[buddym]

I think there's no doubt in anyone's mind that electric cars themselves are reliant on the grid, and if its a coal burning station then obviously you're burning coal to drive. I hope that as greener energy forms such as solar and wind catch on we'll be able to really reduce our carbon footprints. While we as consumers can make a personal change on our end and go electric/hybrid it's really up to govs to help make the grid cleaner with legislation and regulation. It's kind of sad that individuals can't go all the way but I want to be optimistic about this. Maybe combining your own solar panels + electric car can some day in the near future get us where we'd want to be?

[revelation]

Gasoline cars are reliant on the grid (of petrol stations), unless you can refine and pump oil yourself.

Eletric cars are only reliant on electricity. Availablity of eletricity from the grid is much better than gasoline from petrol stations, and even if power goes out you can charge your car from your solar panels or any other means you can find to generate electricity, of which there are plenty. Gyms could probably generate plenty of miles just from obese people on crosstrainers.

All in all, a move to electric cars and renewable power sources will decentralize energy supply and make us less reliant on the grid (and all the failed states that supply oil).

[notdonspaulding]

Indeed, I think it's neat to consider that the electric grid could eventually end up being more distributed than the petrol grid.

Petrol has to be drilled from wherever the fossils happened to be compressed, transported to wherever the closest port is, pipelined to wherever it's convenient to have a refinery, trucked to gas stations, pumped into your car. It's a very top-down hierarchy.

Electricity can be obtained from wherever the solar, wind, gas-powered-generator, nuclear-generator, geothermal sources are (hint: just about anywhere), put onto a fault-tolerant grid, and "pumped into cars" anywhere we've run copper.

Gas wins on storage capacity/convenience, but that's about it.