| > This happened a while ago so I could be misremembering, but regardless I don't believe that the environmental value of electric vehicles has been realized Indeed. However, look at it this way: which is easier to replace, the entire fleet, or centralized power plants? Every time a new windmill or solar panel is added, your Tesla gets that much cleaner. And that's something you can do yourself if you want to. Electricity is fungible and your car could not care less where it came from. Oil changes have a non-negligible impact for the environment as well. And then there are all those components that have to be replaced from time to time and end up in landfills (spark plugs/cables, timing belts, etc). So I believe electric cars today are already a net gain. And, even if they polluted more, the pollution is centralized in the power plants, which is easier to do something about. There are problem health benefits from moving pollution away from population centers. I make a point of going to parks with my EV. I know it's a token gesture, but I like to think I'm not blowing dirty fumes next to animal habitats. It helps that California is reasonably clean. |
The entire fleet I'd think. It's certainly much more likely to happen first.
(Cars have a much shorter average lifespan than power plants; the natural gas power plants we're building right now have a designed lifespan of up to 50 years. Very few cars coming of the production line today will be on the road in 50 years.)