There are a lot-o cars in the world at last count. According to the current statistics there are enough cars in the US for every man, woman, and child in the US to drive a car. With the rapid development of the 3rd world the number of automobiles in the world is likely to geometrically increase over the next several years.
Taking a look at the power consumption of cars should be a very important task for me and everyone. So the first major analysis is going to be of the amount of energy that goes into the creation and running of a typical motor vehicle. This analysis is going to take into account several things that aren't normally accounted for in quick analyses of products.
Here is a quick list of the things I intend to review:
- Cost of manufacturing.
- Cost to transport the car from the factory.
- Cost to create the fuel, and the fuel storage system in the case of batteries and in other cases.
- Cost to run the vehicle based on the average driven millage in the United States.
Cost is going to be defined as the ‘energy’ cost for the vehicle. I’m going to break it down into work or Joules for those of you that are interested. That way everything will be on a level playing field and we can compare apples to apples, instead of ourang-outang to amoeba.