“The bicycle is the most efficient machine ever created. Converting calories into gas, a bicycle gets the equivalent of three thousand miles per gallon.”
In the case of cars with infernal combustion engines, it’s even worse. Even for very efficient road car engines, more than 50% of the energy in the fuel is expelled as waste heat, through either the exhaust or cooling system. Of that smaller than 50% fraction, indeed most of the energy is spent overcoming aerodynamic drag of the car body, and friction from the tires.
Sidenote: F1 made headlines a while back they had achieved >50% thermal efficiency, with an incredibly complicated hybrid system that recovered excess exhaust energy from the turbo.
Nice
It gets better: a human on a bike is the most efficient mode of locomotion there is in terms of mass moved per unit of energy invested.
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In the case of cars with infernal combustion engines, it’s even worse. Even for very efficient road car engines, more than 50% of the energy in the fuel is expelled as waste heat, through either the exhaust or cooling system. Of that smaller than 50% fraction, indeed most of the energy is spent overcoming aerodynamic drag of the car body, and friction from the tires.
Sidenote: F1 made headlines a while back they had achieved >50% thermal efficiency, with an incredibly complicated hybrid system that recovered excess exhaust energy from the turbo.
Talk about hell on wheels!
Link to source?
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-human-on-a-bicycle-is-among-the-most-efficient-forms-of-travel-in-the/