The way things are going right now, electricity comes from coal, and coal is being produced by destroying the most diverse environment in the country, the beautiful central Appalachian mountain range. Is that what you want?

If we have electric cars we should also ban mountaintop removal and get our electricity some other way.

But, you failed to mention that nuclear power is also emissions free.

I don't want mountain-top removals to power cars any more than I want middle-east invasions to power cars. By all means, let's transition away from both of those things to renewable energy sources. It's a whole lot easier to power electric cars with solar and wind power than it is to power internal combustion cars with those things.

It's worth noting that Tesla is employing that tried and true start up strategy: Sell an elite product to the wealthy, then learn enough and make enough to mass produce a cheaper version to the masses. Worked for stuff like VCRs and DVDs, let's hope Tesla can make it work also. The Roadster is shipping now.

This article is interesting because it looks at the chain of energy usage. It takes energy to mine and process uranium, and as far as I know, a lot of that energy is hydrocarbon based. And most nuclear power technology that I am aware of, is capable of emissions. That's part of the problem.

Once again, the pro-car crowd are ignoring their assumptions. One of the main reasons infernal-combustion steel-wheelchairs are so inefficient is that they are getting zero mpg while idling. Most of this idling is done during intra-city travel. Is there any reason, other than a fear of being killed by other two-ton wheelchairs or a physical disability, for driving in town? All of this driving boils down to laziness and selfishness. Electric-grid assist options will not get us anywhere near the 80-90% emission reductions required over the next fifteen years to avoid catastrophic climactic "tipping points". At some point, hopefully very soon, we are going to have to face the fact that there is not enough low-emission energy available to allow it to be wasted it on such frivolous activities as cruising around town in a steel shell.

Pablo Päster nicely demonstrates how to compare total energy efficiency of different transport methods, and summarizes the case for grid-powered, instead of self-powered, automobiles. More articles like this one, please!

An interesting side-note which isn't salient to the actual efficiency of a car in operation but is relevant in terms of the pathway to actual widespread adoption by the public has to do with charge time. By performing a few basic calculations similar to the ones Päster uses for determining energy efficiency one can arrive at a measure of relative charge time of both gasoline- and grid-powered engines.

Pumping gasoline at your average roadside filling station is, in essence, the equivalent of several megawatts. The recharging technology for electric cars is several orders of magnitude less. So even with the much greater efficiency of electric engines, there's an enormous "user experience" gap between the two engine types that will only be solved with as-yet undeveloped recharging technology.

Before we dismiss electric cars out-of-hand because they can't cruise from NYC to LA non-stop, let's remember that few of us ever actually do this. In fact, around 70% of Americans drive less than 30 miles in an average day.

The technology to perform the commuting task on electricity has been available for years. Check out the Toyota Rav4EV at Wikipedia for the most refined - and currently operating - example. And to fill in the details, I recommend a careful viewing of the film "Who Killed The Electric Car." It will make your blood boil.

As to the pollution question, I have always put it this way: There are around 6,000 coal, oil and natural gas power plants in the US. What's easier to clean up, 6,000 powerplants or 150,000,000 tailpipes?

Step 1: Take a $49,000 Lotus Elise and rip out the powerplant. Yes. And the key reason is that Colin Chapman, the father of the Lotus, was an absolute fanatic about building LIGHT cars. Lotus cars have a phenomenal power to rate ratio, stock, off the showroom floor. A series 2-111R Elise weighs in at under 1800lbs and has a 190hp engine.

Step 2: Stuff in 6300 laptop batteries and lash it to an exotic and fragile transmission.

Step 3: Tweak the motors to crank out 248hp under maximum drain to account for the extra 1000lbs of the batteries.

I'm hoping that the Zenn car (http://www.zenncars.com/) capacitor battery will work as suggested--and I'll be among the first to buy one if true. But, as a poster above suggested we really ought to concentrate on making our communities more efficient. If we could walk or bicycle--or take elevators and moving sidewalks (for very short distances) everywhere we needed to go we'd be a lot better off as a nation. Fortunately, global warming and rising ocean levels mean than hundreds of communities will be destroyed anyway--we could plan to replace them with arcologies (http://www.arcosanti.org/), though we will probably replace them with shantytowns instead.

Seems for a fair comparison you'd need to include the research, manufacturing, and disposal costs for the electric car's battery.

For a future post perhaps you could run this analysis for other emissions-free technologies that require extensive R&D and capital costs, like nuclear, wind, solar.

"But, you failed to mention that nuclear power is also emissions free."

Behead the infidel!

This one very practical question pops into my head every time someone brings up electric cars. I live in an apartment and I don't have a garage. There are a lot of people out there like me. Where would an apartment/condo dweller charge their car?

with a bullshit sentence like this:

So, yes, electric and plug-in hybrid cars are a better way to go than gas guzzlers, and remain our best transportation bet in reducing greenhouse gas emissions and dependence on oil.

Remove the word "transportation" and replace it with "automotive" and you have a winner. Always remember...no matter how great its fuel efficiency, any car, not matter how it's powered, is never going to be the best transportation bet for anything.