Electric Vehicles and Carbon Emission Info

[glippy]

Air quality isn't the only factor in fuel choice though.

I'd rather give my energy dollars to Virginia coal miners than religious nut-job oil barons who stone their daughters to death for being raped.

Another factor is security. I can make electricity myself a lot easier than I can make gasoline, should rationing ever come back for however short a time. The price of electricity doesn't fluctuate nearly as much.

And there's simplicity. Electric motors are a lot simpler than internal combustion engines and surely must be a lot less maintenance, no?

[samclem]

Quote:

Originally Posted by glippy And there's simplicity. Electric motors are a lot simpler than internal combustion engines and surely must be a lot less maintenance, no?

I dunno. I would have agreed with you with the technology 30 years ago, (points, frequent spark plug changes/gapping, carb adjustments, expected rebuild at 80K miles) but not today. Internal combustion engines are super reliable, it's generally the stuff we connect to them (transmissions, Ac compressors, power steering, etc) that breaks, and an electric car's versions of the same thing will likely break just as often. And no one ever has to rewind an IC engine. And then there's the battery issue.

[clifp]

The marketing of the EV is shamefully misleading, if the government wasn't one the biggest cheerleaders, (not to mention with government motors an investor) it would likely be slapped down by the FTC.

It has been a disturbing trend that "green" products get a pass on government regulations that other products are subject to. For example the GAO study that showed that the EPA will grant Energy Star stickers to made up and ridiculous products.

The massive subsidies to EV/Hybrid maybe a necessary evil to provide a sufficient market to allow economies of scale to bring down the cost of batteries and such. However, we really need to have intelligent policy which looks at all factors (such as the CO2 contribution of coal plants).

I love the idea of reducing our dependence on foreign oil largely produced by very bad regimes who generally hate us. But before we jump head long into this we need to think and long and hard, are we gaining a lot by reducing oil consumption, if we then become dependent on China to mine all of the rare earth metals needed for battery production.

Lets take some of the subsidies given to wealthy individual for purchasing EV, so they can feel good about being green, and give it to things like high use fleet vehicles, encouraging the mining of rare earth metals in the US, adding nuclear power plants, and of course boring old conservation.