Quote:
Originally Posted by Nevyn
Aye. I want to bop people on the head when I hear them say "Oh, electric cars aren't zero pollution if they use electric from non-renewable sources!"
Seriously? THAT is your complaint about them?! Which is worse? Coal-based electricity being used to charge an electric car, or coal-based electricity powering a refinery to make gasoline that gets trucked (via gas or diesel) to a gas station that is using coal-based electricity to run the store/power the gas pumps?
Sometimes sheeple need smacked.
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What about the large energy costs involved in producing the componets for EV? How about the fact that rare earths take enormous amounts of energy to mine and refine? Did you know that rare earth metals are mined pretty much exclusively in China? China has no emissions standards. The various parts of EV are produced all over the world and need to be shipped to one location where they are assembled, giving them a much higher energy cost to produce than a conventional vehicle.
No one knows what to do with the used batteries in an EV. They are toxic and cannot be recycled. The replacements cost so much that by the time you wear the battery out you've only broke even with the gasoline costs of a comparable vehicle.
how about the supply of rare earths. is that supply even large enough to convert a noticable percentage of the vehicles on the road to EV? No one even knows. If there is enough, what will adding car production to the list of uses for rare earths do to the price? keeping in mind most of the things that use rare earths today are small electronic devices using an ounce or so versus a car using several hundred pounds.
our energy grids today are old and running pretty much at capacity, especially in very hot and cold weather, when demand increases. What would everyone plugging in their car at 6 when they come home do to the grid? No one knows for sure about that either.
what about energy loss through transmission? some of the energy from the coal plant is lost stepping up for transmission through the power lines, some is lost travelling through the power lines, some is lost stepping down at the station, some is lost at the power pole transformer, some is lost converting to the charging voltage, and some is lost in the charging process itself. How much?
issues with vehicle range and response to extreme temperature go without saying.
I don't want to start a fight nevyn, and I hope you take this constructively, but these ARE good concerns about EV. And by ignoring these issues you introduce some irony into your calling people who are not on the EV bandwagon "sheep"