CAFE stds on the chopping block
NYT Good riddance. There is no way that the average fleet mileage would ever come close to those numbers anyway. Hopefully the ethanol scam will be cut at the same time.
Forum Discussion
Gary C wrote:
Norway is a country of 5 million people and has most of their population living in a few urban centers unlike the U.S. They are also very wealthy because of their oil exports (a little bit of irony there) so they can afford eccentricities like EV's. There's also the SLOT effect as a poster mentioned earlier. Everyone things EV's are non-polluting which is absolutely not the case, they just move the pollution site somewhere down the chain. The electricity has to be generated somewhere, if that's done by a coal plant then there's your carbon dioxide source. Nuclear would be the most non-polluting but that causes most greenies to break out in hives. There's also the energy and pollution involved in making the batteries for them, there's a lot of nasty pollution issues involved in manufacturing batteries.
All in all EV's really aren't practical now for most of the world and they aren't as non-polluting as the EV proponents make them out to be. Maybe one day they'll be more practical, but it's going to take significant technology improvements for them to become mainstream in the U.S.
Some good points. But I don't think I have ever met anyone who is under the illusion that EV 's have no environmental impact. They just have less of an environmental impact and i have not seen anyone even try to dispute that. But yes the technology is still developing and EV's are not the answer to all transportation needs. But their use is growing fairly quickly so they must be working for some people. We drive the same amount of miles now as when we had ice vehicles but are now not burning gas to do it. The power comes 100 percent from hydro. That is a good thing. Depending on the country that can change of course but many countries continue to get less power from coal and more from other less polluting sources. (I don't like the use of the term green power as it has now been politicized).
Anyway. A good discussion and an important one for all of us. Clean air and water are portant for all of us.
