Read other letters about this article

• Monday, January 21, 2008 08:50 PM

  Zero Emissions? Pahleasse.

  Thank you for at least admitting there is some pollution from plug-in hybrds; I'm tired of reading about zero-tail-pipe pollution nonsense. The tail pipe of a plug-in is the smokestack of a coal power plant.

  Still, the claim of 30% improvement over conventional internal combustion engines strikes me as questionable.

  Ask anyone who lives near a coal-power plant's foul pollution-bellowing smokestack if that is preferable to a car's tailpipe following a catalytic converter.

  Aside from the hype:

  1. What is the impact of building enough particulate-spewing coal plants to power a meaningful number of cars, say 100 million plug-in's? How much asthma would that cause? Emphysema? Do you think carbon is the only pollutant? How many plants need to be built to power 100 million cars? 300 million cars? Where are you going to build all of them? (not next to me, I hope) This isn't about having one prototype for Ed Bagley Jr's garage.

  2. What is the environmental impact of disposing of say, 100 million cars with 200 pounds each of lithium-ion batteries, some of the more toxic materials in use? (Oh, I forgot, only global warming is trendy; other pollution doesn't matter any more.)

  3. Who is going to manufacture these batteries? China? Can you say Minamata-times-one-million? Sure, you can.

  Plug-in hybrids could have an incremental role, but this strikes me as being like the bottled water hyperbole -- much ado about marginal impact.

  —JimLosAltos Read JimLosAltos's other letters
  Permalink
  Flag
  Click "Submit Flag" if you feel this post is inappropriate. Explain why below if you wish.

  Cancel