Over 70 percent of the oil used in this county is for transportation. Over 90 percent of the coal is used to make electricity. What does electricity have to do with electricity you might ask? Over 50 billion KWH's of electricity are used to refine oil in the USA alone. That works out to a little over 7.5 kWh's (kilowatt hour)per gallon of gas.(Thanks to  Nissan for that stat) Not to mention the amount of Natural gas that is used to run the distillers at the refinery, about 3 times the electrical energy.  In California, almost 30 percent of the natural gas used by the state goes to refining. We are looking at a huge chunk of the worlds energy output so we can drive our cars.

This does not include the amount of energy needed to pump the oil out of the ground. Right now in California 1.5 percent or our electricity goes to extraction, and that amount will go up as the wells we have get less productive.  There are a number of wells near where I live in Los Angeles, and when the price of oil is up, they start pumping. and when it's down they are turned off. It only requires a small amount of profit as an incentive to turn those wells on. So there is even more electricity/coal in the oil equation.

It does not include the energy to transport the crude from the well to the refinery. The most efficient tankers get about 75 gallons to the mile. That works out to about 31,000 gallons per day of cruising or a little over 400 miles. About one third of world wide shipping is tankers of crude oil. So let's say that about a third of the energy for the worlds shipping is for the transport of oil.

Nor the energy to deliver the finished product from the refinery to the gas station. Then there are all those tanker trucks driving around delivering gas and diesel to the gas stations. looking at the big picture now... there is a lot of petroleum being used just to move the raw product around, and a lot of coal being burned to pump it and refine it. it seems crazy to use so much energy just to extract, refine and deliver a product.

But it gets worse. Remember Hydrogen? it was supposed to be the solution for our transportation energy needs. Without going into details, it's worse than gasoline. The only ways to make it, are by taking petroleum, refining it further and removing the carbon from it. A process that loses some of the energy in the fuel, and takes even more energy to produce. It's a lose/lose situation. The other is the electrolysis of water, using more electricity/coal, about 50 kWh per kilogram produced. A small car would have to carry about 6 kgs of fuel.  That's about 300 kWh's of electricity for a full tank. It's a fuel that need to be compressed to about 10,000 psi to be usable. So add to that the energy to compress the hydrogen, an additional 4 kWh per kilogram. and you get a total of about 324 kWh's. The process is not very efficient, and would require more energy than we would use if we still just drove our cars on gas. On top of that we would need new infrastructure to make, compress and store it. . I wouldn't feel safe with that under my butt. And since it is the smallest molecule it leaks out of everything. You would lose 2 to 5 percent a month.

By now you must be wondering where I'm taking you, and why all the mention of kWh's. Let me tell you about electric cars. Electric motors are super efficient at taking energy and doing work with it. The electric motors used in cars are over 90 percent efficient. The whole system of batteries, charger, motor and controller is over 70 percent efficient. Compare that to a gas car at 17 percent. If we were to just use the energy used to refine a gallon of gas in a car like the Tesla, it would go almost 50 miles. Now think about that for a moment. You mean I could go further on the electricity used to make a gallon of gas than the gas itself.... YES. If you could have a range of 350 miles, the average range for a full tank of gas. you would have to carry about 70 kWh's of electricity. For this comparison I'm using small cars of known ranges. But the comparison does scale up. a bigger car would use more electricity just like it uses more gas now. The difference is that electric cars are more efficient over a broader range of operating conditions. They don't use up energy sitting in traffic!

OK, let's compare. To drive a small gas car 350 miles you would need about 12 gallons of gas, plus the 90 kWh's of electricity it took to make it, plus the 85 cubic feet of natural gas to distill it, plus the fuel and electricity to pump, ship, and deliver said gas. If we used hydrogen from petroleum, we would use even more. Hydrogen from electrolysis, would use 324 kWh's plus new production facilities, infrastructure to deliver and compress, plus more electrical generating capacity to add 1.2 trillion kWh's of coal fired goodness.

The other option is to drive electric cars. 350 miles would be about 70 kWh's. Less electricity than the gas car. Without the gas. If we drove electric, we would produce enough oil in this country to cover our needs, So say goodbye to 1/3 of the ship traffic and it's pollution. Say goodbye to using around 280,000,000 gallons per day in the US alone. And we would use less electricity than we do now. We already have the infrastructure in place to deliver it, it's called an extension cord. Cars could be plugged in at night and provide a convenient way for the power grid to store energy become more efficient, saving even more energy. I drive my car about 50 miles a day, or about 10 kWh's of electricity. most people waste more than that in a day.

You can see why the electric car is not the popular solution. Some very large industries stand to lose a lot of money. even car companies would lose. They would be selling new cars, but electric cars are inherently more dependable, and regenerative braking makes the brakes last forever. Car companies get 40 percent of their profits from replacement parts. That profit would be reduced to tires and accident repairs. Electric motors have one moving part. They would last over half a million miles. As you can see there are lot's of reasons that electric cars are held back. They make too much sense, but not enough dollars.

There is no big money behind the electric car, but there is big money behind everything else. There's profit to be made. Ethanol and Hydrogen have a lot at stake. These are new industries, that would require lots of investment and building and doing things that make them money. Those are cash cows that could be ridden for a long time.