I read a misguided comment yesterday that keeps bothering me.  The complaint against EVs was that their battery packs only hold as much energy as a gallon or two of gas.

Ok.  My Tesla Model 3 has a 75 kWh battery.  A kWh is about 3.6 million joules (Joules is a basic measure of energy) for a total of 270 megajoules.  A gallon of gasoline has roughly 125 megajoules of energy.

So yeah, the Tesla Model 3 holds only as much energy as a couple of gallons of gas.

Yet.  I can go a lot further in my Tesla than anyone can on two gallons of gas, in just about any car.  This isn’t a bad thing about EVs.  You might get 60 miles on your  250 or so megajoules of gasoline energy while an EV will go somewhere around 250 miles.  Four times (4x) the range.

So for every gallon of gas you burn getting from Point A to Point B in a gas car, you will have to burn three more, mostly given off as “waste heat”, in comparison to an EV.  This is the reason it is so much cheaper to operate an EV.

I remember Ellison from back in the 80s.  I always thought he was a Bond-villain type.  The famous joke in the old days was “the difference between God and Larry Ellison is God doesn’t think he is Larry Ellison”.  

This was such a well known joke it became the name of his (unauthorized) biography. Old Larry is still around, and by last count the world’s 3rd richest person, even richer than Jeff Bezos.  And his son is the right winger who took over CBS.  I guess the surveillance state is a great market for the database guys.  Wait until people realize who is paying for all this (hint: we all are).

I’m also sure that while these folks will have access to my comings and goings, I won’t be able to say, peek in on the Ellison’s in any way.

Quote of the day by Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison: “Citizens will be on their best behavior, because we’re constantly recording and reporting everything that is going on” — a dire warning on the erosion of privacy