[adventureful]

By that standard, we should never develop any new technology, because in the process of developing ANY new technology (including wind power and solar power) you're going to generate some level of pollution, including most likely using fossil fuels. By your standard, we can never progress at all, and must eventually regress to a primitive state. If that had been followed, we could have NEVER developed solar panels, and so many other important, cleaner technologies.

[OstiaAntica]

Look, Tesla is billed as being greener than traditional autos but it is not. Drawing power from the grid is amazingly wasteful, and is often COAL. Trading oil for coal is not an environmental win-- Tesla's basic premise is a fraud. It reminds me of ethanol, another big government effort for the "environment" which makes things worse.

[gfodor]

Unlike traditional vehicles, Tesla's cars have the potential to be run on nuclear, solar, or other future green energy sources as more and more of those options come online. One would think this goes without saying.

[sp332]

Trading oil for coal is not an environmental win

It certainly is! Burning enough gas in a small engine to power a car is much more polluting than generating the same energy in a commercial-scale coal-power plant.

[Nrsolis]

I'll say this as a person who used to work for an electric utility that generated MOST of its power via coal.

It is MUCH, MUCH easier to control pollution at a point-source (like, say, a power plant) than it is to control pollution on a moving platform.

If you only knew the kinds of engineering efforts that have been devised to make the gasoline engine more efficient and less polluting, you might consider how much better electricity generation via fossil fuels will get if we were really serious about having an energy policy in the US.

SO far, there isn't a mechanism known yet for generating energy from a concentrated source that doesn't involve some form of pollution. Coal, nuclear, solar all have their by-products.

Once you account for externalities, there are very very few options that look great.

[stephengillie]

Come drive in Washington State, where our grid is powered by the water which falls from our sky, as it flows back to the ocean.

Also WSDOT just installed 7 EV charging stations along Interstate 5: http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/News/2012/05/30_newevstations.htm

[alephnil]

Electric vehicles are far more efficient than ordinary cars, over 80% including both the charging/uncharging of the batteries and the electric motor. Compare that with the 25% of ordinary cars. Even if all the electricity comes from coal, it is no worse than ordinary cars, since coal fired power plants also are more efficient than gas engines. That means that it is no worse than ordinary cars even in the worst case.

You can argue that to get more people to use public trasport is a bigger win, but to say electric vehicles is a fraud is just wrong.

[Nrsolis]

The top end Model S has a 85kWh battery pack and can get 265 miles on that charge according to the 5-point standard for MPGe set by the EPA. That's equivalent to just under 3 gallons of gas using the GGE conversion mechanism.

That's an amazing efficiency win.

So far, the biggest downside is the extended charge time. To fully recharge the car using the fastest charger, it's about 4-5 hours.

[efsavage]

I just switched one of my electric bills (Maine) to 100% wind power, and at the same rate (actually less for 1 year with promo discount, then the same).

Millions of toxic batteries are a problem, but I wouldn't be surprised if some future scientist/entrepeneur figures out something smart to do with them. It's not exactly nuclear waste.

Ethanol is indeed a scam at the moment, but when it can be harvested and processed by electric combines and new plants, it will be an effective way to store other clean energy.

[TeMPOraL]

> It's not exactly nuclear waste.

I have strong faith that eventually we'll figure how to use even nuclear waste productively.

[adventureful]

They've already solved that one, at least partially. And it certainly seems likely to continue to progress in the right direction.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traveling_wave_reactor

[nitrogen]

AIUI coal is still cleaner per mile than gasoline.

[darklajid]

Send me a car to Germany.

(Yeah, we have arguably too much coal here as well, but .. it's changing and the renewable energy changes are a relevant subject in elections)

1: http://uk.reuters.com/article/2012/05/26/us-climate-germany-... 2: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4028019 (the discussion regarding [1])