willywanka:

Reducing emissions from cars would be good, but not at the cost of increasing emissions from something worse, namely coal plants.

If the US would stop the activist-choked madness and build more nuclear power plants, we'd have enough clean energy to make electric cars a truly earth-friendly option.

SlothDC:

1) It's a lot cheaper to make the factory cleaner and more efficient than to make *every* car cleaner and more efficient.

I have to give you that. Holding to my nuke point, though, it's even cheaper to build a power plant that's less-polluting in the first place.

2) The cars become essentially source-independent - they don't care if the electricity is generate by gas, nuke, or some as yet undiscovered fuel source.

Well, yes, and that's my point (and the point of a lot of the other posts here). The environmental impact of the cars is tied directly to where the juice comes from.

Now, another problem with electric cars is this:

An ICE car is full of gasoline, oil, and such. When you wreck it or abandon it, that stuff has a realtively mild impact on the local environment.

An electric car has a massive set of batteries. What's in those? Cadmium, Lithium, or other similarly awful materials. If you wreck an electric, they might have to clean the mess up wearing hazard suits. And I'd rather have gasoline than cadmium drizzling into the storm sewer.

I like the idea of less pollutant cars, but given the above issues, I'm not so sure the tradeoff is a good enough to justify the expenses.

Moxie17:

I suppose, but if you re-process the nuclear fuel and reuse it (which is not out of the question), you can fit all of the nuclear waste to power the entire country for a year on the back of a single 53' semi trailer.

We don't even have to store the waste, we can launch it into the sun or some such.

Point is, the direct environmental impact of a nuclear power plant is far less than that of a coal plant. Compare, for example, the human and environmental hazards of coal mining.

Sloth_DC:

1) The batteries they generally use are lead-acid.

I have to disagree here. The battery in my car now is lead-acid, but the larger, more powerful electric-only batteres are usually Lithium or Nickel-Cadmium. The lead-acids won't cut it for cars that need to be more than golf carts with seatbelts.

Additionally, these batteries only last for a few thousand miles (maybe 30-40k max), and need to be replaced after that.

http://wistechnology.com/article.php?id=1485
http://www.hondaev.org/lnk.html
http://www.drive.com.au/editorial/ArticleDetail.aspx?ArticleID=8754
http://www.acpropulsion.com/
http://www.cobasys.com/home/home.htm
http://www.valence.com/
http://www.lithiumtech.com/


2) I hate to break it to you, but you already have a fricking battery in your car.

I do, but it's safe to say the battery in the electric will be a tad larger than the one in my ICE puddle-jumper.

3) The electric doesn't require coolant, which is what you should *really* be concerned about running down the storm sewer.

I'm no chemist, but I'd hazard a guess that cadmium is a bit more hostile that engine coolant.

Again, I like the concept of the electric. I presume in the near future we should have less expensive, safer, more capable models to look at. 'Till then, I'll be a cautious skeptic of the four-wheeled messiahs.

Sloth_DC:

I can certainly see the water supply being more threatened by liquid; the immediate area moreso by a solid.

Again, I have no real knowledge of chemistry or toxic cleanup, but I wonder what effects Cadmium has, and just how difficult it is to clean up.

Now, in all honesty, my objections based on safety concerns are only temporary. They're sincere, but temporary. I'm a mechanical engineer by degree; I can see how much safer and cleaner ICE cars are compared to even 50 years ago. I don't doubt that an electric car that's safer and cleaner than an ICE is possible. I just don't see such a vehicle on the current horizon.

Sloth_DC:

Liver failure? I forsee a whole new solution to the Cadmium problem: cleanup crews composed entirely of DUI convicts. Repeat offenders eat the loose Cadmium. Their livers are screwed up anyway. >:}

P'raps the safe electric car is not so far away as I might have thought...