Electric car
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Overview
Electric cars have the potential to be a large part of the solution to oil dependence and industrial pollution.
While such cars still consume energy, much of which is currently produced by burning fossil fuels, the use of electricity as a means of transporting and storing that energy introduces a number of significant economies:
- Transporting electricity does not itself require a vehicle for transportation; it is generally transported via electrical wires, with limited and predictable loss per mile. While there is still debate about the health effects of high-voltage electrical wires, the degree and scale of possible pollution caused by such is clearly one or more orders of magnitude lower than that caused by transportation of fossil fuels.
- There are many alternatives for mass production of electrical power (many more options than there are for power portable enough to use in a vehicle, anyway). Replacing most combustion-engine based cars with electric cars would effectively solve a huge part of the environmental issues we currently deal with, freeing up many work hours to focus on cleaning up our electrical mass production infrastructure.
- Conversion of electricity into mechanical power is considerably more efficient than for chemical fuel
- Electric motors are much easier to repair and maintain than are combustion engines
- Electric motors are much quieter than are combustion engines. On one level this is purely an aesthetic concern, but on another level the excessive noise caused by combustion engines surely must have hidden costs; it isn't called "noise pollution" just to make it sound worse.
Related Articles
- Nuclear power, while forcefully rejected by most environmentalists, deserves more careful examination.
Links
Articles
- 2006-08-18 Behind the wheel of the Tesla by Matt Nauman, Mercury News: a new and powerful but pricey electric car enters limited production (no mention of the car's travel range...)
- 2006-06-30 The Mysterious Murder of the Electric Car by Hannah Eaves, Grist Magazine
Commentary
- 2006-07-06 Subject: Electric Cars: letter to Jerry Pournelle (2nd entry for Thursday), with response