Duragrouch

My favorite was Pat Bedard. Smart writer, good driver. However, not certain, I think it may have been him who said in a column in the '90s that electric cars make no sense because so much power is lost in transmission, and I believed it (again, not certain it was him), and that electric cars were then best for places like L.A., to reduce pollution that the mountains keep in place, so burn fuel elsewhere, use the clean electricity produced to power cars in L.A. But I learned that was all wrong. Electricity transmission is extremely efficient, over 90%, and is getting even better with High Voltage Direct Current (I thought AC was needed for efficient transmission, nope, it just was easy to jump power up and down in voltage with AC, but now they can do that with DC). Internal combustion engines are only 25% efficient, 75% is waste heat, F1 engines with thermal recovery approach 40-50% I think, but fossil fuels burned in power plants are over 90% efficient because they use all the heat. If we all went to electric cars, and that power came from coal, it would still be less carbon output than cars burning gasoline. And that says a lot. With wind turbine, solar, and much better nuclear, vastly less carbon emissions. Sorry the tangent.