Do electric cars make environmental sense?

[jag]

The answer to this is to put all the fixed costs of motoring onto fuel.
If both the road tax and average insurance charge were transferred to fuel duty, there would be no penalty for using your car less frequently - an incentive to be more green.
What do you think? Compared with the astronomical fixed cost of satellite car tracking, it make sense.

Putting average variable costs into the fuel price seems to be the most efficient way in the long run. In the short run it would be next to impossible politically in North America.

Use-based insurance could be rolled out by private companies now. It could be as simple as a tamper resistant device that logs what times/days you drive, or more advanced using satellite tracking of also where you drive. Use-based registration is a bigger deal in Europe, where registration is expensive. Registration in NYS was a pitiful $25/year, and here in AB it is about $60. Afaik, it is the same for a Toyota Yaris or a Hummer.

Martin

 

[rguy56]

Where I live there is very limited impact on greenhouse gasses, as our overwhelming source of electricity is hydro electric. Further, our hydroelectric supplier is owned by the people of this province, and subject to oversight, so it is relatively cheap. My only doubt regarding it's superiority would revolve around sufficient reserve in winter to warm the vehicle and maintain operating warmth for the battery.

Bob

 

[Anonymous]

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[monster]

those graphs dont look right to me so check out this. the author does a whole free book on energy. its a great read go to http://www.withouthotair.com Anyway the guy concludes that electric vehicles are a great way of reducing carbon emissions even with todays energy network. he goes on to sugest that renewables need electric cars as "load leveling" using smart chargers that vary charge rate with national energy demand.

this is the one that i always refer back to
http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/withouthotair/c20/page_128.shtml

 

[Puppyjump]

those graphs dont look right to me so check out this. the author does a whole free book on energy. its a great read go to http://www.withouthotair.com Anyway the guy concludes that electric vehicles are a great way of reducing carbon emissions even with todays energy network. he goes on to sugest that renewables need electric cars as "load leveling" using smart chargers that vary charge rate with national energy demand.

this is the one that i always refer back to
http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/withouthotair/c20/page_128.shtml

I drive mine to screw Chevron

 

[AndyH]

those graphs dont look right to me so check out this. the author does a whole free book on energy. its a great read go to http://www.withouthotair.com Anyway the guy concludes that electric vehicles are a great way of reducing carbon emissions even with todays energy network. he goes on to sugest that renewables need electric cars as "load leveling" using smart chargers that vary charge rate with national energy demand.

this is the one that i always refer back to
http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/withouthotair/c20/page_128.shtml

Very nice Matthew - thanks for posting this!

 

[Reid Welch]

After WWII Japan could build nothing more than those little paper and toothpick umbrellas for fancy cocktail drinks. Now look at them. China is next.

Don't bet on it. China and Japan are worlds apart, and will be for generations: In the process of market expansion, China has been poisoning its population and destroying its ecology.

The remnants of the Mao regime opened the channels of capital, but not democracy. The checks and balances that protect workers and the ecology in first world countries, make goods more expensive in those countries, but safer, and balance international trade and distribute capital more evenly across the board.

Tyler, I added a few words in blue, which I think add cogency to your intended statement. Correct me if I'm wrong.

The "great" thing about China: it is allowing the whole world to live rich and cheap, high on the hog, as it destroys its own ecology and exploits its workers with low wages and few safety guards. Times will catch up. I see this as the most easy-to-afford, highest standard of living-time in human history, thanks to cheap Chinese production. They are growing more and more efficient, and perhaps in time, they will begin to truly take care of their people and their natural resources. In the meanwhile, we pay but a fraction for durable and non-durable goods, in adjusted dollars, as compared against, say even ten or twenty years ago.

China will win, long term, but they are paying a price. We are going to pay a price, eventually, too: can't afford new stuff. There's going to be a huge re-adjustment of what middle class non-Chinese consumers can expect to be able to buy and...I think of the austerity of earlier decades, how grandmother threw nothing away that could be fixed or patched; not even socks. Who darns socks anymore?

r.