Originally Posted by
cwatters
...
Also, an electric car is far more efficient than a gasoline car...
The primary advantage of the electric car is regenerative braking, wherein the drive motor(s) become a generator to recharge the battery. This advantage is greatest of course in stop-and-go city driving.
On the highway either you have to stop fairly often to recharge, or else have a small engine to keep you charged enroute (i.e. hybrid), and so the advantage is less.
Somewhere there's a chart of cost of energy per million BTU (Petrol, coal, diesel fuel, natural gas, domestic electricity...) that should quickly point out the cheapest energy sources.
