[pnh102]

If there’s one thing this idiocy will beget, it will spur people to install locks on their outside electrical outlets.

[ClearCase_guy]

The whole Green thing is just a massive con. Neither the plug-in cars nor the Prius make a whole lot of sense. We're expending a lot of effort to reduce CO₂ and there is no reason to make that effort. But some folks sure are getting rich off the fraud.

[Leisler]

Gasoline comes from dirty oil wells and right wing companies. And...and the redneck drillers are social recidivists. The oil engineers and geologists are kind of conservative too.

Electricity on the other hand comes from ...um..er...a wall socket in one’s ‘home’. And windmills.

So there!

/sarc

[grobdriver]

The result is the industrial equivalent of a snipe hunt, a wild goose chase based on flawed assumptions.

This even a blind man can see.

[Yo-Yo]

What about plug-in hybrids? There are aftermarket plug-in kits for Priuses.

[brownsfan]

Anyone who looked at this beyond the salivating media hype could see the flaws:

- Battery capacity.
- Battery disposal.
- Pollution generated by battery manufacture.
- Shifting energy use from relatively clean gasoline engines to electricity generating plants, many of which are coal fired.
- Additional load on the electrical grid, which is already taxed.

It’s a crying shame that critical thinking skills are discouraged in public schools.

[Leo Farnsworth]

Electric vehicles are really remote emission vehicles as they may not pollute when they go down the road, but a lot of the electricity in CA comes from coal fired generators in Wyoming.

[CrazyIvan]

Please don’t kill the electric car. There are a lot of
politicians that want to give you a huge tax credit for
buying one. With that money I plan to purchase a diesel
generator and run it on free waste oil to charge my car,
thus driving for free. And I'll still pass for a non
polluter! I love this country.

[quintr]

I would like to know what the life of those batteries are and how much they will actually cost to replace.

I read a few years ago that the batteries are made in Canada and they use more carbon to manufacture than they save the driving public. Also, could it really be true that the replacement battery is purported to be about $25,000? And then how are the old batteries disposed of and who pays for that and if it falls on the consumer again, what is the cost?

And finally, is there anywhere in the United States where the batteries will be manufactured, or will those jobs be outsourced like the little matter of re-supplying American embassies around the world with fine crystal made in Sweden!!

Just asking.

— Jane Reinheimer

[N. Theknow]

Wow!

Cars that run on batteries!

Pssst. Know what runs on batteries?

Toys!

[SuziQ]

Well, the one thing having a larger number of plug-in vehicles might do is put some impetus behind the push for new nuclear power plants. Frankly, if that happens, I believe they would have served a great purpose.

I'd love to have an electric car for doing around town errands; it would put less pollution into the surrounding air. And I'd also like to have a house with a big enough land area to put in a big solar array to power the house, so when I plugged the car into it, it's essentially free energy for me. Yeah, I know about the costs associated with the collectors, but hubby will be assembling and connecting those, so we wouldn't be paying 'retail' for them, anyway.

I guess you'd call us 'crunchy conservatives', but I don't care what anyone else drives, I'm just looking at what we drive. Of course, hubby will still have his Ford F250 Turbo Diesel, which he calls his F1250 Global Warmer, with the Middle Finger Option, so we DO have a sense of humor about the environment. ;o)

[glide625]

HA, I’m the only one with the real solution; I’m converting a golf cart to run on a steam engine powered by charcoal briquets!

[wendy1946]

If there is any future in electric vehicles at all, it will involve super capacitors and not batteries.