Electric cars - laudable but not 'carbon free' #environment #autos

Electric cars are certainly quieter, potentially more reliable and more durable than what we have now. And they make a lot of sense as a driving experience with their seamless instant-on torque delivery, but that doesn't mean that they are "perfect" or "green" or even better than anything else in every situation. They are an option, and a worthy one, if you really need to propel yourself and a tonne or so of metal and plastic around. I also know that the car-fan media is obsessed with "fuel" to the exclusion of all else. But really, this goes a bit too far:While Tesla’s electric cars grab headlines across the globe, a company in the NSW country town of Armidale is quietly developing its own contribution to carbon-free motoring.

Exactly how "carbon-free" is any electric car? Was it manufactured without burning fossil fuels? (Certainly not in this case - I can see plenty of coal-fired furnaces at work here.) Was it shipped around post-manufacture without emitting carbon? (Unlikely.) Were the raw materials mined or made without a single atom of carbon getting lost along the way? (Hmmm.)

What they (the media outlet) mean is that it's not a petrol car, it's electric. I think we gathered that anyway. Like the uncritical Top Gear fascination with hydrogen, it stumbles on a key point: it takes energy to make, store and move energy. Whilst making electric or hydrogen-powered cars may lead to a cleaner atmosphere in our cities, and whilst driving such cars may eventually be sustainable in some narrow sense, they still have to be made and distributed, and the energy to move it must come from somewhere as well. There's no free ride here folks.

I wish I could believe the Tesla will work...

I really do. It's a 4 y.o. start up auto company that makes just one product: a swoopy sports car. It's fast. It's lowslung. It looks the business. It costs a reasonable $US100K. And it runs on electricity. I just want to believe in it, I really do.

I just wonder what happens when you get stranded for the first time. When the batteries start to lose their zip. Do you pull over and run an extension lead over to a friendly local 220V public power point and wait for 3 hours? Or plug into a more common 110V socket and wait 7 hours, happily? What happens when you forget to charge up overnight (maybe the car emails you a reminder?). Do you go 'oh well' and walk? Hmmm. It's not like a gasoline car, is it, where you just go to a petrol station and refuel in a couple of minutes...

The other thing is, who makes the electricity, and how? Do we really save anything, when we are in effect burning coal to run the car? I'd like to see the sums...