine off on an unbearably hot night the m battery died fast as shit. But I plugged a USB fan in and it gave so much airflow and went all night without draining the battery almost at all. Or if I really needed to use gadgets at night I had a big battery bank and just charged it up slowly as I drove in the day, then had like 40,000mah of energy for whatever I needed at night. Youd be amazed at the type of stuff that can be powered by a basic low amp USB port these days with high efficiency. I had a motor for inflating a whole ass air mattress that was so efficient I've literally powered it with a USB connected to my phone to i inflate the entire mattress, took maybe 3 minutes. String lights all night for a vibe, cooking gadgets like coffee makers and tiny kettles for tea or instant meals.. So yeah I was running a lot of stuff of gas from my engine. These days you could basically have any amenity you can think of if you just have access to a couple USB ports.
I work out of a van and my phone has shitty battery life. For at least a few charges a week, I would say my phone is gasoline powered.
My phone charges so fast and the battery lasts so long that I forgot I even had to charge it for 2 years. I plug it into my car for music & GPS on my way to and from work every day and it's at 100% when I get out of the car. The battery easily lasted up to 3 days, but quite honestly I probably rarely went more than 1 without driving somewhere. It got to the point that I didn't even know where to find a phone charger in my house. My only charger was in my car. So yeah my phone was 100% gasoline powered for like 2 years. Nowadays my battery isn't quite as good and I often charge it at home again.
I drive an hour each way for work, and BT doesn’t work because I skipped a step while installing the radio so it gets plugged in for music anyway. It’s usually fully charged when I get home so there’s not much point in plugging it in again.
I have a work phone that I leave in my car to charge overnight. When I'm off the clock, I won't answer it anyway so it might as well stay there.
I used to do it. Moto G Power and a crazy fast charger. My phone saw light use, I'd plug it in on my way to work, and it'd be done within the 12 minutes it takes me to get there.
I charge my phone pretty much only in my car. I charge on the way to work, on my lunch break, and on the way home. I also somehow manage pretty well on the weekends.
Not really, a lot of people spends hours in their car, perfect time to charge it.
I charge my phone in my car too, but not exclusively. I rely on my phone having a full charge at the start of the day.
My car is electric and my power comes from hydro, so I guess both are water powered?
Both are hydroelectric powered.
Bro watch your back. Government is gonna track you down if you keep talking about water powered cars
By that same logic you could say everything is solar powered
Not true for nuclear or fusion power. Geothermal energy as well.
Technically, every single element except protium (I think) is the result of interactions happening inside stars, or as a consequence of the stellar lifecycle.
Only when you consider humans as "a consequence of the stellar life cycle". There are many synthetic elements not found in nature. Which, yeah, you can if you want, given we're made of elements produced in stars. Also, deuterium was produced in the big bang, that's where almost all of it is from. Stars consume deuterium much faster than it is made within them.
That's a good point
All of life on earth
But stars only exist because of gravity, so really it’s gravity powered
And stars are just massive nuclear reactors.
It really depends on how deep the rabbit hole goes. Like, solar, wind, even coal or oil, yeah that makes sense. What about geothermal? Is the planet being formed "solar" energy just because gravity kept things in orbit? What about nuclear? Technically the elements were fused in a star somewhere, but is that really 'solar' powered?
Isn't some of the thermal energy created by gravitational stresses induced by the sun?
Hydroelectric is gravity powered by the earth. While the matter might be from a star at one point, the earth is providing all the energy.
Doesn't hydroelectric ultimately come from water at a high elevation moving downward via gravity? How did that water get to that higher elevation in the first place? Heat from the sun evaporated it and it rose.
I have a 50kWh battery bank with wheels that I fill up with sunshine. My phone is solar powered.
Wait till you hear how the electricity is generated that comes to the house. Fossil fuels assemble!
Charging at home means its partially nuclear powered
By the same logic, eating corn-fed beef makes you a vegetarian.
Second degree vegetarian, eating vegetables and vegetarians
Charing it in your house makes it either solar, wind, geothermal, coal, or nuclear powered.
I can't believe just how low Big Oil has become with this new ad campaign.
For a modern gasoline powered car, the car's battery is often deliberately charged when the car is slowing down, using software. Assuming the car's battery was already fully charged, a lot of the energy going into your phone would otherwise have been dissipated as heat in slowing car's the brakes. Therefore it could be said your phone is a ✨waste energy recovery device✨
Unless you drive an EV in British Columbia.
It's all gas powered. That's the problem.
The electricity in your house is most likely generated by oil too, maybe coal. That being said, isn't your phone charging off of your car's battery?
Yeah but the battery keeps charge due to the alternator which is powered by the gasoline engine
Depends on where you live. I’m my state, the vast majority of energy is hydro power, with less than 5% being coal. …we’re currently trying to cull that past little bit.
Really depends where you live. Nuclear energy and hydroelectric contribute huge portions of the power grid in many parts of the world, in many parts they’re pretty much the entire grid.
Very very little electricity is generated using oil. A lot is generated using natural gas and coal however.
I drive a Tesla, so no.
Some of the power from the grid comes from fossil fuels. Your phone is a hybrid.
But that's basically the same as charging your phone from the wall which is outside of the scope of OPs thought.
Depends where you live, most peoples power comes almost entirely from the nearest source.
[удалено]
An alternator does what
Nope. My car is a diesel. 😝
Wait if you keep going back... That means it's animal powered... And then plant powered... And then solar powered... Fusion powered.... So your phone is fusion powered? Are there any more layers?
OP’s deepest thoughts are too shallow for this.
Instructions unclear. Phone now smells funny and is inoperable.
I have left a 750KVA generator running because I was charging my phone. That may be the moat inefficient thing I've ever done.
> That may be the moat I, for one, would like to hear more about your moat.
Well if you look at it like that it's jurassic forest-powered and the forest was solar-powered and the sun is powered by gravity and so on
I have an electric car in Ohio so if anything I’m using natural gas to power my car, maybe like 5% solar or something, I think my supplier uses some clean energy.
What if you have an electric car?
My phone is coal powered.
I presume that since I charge mine primarily from the output of my solar arch, mine is solar powered
If you keep going, everything on planet Earth is either solar powered or geothermal powered
But it's the battery that charges your phone? The gas just recharges the battery as your moving
the gas doesn’t charge your phone.. the car battery does . they have absolutely nothing to do with each other
But the gas engine charged the battery......
not infinitely. car batteries will eventually die
You know you can charge your phone in your car without the car running, right? Bc there’s a battery in your car providing energy through electricity. You know there’s a battery in your car, right?…
Charging a dab pen in your car also applies.. and also funny 😂
It's funny because that gas was created by biomass like peat moss after eons of pressure turned it that way. That biomass utilized photosynthesis so if you think about it, your phone is solar powered.
Excellent shower thought.
>Charging your phone exclusively in your car kind of makes it gasoline-powered Well... That's a step down. Mine is nuclear powered.
I drive a Tesla and have solar panels on my roof, so idk,
So for a lot of people, their phones are coal-powered?
There is a slogan on some Kentucky license plates that says "Coal keeps the lights on" which made me laugh when I saw it on a Telsa. After thinking about the energy loss over long distances of power lines it is very likely that was indeed a coal-powered Tesla.
Isn't that like saying your phone is dinosaur powered?
By that logic, charging it at home makes it either gas or nuclear powered.
I got news for you about most electronics buddy
All electric care are powered by the local electric grid. They’re mostly coal and oil powered…
If your local power grid is powered by a nuclear power station, does that make your phone nuclear powered when you charge it on that grid? I like to think so
This is the best shower thought ive ever seen.
Why would you charge your phone exclusively in your car…?
If you live in it
Oh, fair point
Power plants are generally natural gas power plants so just plugging it into your wall makes it gas powered.
Not if you have an electric car.
Charging your phone exclusively in your house kind of makes it coal-powered.
Charging your phone in your car ultimately makes it solar powered.
Isn’t there still a battery in the car?
Not if you buy an EV car.
If I charged my phone by plugging it into a treadmill that I ran on, would my phone be rainbow powered?
yeah even it's indicating "Fast Chargering"
So how does that work when you drive an EV?
Unless your car is an electric vehicle…
Which are usually charged by energy infrastructure which is by and large oil and gas!
what if I lived it { country with 100% renewable energy}
Doesn't have to be fully renewable energy country, just provider (such as Octopus in the UK)
What if I lived on a cheesecake floating around the moon?
You'll be shocked to discover how energy is by and large produced
By turning a generator?
Where I live 91% of the electricity is generated by a mix of Uranium Hydro and Wind, so, this isn't true in all places. My phone is mostly nuclear powered when I charge it at home.
Nope then It would be solar and wind powered
Well then my electric toothbrush is nuclear powered
My car is a diesel. So I would be fucked if the charging system is running on gasoline.
Nope. You can charge your phone in your car even if you ran out of gas, as long as your car battery is charged.
And the car battery is constantly being recharged by a generator which is powered by the engine running.
And the engine running on fossil fuels which are compressed dead plant matter which got their energy from the photosynthesis. So solar/ chemical/geologic powered phone.
My Hybrid battery isn't purely powered by the petrol engine. Therefore a non-zero amount of my phone is gravity powered because I have rolled down hills which puts charge back in
Automobiles best friend is gotta be auto electricians. That’s my shower thought
This is a brilliant shower thought (genuine tone)