Quote:
Originally Posted by Jcamp
The push for electric vehicles is very naive. There is a guy that gave a really good TedX talk on them a few years ago and it takes about 400,000 miles to get to where it is the same carbon footprint as a gas vehicle due to how they are built. On top of that I work in the power grid and it has not been developed to allow for that amount of charging power to flow. Not to mention there are already areas (one of them is your state) that have frequent blackouts and brown outs and that’s without adding a large load of supporting E vehicles. To reduce their pollution they’d be better off implementing a good land management program to curtail the wildfires since 1 acre burning is around the equivalent of 5.000 cars running for a year.
|
I respectfully disagree.
Since the TED talk that you are referencing is a few years old, it is likely no longer accurate.
The sources I read suggest that "break even" on emissions related to producing and operating electric cars is, overall, about 179,000 miles, and declining rapidly (the primary variable being how electricity is being produced where the car is being manufactured, and then driven: areas that rely on coal and oil produce "dirty" electricity, whereas areas that produce electricity using renewable sources such as solar, wind, hydroelectric, and solar panels produce much cleaner electricity). Regardless of the current status of electricity production where you might drive an EV, there is no denying that there will be a profound shift in favor of cleaner electricity in most locations, especially if we are talking about the US. So that will lower the "break even", probably quite dramatically.
And since the shift to EV's is proving to be gradual (though picking up speed), the current problems with brownouts and blackouts can be addressed over time, and should not be regarded as a huge problem or insurmountable obstacle to EV's being more popular.
Regarding your comment about "good land management practices"...well, we don't have to choose: we can undertake both the shift to EV's, and try to improve land management practices. However, with climate change, the phrase "good land management practices" is not nearly as straightforward as the words imply.