Oil is only used for relief power-plants (the ones that the utilities keep around for peak use). Most of the electricity in this country is generated from coal. If memory serves, only 6% of the oil we use goes to electricity and residential use...
Well, you make the point that to plug in a car, some coal elsewhere is being burned to make the electricity. It's no free lunch. There's also a limit to the amount of Lithium (used in batteries for electric cars) there is in the world. http://lithiumabundance.blogspot.com/
Who said it was? All I said was that it was a good deal for this country because: 1. We have lots of coal. 2. Electricity can be created from multiple sources, nuclear, natural etc... 3. We move the investment we make into our borders for our own infrastructure and mostly our own population. We already make the investment. Let's make it in a place that makes sense for us to benefit most from it... Yes, there is, but Lithium is not the end-all of electricity storage technology, it is just the most common modern method used today.
If we were allowed to burn all the coal we want to make electricity, it'd be really cheap. But the trend is away from coal burning plants. We have a lot of natural gas. If we made cars that burned that, we'd accomplish your goal - bring it all within our borders, etc. The cost of the infrastructure would be HUGE. Maybe I'm no financial genius, but when you continuously spend money on losing propositions, you'll eventually run out. Like we are now.
Nuclear power-plants will be even cheaper than that... The technology is there, but for some reason, politically it's not OK to build them but it's OK to send people to fight in Iraq... Are you talking about the cost of the infrastructure for electricity or natural gas? And there you made my argument for me. We already spend tons of money on a losing proposition with the foreign oil dependency. It only makes sense to transition to something else and move that investment where it will build our infrastructure, create jobs and investment in-house and develop technology that can later be exported...
A nuclear power plant costs a lot to build in the USA. Perhaps $20B these days. The cost of Iraq and Afghanistan combined might have built 50 nuclear reactors over 10 years. Hardly the number we'd need. The cost of infrastructure for natural gas. I don't see many filling stations that have tanks of it to fill up from. The problem with your last statement is that burning oil (and coal) is hugely economical compared to the alternatives. Otherwise the alternatives would have already won. We're talking maybe 50x more economical.
...or the military industrial complex that runs our country and profits insanely from the status quo. Never gonna happen.
So, you're an isolationist that opposes free trade between countries? I'd much rather have oil wells being drilled in the Venezuela than more dams and nuke plants built in America.
Not very green of you. Most sane people would like to see the filthy practice of burning it banned, which will eventually happen. Proposing to increase the burning of coal by tenfold or whatever absurd number would be required to run America's cars is naive at best.
Common sense for most people. Better that people die over there than build death plants here. Power plants around the world are decaying and in a few decades meltdowns will be as common as the seasons.
The US today has around 70 nuclear power plants, the last one built in 1977 (yikes) - many of them are tiny by modern standards, and yet, 20% of the electricity in the US is nuclear based despite the use of outdated, not really state of the art facilities... I think you have to rethink what 50 modern nuclear plants will do for this country... Burning oil is not really more economical than electric-transportation for most everyday uses by Americans, the reason that petroleum based transportation was not challenged before was the issue of batteries - as far as storage and safety. We are finally at a place in time where the technology is there to make a serious dent in the IC dominance in this area. As for coal burning - nuclear generation is actually cheaper - but for political reasons it has not been expanded for many years in this country. I would again remind you that in this country, the last nuclear-power plant that was built was finished when Jimmy Carter became president. In comparison - France manufactures 75% of it's electric energy via nuclear power-plants and France is the world's largest net exporter of electricity due to its very low cost of generation, and gains over 3 billion Euros per year from this.
I'm already sold on nuclear power. I'm not sold on a 40 mile range vehicle when I might want to go 41 on some days or 80 or whatever. I think that will be the huge resistance to all electric vehicles unless they're as cheap as gas fueled cars, get the same kind of range (300+ miles to a tank), and don't take several hours to refill (gas station takes 5 minutes to refill a car). Do you realize the life expectancy of a nuclear power plant is about 30-40 years? We don't have to build 50 MORE plants, we need to build 70 to replace the old ones and then 50 more. Or more like 300 more so we can stop burning coal and still have extra capacity to plug in more electronic gadgets.
We don't actually. We have some of the cheapest gas prices here in the US, and it's doubtful an equivalently economic electric option will EVER be available to the masses. That technology is so far off the idea will probably be made obsolete by something better soon. You are talking about pennies when you talk about how much of that $3.25 per gal even makes it to the oil supplier, whether he/she is Arab or American. Nearly all the cost to you comes from the US or British processor, and Federal, State and Local taxes.
The average American driver covers 33.4 miles per day - which is within the range of a single charge. Given that the US also has many people that drive long-distance, the vast majority is right on the money. LOL as much as you want, it's the truth. No, but I also do not think it makes sense to be dependent on the whims of dictators in far-away places that can always wave the threat of cutting you off to get whatever they want. Until they decide that they are once again happy with $100 per barrel - and later $120 and later $140 and this country never gets out of the recession because it has to dance as a puppet... Actually you got it wrong again. It is much easier to create clean burn when you do it on a massive scale as you do in the power-plants than when you do it on millions of small power-plants in cars. Most ozone pollution is caused by motor vehicles, which account for 72% of nitrogen oxides and 52% of reactive hydrocarbons (principal components of smog) - Emissions from cars dwarfs that from power plants - for example, the power-plant that serves Austin, TX and the Travis county creates around 1000 tons per year of NOX, the cars registered in this county create 30,000 tons per year... Replacing the IC engines with coal burning electricity is very, very green...
The Leaf gives you a 100 miles range, and the Volt gives you that 300 miles range - but most of the time you will not use the gasoline... If you do drive normally, you will have maybe 10 days of the month where you will go over the charge range - and after that you will have comparable gasoline costs as a normal car, but for the other 20 days, you will have somewhere between 1/2 and a 1/3 of the cost. It is already cheaper at a very early stage of the development... What does this have to do with anything? This is just maintenance of existing infrastructure which is done anyway, it has nothing to do with moving the price of police actions to investments in new infrastructure to move to better/modern technologies and lessen dependency. BTW, most nuclear plants in the US have their licenses extended to 60 years now - because, as mentioned above, the last time one was built in this country was 1977 - 34 years ago...
California. This Global Warming Solutions Act that Arnie and the dems passed is going to cripple economic growth for the next decade+ (well, until they eventually repeal it).
I've never met him (the average American), but since 7 days a week he drives exactly 33.4 miles, not 12 miles on workdays and 170 miles on weekend trips, it sounds like if they ever make a fairly priced electric car he might buy one. I don't know anyone with a car who could rely on an electric as the only family vehicle. A city-dwelling childless person maybe. And then there's the actual gutless piece of tin you get for a whole lot of money, and it is dangerous as hell if you get hit in it. And when the power grid fails, as happens on occasion, you'd be stuck without a ride. I want a perpetual-motion transport powered by happy thoughts.
