>Essentially dirty methods of producing electricity and converting that electricity back into mechanical energy are less efficient than gasoline engines. So yes - we do need electric cars and it's great companies are making them but that won't have a significant impact until the industrial-scale energy problems are addressed.
In America; and really, most of the wealthy bits of the world, this is purely a political choice. fission is a real answer that we can use right now, one that pretty provably kills fewer people than coal. But coal kills people very slowly in a way that isn't very dramatic, while when a nuclear problem gets that bad, it's very scary and dramatic.
We burn coal for the same reason that we heavily regulate airlines, while we let just about any yahoo drive just about any car, no matter how unsafe.
But, the point about electric cars is just that if the left actually starts to believe in global warming like they say they do, and actually decides to solve the problem, like they say they want to, rather than just opposing cheap energy on the principle of "you shouldn't waste things" (e.g. "I can afford less mature energy sources, so why shouldn't you?") - the technology of fission is there, and building more nuclear power plants is only half the solution, the other half is converting our transportation network to run on electricity rather than oil.
I mean, yeah. For now? electric cars are largely signs of wealth that rich people can buy. But the point is that having the technology out there, working with it, improving it, gets us more ready for the day that we do decide to get serious about our energy problems.
In America; and really, most of the wealthy bits of the world, this is purely a political choice. fission is a real answer that we can use right now, one that pretty provably kills fewer people than coal. But coal kills people very slowly in a way that isn't very dramatic, while when a nuclear problem gets that bad, it's very scary and dramatic.
We burn coal for the same reason that we heavily regulate airlines, while we let just about any yahoo drive just about any car, no matter how unsafe.
But, the point about electric cars is just that if the left actually starts to believe in global warming like they say they do, and actually decides to solve the problem, like they say they want to, rather than just opposing cheap energy on the principle of "you shouldn't waste things" (e.g. "I can afford less mature energy sources, so why shouldn't you?") - the technology of fission is there, and building more nuclear power plants is only half the solution, the other half is converting our transportation network to run on electricity rather than oil.
I mean, yeah. For now? electric cars are largely signs of wealth that rich people can buy. But the point is that having the technology out there, working with it, improving it, gets us more ready for the day that we do decide to get serious about our energy problems.