Originally Posted by Wogsterca
The problem with the electric car, is that your replacing a gasoline engine with an electric one, so if everyone with a gasoline powered car, switched to an electric one, where are you going to get all that power, probably from burning coal, which results in just as much greenhouse gas, and you get to burn through the coal supply that much quicker. Instead of having 300 years worth of coal, you end up with 30 years supply. Your not solving the problem, just changing the finite resource your plundering, same goes for nuclear. Biofuels are a partial solution, but creates a different issue, would you rather eat or drive?
As for the movie, I would love to see it. Wonder if the local video place can order a copy.
Actually, burning hydrocarbons in a power plant is much more efficient than burning them in a car engine. A IC engine for a car is somewhere in the efficiency range of 10-20%, depending on how the car is driven. A combined cycle plant burning natural gas or gasified coal is right around 50% efficient. This is not a trivial difference. Stationary powerplants run at essentially constant load, so they have much better emissions than IC car powerplants (except for burning straight coal) as well.
Also, non-hydrocarbon energy sources such as wind, hydro, and nuclear are all fixed sources which can be drawn upon to power electric vehicles if we could solve the battery problem. Ultimately, if we can develope better energy storage devices, such as batteries, then the conversion of energy from electrical energy to mechanical energy is extremely efficient; somewhere in the 70-95% range, depending on the motor used and the load conditions.
Hybrids are also part of the solution. Part of the problem with cars is the huge power and speed range that the IC engine has to cope with. Hybrids cut off the peaks and fill in the valleys and the IC engine can run at a more constant speed and thus be both more efficient and produce less emissions.
I guess the point is that society has to work the problem from both ends. The conversion from stored chemical energy in the form of hydrocarbons to useful work energy must become more efficient on one hand, and on the other, we need to find ways of lowering our use of work energy, i.e. stop moving around so much in such large vehicles. Hybrids, fuel cell, and electric vehicles work toward the former. Cycling advocacy works toward the latter.