So our dear readers write in to a screaming Czar about mechanical efficiencies when they have access to a time traveling robot?!?! Go figure. Well, before I dive into it, I’ll let GorT, Sr. chime in:

I believe [the Czar] has ignored the efficiency of generating the electricity that charges the cars. I can’t believe the 97% – 93% numbers include generating losses, let alone transmission and charging inefficiencies. Just looking at the thermodynamics laws that state that your efficiency (of any heat engine) is a function of the hot side temperature and the low side (sink) temperature measured in absolute degrees. Since even a gas turbine can’t reject heat into absolute zero – it’s more like 500° K or so. The efficiency is the area enclosed by the engine cycle on a temperature-entropy plot if my memory serves me right. Checking the databanks, I find 45-50% efficiencies for the most advanced coal plants. If you include a maximum of 50% to generate the electricity, that would collapse the efficiencies of electric vehicles compared to gasoline powered cars.

Further research shows that nominal coal and oil-fired plants run about 33% efficient and combined-cycle gas-fired plants can run as high as 50%.

GorT

GorT is an eight-foot-tall robot from the 51ˢᵗ Century who routinely time-travels to steal expensive technology from the future and return it to the past for retroinvention. The profits from this pay all the Gormogons’ bills, including subsidizing this website. Some of the products he has introduced from the future include oven mitts, the Guinness widget, Oxy-Clean, and Dr. Pepper. Due to his immense cybernetic brain, GorT is able to produce a post in 0.023 seconds and research it in even less time. Only ’Puter spends less time on research. GorT speaks entirely in zeros and ones, but occasionally throws in a ڭ to annoy the Volgi. He is a massive proponent of science, technology, and energy development, and enjoys nothing more than taking the Czar’s more interesting scientific theories, going into the past, publishing them as his own, and then returning to take credit for them. He is the only Gormogon who is capable of doing math. Possessed of incredible strength, he understands the awesome responsibility that follows and only uses it to hurt people.