Why Buy? Current EVs Short On Range, Long On Price, And Pollute More Than Conventional Vehicles

Battery power is still said to be the coming thing, although not just yet. Critical mass for electric cars may be less than five years away, say some experts, when economies of scale will make the product cheap enough to stand on its own feet without government subsidy.

Others say that by cutting weight out of vehicles and adding so-called range-extenders, viable electric cars will soon be a success, even though they may look more like frogs on steroids than normal cars.

In Europe and perhaps in America too, another looming obstacle to electric cars — on top of the fact that they are probably twice as expensive as they should be with half the needed range — is the fear that government regulation to clean up electricity generation and close down dirty coal-fired power stations may cut supply to dangerous levels just when the public will be seeking to plug in their new electric cars to the national grid.

thetruth01 - 3/26/2013 3:02:49 PM

+1 Boost

The author making the claims about how dirty EVs are, Bjorn Lomborg, is the same one who originally denied global warming, then came around to believing it (9 years later), but now thinks there is nothing we can do about it, so let's do nothing. His work currently is referenced by the WSJ and Fox News. Just sayin.

thetruth01 - 3/26/2013 3:10:57 PM

+1 Boost

"if the electric car is driven for 90,000 miles and the owner stays away from coal-powered electricity, the car will cause just 24% less carbon-dioxide emission than its gas-powered cousin." (from lomborg's original story). The fallacy here is the once again false belief that people wont drive electric vehicles longer than 100,000 miles. the same crap was spewed forth about the Prius in the famously debunked Hummer vs Prius "study." The bigger problem lomborg has is that headmits that by 90,000 miles there will already be savings. So the next 90,000 miles will be all gravy. But that isn't mentioned.

thetruth01 - 3/26/2013 3:12:57 PM

+1 Boost

http://green.autoblog.com/2013/03/18/edta-wall-street-journal-attacks-plug-in-vehicles-fuzzy-math/

last comment by me on this topic. maybe.