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His reply was "but where does the electricity come from?" It comes from coal which is an even worse fossil fuel than oil". So in a way you are using more energy than any fossil fuel run vehicle. I didn't say anything.
Same thing as saying "Where does oil come from? The Middle East.... that means you are funding the enemies with your pickup truck"
If we can get the oil lobbyists to stop blocking the solar initiatives, more people will be charging their EVs through solar power at home. Their cars will be running on the sun. How cool is that?
I have only driven a Tesla Model S for EVs. The car is a rocketship. The fact that it uses no gas makes the deal all the sweeter!
Maybe, but for those of us in the Midwest or East Coast, there often is too little sunlight for at least half the year for solar to be reliable.
The best solution is multi-faceted - better use of solar as well as NUCLEAR power.
Your landlord is more or less right. I don't think burning 1 gallon of oil in the power plant will give me enough electricity to run 30 miles.
What is the logic behind this statement? I would reason that a stationary plant, with scale and none of the space or weight restrictions of a portable engine would be FAR more efficient at extracting energy. Additionally, do you know how much potential energy is actually harnessed from an ICE engine? The average is about 20%, the rest is wasted every time you turn your key.
Electric motors can operate at 85% to 90% efficiency.
We had a debate over this topic. I have been getting very interested in tesla and actually feel as though this is a revolution of some kind. I told him it'd be great when we no longer depend on oil from Arab nations. Less politics, less hatred, better future.
His reply was "but where does the electricity come from?" It comes from coal which is an even worse fossil fuel than oil". So in a way you are using more energy than any fossil fuel run vehicle. I didn't say anything.
Well, a while back I was behind a Prius with two bumper stickers, which said:
RUSH IS RIGHT
and
RUN LIKE REAGAN
Just a hunch that the owner wasn't a 'liberal'.
And, no, you're not 'using more energy'. A power-plant mass-producing energy via coal does so much more efficiently than does a single internal-combustion engine. Thus, the energy extraction from the fossil fuel is significantly more efficient when scaled up, while the pollution released is less (an additional contributing factor here is that it is possible to apply a much better by-product processing/filtration system on a large static building than on a small mobile vehicle).
Beyond all that, it's a red-herring to insinuate that the only worthy pollution-reduction mechanisms are those that eliminate all problematic wastes entirely, as if reducing said wastes alone is not a worthy goal.
1) what percentage of US power comes from wind and solar? Sure, you can name a very long list of alternative sources including hydro, but how much power comes from there, overall?
2) and then there are the batteries. Millions of units to process, recycle, etc. Batteries are poisonous, not just pollutant.
3) most global pollution isn't generated by automobiles. Dealing with the biggest pollution source should be first priority. All the Teslas etc dont even make a dent in the global pollution.
4) but overall there is no disadvantage to driving electric cars, beyond the overrated importance.
If the government passes a law knowingly favoring one industry, it is certainly a lobbied effort. It is common sense that Koch Industries has their tentacles in Oklahoma's government.
Not as long as the oil lobby controls the government.
It's not just Oklahoma, it's a national push by ALEC that is being made nationwide.
Apparently this fellow did not read the instruction manual. This is dangerous for several reasons.
The biggest problem with EVs that I see is they do not actually achieve the advertised range in real life driving conditions. Wind, hills, temperature, use of heat or cooling, number and weight of passengers, and other factors all significantly reduce the actual range in real life conditions. Further, the range indicators do not work well. They tend to drop rather suddenly once you get to about half the indicated range. If it is a pure EV and you run out of power, you cannot simply go get a can of electricity to fill it up, you have to call a lift truck. They also tend to lose a bit of the charge while parked, particularly in cold weather. It is not a lot of loss, but it does not take a lot to cause a problem. If your round trip commute is close to the range of the EV, you will likely not make it home even if you still had half a charge at time of arrival.
They need to make the batteries standard and exchangeable for the EV concept to work. Then you could pop into a fueling station, swap a low battery for a charged one and be on your way in a matter of minutes. If they do that, continue to improve the actual range, and get the price down, they will be very practical. To get the prices down, they need to increase production and sales. To increase sales, they need to make them more practical for a broader spectrum of potential buyers.
They need to make the batteries standard and exchangeable for the EV concept to work. Then you could pop into a fueling station, swap a low battery for a charged one and be on your way in a matter of minutes. If they do that, continue to improve the actual range, and get the price down, they will be very practical. To get the prices down, they need to increase production and sales. To increase sales, they need to make them more practical for a broader spectrum of potential buyers.
The other week I saw a Nissan Leaf parked out in front of a house with on street parking and he had a long extension cord going from the house out to the car...
.
Using an extension that crosses a sidewalk would definitely be illegal here in Montreal, people tripping over them at night would be a concern and in winter extension cords across a sidewalk could prove disastrous for our fleet of sidewalk snowplows.
Spend your time doing something with a better chance of success, like teaching chimps to sing opera.
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