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>why the coal and nuclear industries haven't been promoting electric vehicles more vigorously to drive demand for electricity Well, on the coal side, they can

• MrRadar 9y ago
  There are advantages that electric cars have that have nothing to do with their evironmental benefits. They have massive torque, smooth acceleration, are silent at low speeds, you never have to go to a gas station, fewer moving parts so less to go wrong, etc. And even on the most coal-intensive grids in the US electric vehicles produce less greenhouse gas emissions than the average ICE vehicle and there's still a public health benefit to displacing non-GHG emissions away from cities where people live.
• Brakenshire 9y ago
  Although, coal produces its pollution many miles away from population centres, whereas internal combustion cars produce it feet away from people breathing it in on city pavements. Nuclear in particular should be promoting it, it matches perfectly with the overnight charging demand. Perhaps in that case it's just that nuclear isn't that significant an industry, they have enough effort trying to promote themselves. Certainly it's strange that utilities in general aren't all guns blazing for electric cars, I suspect we'll see that start to happen soon.
  • ZeroGravitas 9y ago
    Various utilities give $10K rebates on EV purchases. I've never run the numbers to see how that works out for them economically. Though they often get government support to roll out insulation and other efficiency improvements so maybe it falls under that. The ones that pay to control the timing of EV charging make more immediate sense to me.