Dennis
Established Member
With the launch of the Nissan Leaf, and with other manufacturers soon to follow, electric cars now seem to be entering the mainstream. One thing concerns we - do we have enough generating capacity to run these?
From the sales blurb, it takes ~1kW to cover a mile. Accepted average car mileage per year is 12 000 and there are just over 30 million cars on the road in the UK. So, if everyone was to switch to electric cars, an extra 360 000 gigawatts of electricity are going to be consumed each year (if everyone drives Nissan Leafs!).
Do we have the capacity or is the price of electricity going to rise immensely? Is this going to affect the long term economics of electrification?
From the sales blurb, it takes ~1kW to cover a mile. Accepted average car mileage per year is 12 000 and there are just over 30 million cars on the road in the UK. So, if everyone was to switch to electric cars, an extra 360 000 gigawatts of electricity are going to be consumed each year (if everyone drives Nissan Leafs!).
Do we have the capacity or is the price of electricity going to rise immensely? Is this going to affect the long term economics of electrification?