Since his first term in office, President Obama has pledged to get 1 million electric cars onto America’s roads by the year 2015. And while that promise has been repeated, it appears all is not going well with the President’s initiative. Despite the promise of “green” transportation – and despite billions of dollars in investment, EVs continue to be plagued by many of the problems that eventually scuttled electrics as far back as the 1910s. Both Toyota and Nisson have cut back on electric vehicle production, and even hybrid car pioneer and “father of the Prius” Takeshi Uchiyamada says, “Because of its shortcomings– the electric vehicle is not a viable replacement for most conventional cars.”
Electric cars losing charge
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Electric cars all get around 3 miles per kilowatt-hour of energy consumed. If
they use air conditioning, heating, or drive fast, they may get considerably
less miles per kilowatt-hour. Electricity has to be generated at a power plant
and transmitted through transmission lines and the alternating current must be
converted to direct current. All of these operations have losses; so a generous
credit for electric cars is it costs three kilowatt-hours of energy to make one
kilowatt-hour delivered to the car battery. The net result is electric cars get
one mile or less off one kilowatt-hour of energy. A gallon of gasoline contains
40 kilowatt-hours of energy. Thus electric cars get less than 40 mpg equivalent
using gasoline as energy sources. All these cars are compact cars carrying
heavy batteries. Their comparable gasoline driven competitors all get more than
40 miles per gallon. Thus electric cars are energy losers. They should be banned
in Hawaii where electricity is made with oil because they would end up
increasing the use of oil on the islands.
Electric car subsidies are nonsense peddled by the uneducated energy policy
makers who are ruining the United States. Another example of damaging energy
policy with regard to transportation is the mandate to mix ethanol with
gasoline. This is another energy loser that should be eliminated.
James H. Rust, Professor of nuclear engineering (ret.)
And that is not all: electric cars are, at present, slow, consuming electrical energy, and expensively impractical. Can’t some people believe in electric vehicles still?
I personally hope that the EV sales are minuscule worldwide. – J.P.K.