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Electric cars are useless if the power is still generated by oil, coal and gas. So helping the guy who supports a climate change denier will make things worse.
by croes 2y ago
Electric cars are useless if the power is still generated by oil, coal and gas.
So helping the guy who supports a climate change denier will make things worse.
- ggm 2y agoIf you'd said less beneficial I could agree. Since batteries can soak surplus power and make it available at other times there is a substantial social utility to ev as energy soaks irrespective of the source. The "less efficient because coal" thing is massively overstated sometimes, it's tendentious.
- croes 2y agoNot less efficient, useless. Imagine instead of directly powering the car by combustion engine, you first use a combustion engine to generate electricity to fill the battery. How would the car benefit the environment?
- ggm 2y agoCoal generation favours long run times and is inefficient at being ramped up and down quickly. Using battery systems to soak surplus power time shifts a commodity which otherwise has to be negatively priced. The ideal input for a battery is of course renewable energy but there is a case for batteries as energy soak during times of low consumption, and to help stabilise demand in the network. This isn't an individual car efficiency statement, it's about socialised costs.
- apparent 2y agoThere is still a benefit to having pollution not come out of the tailpipe. When I go for a bike ride or a run and half the cars are EVs, I'm glad (even though I understand the electricity may come from fuel burning elsewhere).
- croes 2y agoSo you trade your health for more pollution for others.
- apparent 2y agoMy understanding is that power plants have scrubbers that reduce their environmental impact more than tailpipes. Also, power plants tend to be located in places that are not as heavily populated as neighborhood streets.
- croes 2y agoIf they have scrubbers and if they are placed in non-heavily populated areas. My point is an electric car a such says not much of environmental benefits. Take for instance the Nissan e-power. The car drives electric but it uses a combustion engine to load the battery.
- timbit42 2y agoElectricity generated by natural gas or oil and used to power a vehicle is still cleaner than burning gasoline in a vehicle because the generation plant has better emission controls than a gas vehicle.
- bangaladore 2y agoThis is entirely incorrect. I sure hope you are just misinformed instead of purposely touting misinformation. This is the common talking-point of OIL aligned lobbyists and misinformation campaigns. A grid scale generator is wildly more efficient than the small generator that exists in every single vehicle. Oil -> Gas -> ICE Combustion -> Wheel Movement Is far less efficient than: Oil/Coal/etc. -> Electricity -> Wheel Movement Not to mention capturing emissions is far easier when you have a few sources of static emissions then 100s of thousands of moving source of emissions.