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Cars Produce More Power than Power Plants

Alexis Madrigal points out that we've got 35 times more horsepower in our cars than in our power plants: "I decided to run the numbers for today's...

Zach Frechette
By Zach FrechetteAug 15, 2009
Zach Frechette
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Alexis Madrigal points out that we've got 35 times more horsepower in our cars than in our power plants: "I decided to run the numbers for today's overpowered vehicle fleet. (The math is below.) Turns out we have something on the order of 51 billion peak horsepower sitting in our driveways. That's an incredible 38,276 gigawatts of power available. That absolutely dwarfs the nameplate capacity of our electrical power plants, which total up to a mere 1,087 gigawatts. In fact, each week of 2008, a horrible year for car sales, almost 38 gigawatts of capacity rolled into the streets of America."

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