Electric Vehicles comments
17 October 05
From a business researcher:
Once again interesting.
Couple of points. Electricity is significantly less efficient than
liquid petroleum, when measured from the source. And it pollutes at
least as much.
So electric vehicles are limited by overall energy economics.
And - $3 gas is still cheap, in real terms. Hasn't even put a dent in
the economy, and is less of an impact than 1980.
Even if gas goes higher, a small mix shift away from truck based SUV's
to smaller cars will completely counter the energy costs to the economy.
And, world wide there are more than 700,000 gas stations that cannot
easily be converted to alternative fuel, and they have significant
political importance.
The petroleum based car fleet is amazingly robust, and is already
picking up the slack of the summer gas prices, with adjustments in less
than 2 months.
And from a chemist:
It doesn't make sense to me why die-hards are so wedded to their pure
electrics. There are substantial losses involved in electric power
transmission and the source fuel is predominantly hydrocarbon. Running
your hybrid on gasoline is equivalent to having an on-board electric power
station without the transmission losses. The loyalty would make sense if
we were running the power grid from renewable sources like wind and hydro.
