Some are predicting that the US will have more than one million low-cost or no-cost public charging stations for electric vehicles by the year 2015.
Y'all understand that most electricity is produced by burning coal, and that's what will be powering those cars? Clean coal.
3 comments:
Paw, either coal fired OR gas fired... They won't let us build any Nuc plants, remember?
Well, that additional consumption of electricity might just strain the US power grid to the breaking point. In most power regions, it's already running at or near 100# during peak periods.
I predict that since the government actually DISCOURAGES grid improvement (see the Endangered Species Act, et al), we will all wind up with power rationing because of this explosion in new power consumption which is NOT predicted to be met by anything other than the usual calls for conservation.
The wind power additions being built cannot be counted on 24/7 to add to the grid, since few, if any, use their excess power to store energy against calm periods in the wind farms. That COULD be done (see: "pumped storage", an OLD concept), but isn't. Once again, no motivation on the part of the Greens to do anything except change everyone else's life with their "new" ideas, most of which don't pan out on close inspection.
The cars themselves don't pan out on close inspection. When the battery-electric car is built which will go 250 miles on a charge with all options like heat or A/C running, with a full load, at freeway speed and can be recharged in 20 minutes at a charging station, then, and only then is electric transport (other than electrified railways) efficient enough to replace the internal combustion engine.
We would do FAR better sticking with internal combustion power for cars a while longer, until we've gotten the most efficiency possible out of it. We're nowhere near that level of efficiency yet. The 80 mpg family sedan should have been developed by now.
Chrysler had an EV-gas line that was supposed to come online this year or next; I think it died when Obama brokered them off to Fiat; now instead of a Jeep (which I was seriously interested in, depending on the end design) or Chrysler EV we're probably going to get some ambulatory wart shaped euro-toy...
OBTW didn't Clinton shut down the bulk of clean coal production here in the US by locking up the land in preserves? I remember reading stories then that it would mean importing said higher quality coal from overseas...
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