You know those electric cars we’re all supposed to buy to help the environment? Turns out that, all things considered, and using full lifecycle emissions, electric cars are worse polluters than small, gas-powered vehicles. Which have the advantage of not needing government subsidies to get people interested in buying them.
Oops!
Next time I see a Leaf or one of those ridiculous Smart Cars, I think I’ll pull up along side it and ask the puckered eco-prig driving it why s/he so HATES THE EARTH!
(h/t Mark Levin)
“electric cars are worse polluters than small, gas-powered vehicles. ”
coal fired devices usually are
this article fits in too:
link
This is not surprising to me at all. Without reading the article, I’m guessing that we have an intersection of many different issues. One of them is that electric cars probably take more energy to build that standard gasoline cars of the same performance level, which means more emissions of course. Another huge issue is that the battery technology is really not where it needs to be yet. Currently lithium batteries are the schiznit, but they are still expensive to produce and involve toxic chemicals. They also need to be replaced at least once over the lifetime of the car, and probably more than once. Producing those batteries takes power, and so does recycling them. Emissions again, as well as energy used.
We also have the fact that storing electricity in batteries by charging them automatically results in an energy loss, as does removing the stored electricity to power the electric motor. A full electric car that used some kind of internal combustion engine to power a charger (as opposed to being a hybrid, which has an engine that can directly power the car) would have losses when charging the battery as well.
All energy production that isn’t nuclear will have atmospheric emissions. You can transfer where the energy is produced, and store it somehow, but ultimately the energy gets used no matter what. If you had a way to build a car which never needed gas or to be plugged in or whatever, there would still have to be an energy input at some point that probably had emissions associated with it.
In short, there is no such thing as a free lunch, no matter how much progressives want that to be so.
I could never understand this nonsense, other then self-righteousness or status. It’s possible now to buy a low cost, highly fuel efficient little car which will run and look like a “real” car and even be fun to own and drive.
Oh hey!
Insty posts a positive review for Ric Locke’s book.
Kewl.
That’s why I’m holding out for a nuclear car. If it has a Mr. Fusion and a flux capacitor, so much the better.
Used electric vehicles will have zero resale value, because of the battery replacement/disposal issue. So it’s really throwing good money after bad.
about as good for the environment as mercury CFLs are
Not good at all.
Smarts are just crappy and stupid-looking, not electric. The drivers of such still deserve ridicule, though. If I was after high mileage and a non-crappy car, I’d be looking at a Jetta TDI. Or a diesel E-Klasse if I wanted to be spendy.
I like to say “E-Klasse” because I once owned an M3 that spoke to me only in Deutsche. It liked to flash things like kuhlwasser pruffen on its information display.
Blast that law of unintended consequences.
The energy problem is easily enough solved if you get rid of entropy.
Perhaps we should stage a protest? Submit a petition?
no entropy no peace
Hey why that Entropy hate. I’m sure he has a valid reason for missing class ;)
That’s it, I just saw my old Bonneville Safari wagon on ebay and I’m buying it. Giant V8, hood like an aircraft carrier, the skin of 200 naugas wrapping the interior, engine build quality that guarantees I’ll never have to blacktop my driveway again, couple two-three free wrenches inside the doors and quarters and about three hundred dinosaurs to the mile.
I always wondered what a coal powered car would look like.
#16
Probably a lot like a wood burning car-wood heated in the absence of air and the gasses produced sent to the carburetor-but the vessel to hold the coal would be smaller. They were popular in Europe during WW2. Looked like a still on wheels.
Bottom line is that electric cars are no more efficient at using energy than fossil fuel cars.
With the our greater supply of natural gas we should be looking at more efficient closed loop steam systems.
@ newrouter #2
but…but…HALLIBURTON!!!111!1!!eleventy!11!!!