Thread: electric cars are they the future?

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Electrics cars seem to be our future but whats going to happen when we got millions of batteries with no place to put them? The acid , and materials the will have to be manufactured to make a batt will cause more problems to the ozone that gas does. What am I missing?

You've hit on one of many problems, though some sort of recycle mandate (yeah more big brotherism) will appear to solve that issue, though will further increase the real cost and inconvenience. What almost never gets addressed is the material the batteries will likely be made from. Generally known as "rare earths". These need to be mined (we know how popular that is with the enviro whackos), often in unstable geographies, and in limited supply. Will the "carbon costs" of the mining, refining, transportation, etc. be calculated in the "greener" formula? Is there enough material available to power the world fleet of cars? Not likely. But they've managed to hide the real costs of ethanol, so this will likely be obscured the same way. The real main objective is subjugation of the populace, but of course that can't be admitted. Sigh!

To conquer

Thanks, Bob

Richard

What amazes me is how many people praise the electric car for it's "pollution free" "environmentally freindly" and, as they say, what could be cleaner than just "plugging it in to any wall outlet". just where the H*!! do they think that "pollution free energy" comes from? here on the left coast we're actually fortunate to have mostly hydro-electric for our power, but those are being torn down at a rapid pace and a new one will never be built. that leaves Nuke or coal, and we know how "environmentally frendly" those are.

#@&^% errrrr &^%#$. I need a beer,
Lotsa

I know that I have carried millions of gollans of fuel over the years to the power companies here in Florida. They have a bunch of tanks that are all 100,000 gallons that have to be filled continuously for thier back up generators.
Ya I can see them plug in cars saving the planet. HE! HE!HE!
Kurt

I could be wrong but if I remember correctly the country of Brazil has been running on sugar cane since the gas crunch of the early 80's. It seems this Country Brazil got smart and vowed to not to be in need of gas like the rest of the world.

Several reasons why an ethanol policy worked better for Brazil. First, it's a much smaller economy and populace than ours. Second, sugar cane produces approx. 50% higher yield per acre of alcohol output than corn. Third they practice more "flexible" environmental policy than we do so can further lower the cost of production by burning the cane stalks in the alcohol production process. And of course they have a lower standard of living than we do...................well, for now anyway.

Additionally they haven't forsaken exploring for oil on there offshore regions. http://article.wn.com/view/2009/09/0...an_oil_fields/

And are able/willing to partner with the Chinese (who have been spending the last couple years making deals around the world to line up petroleum sources in preparation for the next economic upturn as well as the growth of their own economic base)
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124274623930634997.html

http://www.allbusiness.com/mining-ex...2991973-1.html

Somehow these stories seem out of sync with the stories we've heard for the last 30 years that world supplies of crude are almost gone, and that we MUST develop new "clean-green" energy sources. Well, the good news is, when we're a second rate economy our demand will be lower.

This has me looking sideways at our situation too. Auckland,if not the whole of the country experiences power shortages now and then,Auckland nearly every winter. Imagine what will happen when 50000 people plug their clean green tree hugging plastic electric car in at night and turn the switch on....

Geez, now you guys are making me feel guilty....How big a windmill do I need to keep my golf cart charged up????????

And all the genius tree huggers still overlook the obvious....How's about a few more bodies participating in the public transportation system??? Park and Ride and the commute into the city on a high speed rail system should work....We dump a gazillion dollars into Amtrak, why not put that money into rail freight???? How many trucks come off the highway when a train with a 100 cars goes down the rails??? Around here, they haul corn and soybeans from the local elevator's to the production and export locations on "Unit Trains"--usually consisting of about 80 rail cars full of grain!!!!! I'm not into the economics or tree hugging crap, but that's got to be a heck of a lot less pollutants pulling one train vs a few hundred trucks on the highway.... I dunno, are they just overlooking the obvious or what????

They have the trains figured out here. Our little hamlet sees about 100 trains a day on average. I rarely go downtown & back without getting stopped at least once by a train.

BTW: My Grandson likes to see the choo choo'z go zoom.

The freight railroads did exceptionally well last year when fuel prices were up; basically it's a pricing issuel. When it makes money and time sense the rails get the nod. Other times the truck transport makes more sense.

As for the passenger rail stuff, in Seattle they finally passed measure to build a "light rail" system after several failed attempts. The "do-gooders" finally scraped, cajoled, invented, whatever just enough votes. Once construction began so did the schedule delays, and the cost over runs, and the route reductions, and all the rest of the b.s. that happens on these kind of programs that promise more than they can ever deliver. They had the grand opening a couple months ago and had their largest ridership via the grandees that showed up. Since then the trains are almost empty. As so often happens the "do-gooders" come up with these great ideas......................ideas they want to force on others, not themselves. I'm sure it's too inconvenient for THEM! Let (make?) the peons use it! Did I mention they also didn't provide parking lots at the terminals? But they did put in bike racks! S.O.S.

Yuppers, just like everywhere else... The tree huggers are just so busy and there scheduling so tight the only way they can get around is in there 10 mpg SUV.....but the rest of us should drive electric or hybreds so they have enough fuel to save the world!!!!!!Makes perfect senseless to me!!!!

Oh well, everybody wants to bitch about the problems and come up with solutions for others to carry out and make the sacrifices..... No such thing as individual responsibility anymore. Our government seems to be so dang busy trying to save the world that our own little country is well on the way to self destruction!!!!

We rely on the trucks to get a big percentage of goods to our neck of the woods,as the governments in the past have let the railways get run down,and in some areas,closed down.To get anything railed into our province from Auckland,it has to go further south,then come back up to our province..We do have a line from New Plymouth to places south of here which is mainly used by the dairy company to ship milk product back up to the port,and for general cargo,if you aint in a hurry,which I guess is what its all about..For the main freight up and down the country,trucks are used,its the only reliable transport in the country,as it took too long to freight anything by rail,and IF it turned up,it could be damaged anyway,and usually took three times longer than it should,besides that,the more trucks on the road,the more repairs I might get...oops,did I say that??