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Paul
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http://online.wsj.com/article_print/...024310060.html

paul34

If a lot of people start buying this then we'll see an already strained electrical grid get even more strained. But in the meanwhile, before it gets too popular, it might work... I really do mean "meanwhile," because 6-7 years down the road (even sooner if they get in a totalled wreck) then I guess we'll see all these toxic batteries end up in all the wrong places

apexjr

Plugging in makes it worse actually. Since coal power plants pollute our air much more then cars. The Gibson coal power plant in southwest Indiana burns through 300 train car loads of coal each day.

Coal power plants pollute our air more then vehicles, but vehicles are 2nd.

The only true solution is a super high mpg vehicle, hybrid of course, and no natural gas, hydro, or coal power. Air and solar are pretty much the only clean ways to generate power at this time.

brambling

It will require larger batteries, I forget how long you can go on just the Prius battery, if I remember right not very far. I thought Toyota already decided people didn't want this.

tCheesy

I thought that the use of hydrogen fuel cells only "exhaust" water? I agree though... this will just pollute more. If your going to make a difference.. follow the line of events all the way back...thats usually humans greatest mistake. IMO

ecandlcubed

nah. it is not going to work. the infrastructure is not there plus the charging technology is not there. gm tried it with its ev-1 and ev-2 back in the early 90s with no success.

jamessicat25

hybrid : electric-bike pedal is the solution..

paul34

Yea, considering most new power plants are coal and gas fired, it is true. Why no safe, cheap, and efficient nuclear power? It is, after all, modern times, right? You can thank NIMBYs and people who choose ignorance and fear rather than facts and science (aka "NO NUKULEEER POWRR" types)

xBassist

Mmmm.... Chernobyl

OldYeller

Its my understanding that they are working on ways of getting clean burning coal. We have hundreds of years of reserves of coal in this country if they can make it work. We have not built any nuclear plants in years because of fears of accidents. It would be nice in either case to not have to buy oil from the Mid East or Venuzuela..........

BSP_5c10n

I think the point is to lower our dependence on foreign oil. Plus I think a few extra power plants here and there is better than thousands of polluting cars on the road.

BlueStreak

Well, GM had the idea of the Green Fuel, AKa made from corn, that works just as good as traditional gas, only with virtually not exhaust pollutants, and if you think about it, corn is alot eaier to get and supply than gasoline. And if americans stopped eating so much corn, considering its the least nutritional vegetable, almost purely insoluble fiber, it even comes out whole when you let out a load. Not to be gross, but its true. People could use it as fuel instead of non nutritional food, and then wed have even more corn. I knew corn had its place in this world, and i knew it wasnt in my belly. Thats just my opinion, but it makes alot of common sense if you ask me.

paul34

^^ There's cheap and plentiful corn and ethanol to be had from places like Brazil... but the US is afraid, and wants to"protect" their own corn farmers so there's a lot of tariffs on that sort of stuff...

We could be closer to energy independence if trade was a bit more free in that aspect, not to mention that farmers in Brazil would benefit

OldYeller

What I understand is that you can not pipe the ethanol so you are somewhat limited to where you can sell it. Thus it is in the Midwest but no in Cali. They are also working on making ethanol from stalks of wheat and corn, which would be a better use of the food chain.........

etli

Solar energy generates toxic waste when you make the solar cells. It's the same process as when you make computer chips. A whole lot of messy toxic chemicals are used to etch the chips. (well, maybe it's cleaner these days. It's been a while since my EE courses). Maybe you're referring to using mirrors to reflect sunlight to a water tower - problem is you need a LOT of space to generate enough heat to get the water hot enough. I doubt the environmentalists would go along with covering the mojave desert with mirrors.

Wind - yeah, pretty clean but the places where you can use it are very limited. To generate electricity you need constant windspeed and depending on the design of the windmill, it has to be pretty big. There aren't that many places in the world where the wind is constant enough.

Pretty much anything we do generates waste into the environment.

ricktoyota73

That's what I was thinking. Just need to install a Mr Fusion!

apexjr

Facts -

83% of US Powerplant CO2 emissions come from COAL
50% of US electricity comes from COAL

For now, US Utilities are free to pollute as much CO2 into the air as they wish. But regulations are coming soon. July's energy bill will also help us onto the right path in cleaner energy. The bill is to give tax credits for gasification projects.

The gasification project is what OldYeller might have been thinking about. You can't burn coal cleanly, it is impossible. You can scrub the CO2 out of the exhaust but you loose 25% of the energy. The gasification process is smart, you basically chemically change coal into gas, scrub the CO2 out easily and you get clean fuel and hydrogen as a by product. They could easily use the fuel for the electricity and the hydrogen for the cars. The only unknown is the pumping of the CO2 gas into the depths of the Earth. They don't know what the ramifications of doing it is.

The best thing we can all do is reduce our consumption and when possible subscribe to cleaner energy. For example all the user of PGE (Portland General Electric) can subscribe to hydro/wind power only, instead of coal.

While I know heating the water is bad, at this point I don't think it is worse then the burning of coal.

I suggest to everyone interested in this subject to watch a new show on Global Warming on Discovery. It's pretty decent, and shows how we have messed up our planet and how things are chain reacting. A small example; 20% of the earth is white polar caps. When they melt they make blue water. That blue water evaporates into blue vapors. All that blue absorbs slightly more heat then the white did. The blue water warms up the other water, while the vapors warm up the air.

scionofPCFL

Nukes are super safe....when done correctly, just ask the Navy. The problem with Chernobyl was the flawed design. They used a flammible material to control the Fussion process. Uhm, hello!!! McFly!!!!

The problems we had in the US with nukes was that there was no consistency in design. And, even tho it was designed and engineered by people with many years of training and advanced degrees, you still have a Homer Simpson running the controls.

Solution: Put the US Navy in charge of designing, building, and running the plants. 30 years of Nuke ships w/zero incidents.

As far as wind goes, Texas is on the forfront of this. There are wind farms all over west Texas now contributing to the US grid. There's also a lot of dessert in the South West where these farms could be highly profitable. I mean, how much could an acre of dersert sell for? It can't be that much.

mfbenson

"Solution: Put the US Navy in charge of designing, building, and running the plants. 30 years of Nuke ships w/zero incidents. "

One one sense that is already happening - all the guys that do it are former Navy.

What we need is information on how many kwh a charge on the batteries takes, how far the car can go on that charge, and how much CO2 it produces to make that much kwh, and compare that to the CO2 output of making a gasoline-only car go that far. The sketchy information I could find on the web made it look like even with using coal to make electricity its still better for the environment than straight-gasoline.

The devil is in the details.

Oh, and about ethanol, don't get me wrong, I'm all in favor for it, but it does have a big downside - all the extra demand on agricultural soil will make the aquifer in the midwest drop even faster than it is, and it would run dry in about 20 to 30 more years, and at that point we would face a triple threat - no oil, no ethanol, and no food.

But why worry about that? Earth First! We'll strip mine the other planets later.

paul34

I think we'll just have to find a benevolent alien race, and then enslave them to produce electricity for us from their home planet.

Seems pretty simple to me...