Science Forums 2

[Moontanman]

Originally Posted by Boerseun

Electric cars won't achieve anything, unless charged with clean power. If your grid is fed with coal- or oil burning plants, you're simply transporting the pollution somewhere else. The powerplant now has to burn more coal because you've purchased an electric "environmentally friendly" car. Which achieves nada - the plant will have to burn more energy to produce your charge than you would have gotten in a full tank of gas, producing more pollution.

Switching to electric vehicles without changing our entire electricity supply source from fossil to nuclear or renewable/non-polluting is utterly pointless.

If an entire city were to switch to electric, and everybody parked their cars in their garages, plugged them in so they can be ready and charged for the morning commute, it will completely crash the grid. Charging an electric vehicle is no small feat, not even close to anything you charge on a daily basis. An electric vehicle is not a cellphone. Due to the energy requirements to shift a couple of tons around town for a few hundred miles, it will suck the grid to kingdom come. I bet if you plug in your car you'll hear your electric meter ticking from miles away. People are switching to energy saving lightbulbs, because they might save a few pennies on using lower Wattage per bulb, but are willing to purchase an electric vehicle that will make your meter run as if you've got ten ovens running on full blast for ten hours at a stretch, every day. If every house in every street had ten ovens running full-blast, the grid will crash.

Swithching to electric without re-engineering the entire electricity supply grid, from source to domestic power outlet, is futile and pointless - the grid can't handle it.

Hydrogen is the way to go, if we can get a cheaper and easier way of splittin' those pesky and sticky H atoms of the fat O than electrolysis - which also, once again, merely transports the pollution, making the point rather moot.

The most obvious answer would be to drive less. Shop over the net, telecommute, and when you actually have to go somewhere, use a bicycle if close by, or public transport.

Actually, if you had watched the NOVA show you would have found out that charging an electric car at night not only costs very little (a little over a dollar a night) but since it is being charged in off peak time it actually allows the power company to maintain a more efficient power supply. I thought it was counterintuitive as well but that is what they said.