I got this in my inbox yesterday:
Hello IT Nerd. I’ve been following your blog for a while and I note that you’re writing about cars and I’d like to ask what you’d think of electric cars. My wife wants to buy one because it’s the right thing to do for the environment. But I think it’s a technology that isn’t ready for the mainstream yet. What do you think?
Thanks for the question and thanks for reading my blog. I have two thoughts on electric cars. First, there’s no distribution network for these cars when it comes to electricity. There’s tons of gas stations, but very few electric charging stations. Thus, you can’t take it on a road trip, nor can you “top off the tank” as it were while you’re out and about. Oh, I’ll also mention if you run out of power you’re pretty much walking home or waiting for a tow. Nobody is going to bring you a tank electricity in a red can to get you to the next charging station. Thus this is a limiting factor in terms of making these sorts of vehicles truly as useful as gas powered cars.
That brings me to the second thought I have about them. If you live in Canada or the US, you’re charging these cars from a power grid that has a significant amount of fossil fuel based power. Example: Coal fired generators or gas powered generators. Thus, there may be nothing coming out of your tailpipe, but there’s stuff that’s harmful to the climate being emitted long before the batteries in your electric car get charged. All I believe you’ve done is shifted the emission point from your tailpipe to elsewhere. Thus, are you really doing your part for the environment?
Thus I’m really not a fan of these cars. I think that for the foreseeable future, we’ll be driving cars based on the internal combustion engine and we should be focused on making those cars consume less gas and put out less emissions that harm the environment. Mazda for example is rolling a package of improvements to their cars dubbed Skyactiv which is based around improving the engine, transmission, body, and chassis of their cars to increase fuel economy. Other companies such as Ford and Hyundai/Kia are now using turbocharged engines. For example instead of using a V6 in a car, use a turbocharged 4 cylinder. That way you get the power of a V6 with the fuel economy of a 4 cylinder. That makes a lot more sense to me, at least for the foreseeable future.
Agree? Disagree? Post a comment and share your thoughts.