I read your article. It's an important question, but I think the author misses the premise. Electric cars aren't a silver bullet, but they are a necessary step

I read your article. It's an important question, but I think the author misses the premise. Electric cars aren't a silver bullet, but they are a necessary step in order to lower CO2 emissions while keeping our current lifestyle. What I gathered from the text was that, with somewhat pessimistic input numbers, electric cars are more or less on par with gasoline cars. But this is assuming no changes in the power grid, which will be essential if we are really going to transit to a greener economy. Which means more nuclear, hopefully new nuclear, more solar, massively more wind and hopefully less coal during the transition. Note that the Tesla Model S uses few to no rare-earth metals (there are usually employed in the permanent magnet of the motor). But this is sort of a moot point, since properly engineered electric cars appear to be better than their gasoline equivalent, and will eventually sell better regardless. I do agree that this is something which should show up on the HN front page.