Are gas powered cars cleaner than electric cars who get their power from coal fired electric plants?

The push for electric cars by the government is the biggest con-game

ever pulled on the American public. The politicians are hoping that you

won't think about where all that electricity is coming from when you plug

in your government subsidized Volt.

Most people also don't realize that most of the mercury and much of

the background radioactivity that gets into the environment is from

burning COAL, not to mention all the carbon oxides. And once everyone

starts using electric cars, then of course there will be a huge push to

build new electric plants to accomodate them all, making the pollution

problem 10 times worse than it is now.

And don't even bring up how they are going

to have to devestate the environment to produce all those batteries for all those cars

(1500 lbs of exotic metals per car, many of them toxic), which have to be replaced every 3 years.

What the government should be doing is backing the development of

a hydrogen powered car and an infrastructure to handle hydrogen fuel.

Hydrogen has ZERO emissions, can be made catalytically from natural

gas using no energy, and the balance can come from the many industrial

processes that already generate hydrogen as a waste by-product. Plus

it will never run out, since it is the single most common element in the

universe.

Even an EV powered by pure coal produces less carbon then an identical car powered by gas. There's other pollutants with coal, but coal is becoming cleaner then it was. But coal only accounts for a portion of our electrical energy, and you don't have to use coal to make electrical power, there are plenty of clean renewable sources. But there's even more to the gas story. It has to be refined from crude oil and then transported to gas stations all over the country. That's an extremely energy intensive process and accounts for a good deal of pollution that doesn't get a lot of attention, but it's there. Coal just has go be transported to the power plant, usually pretty close by, then the power goes to every point on the grid instantly. It's a lot more realistic, logistically to control the pollution at one single power plant, then with tens of thousands of gas cars all over the roads. I'm not saying that coal is the way to go, it's not, but even pure coal powered EVs are still cleaner then crude oil powered gas cars. Then there's other environmental impacts, like oil spills, which is just part using oil. You use that much oil, and spills are going to happen. There's other environmental impacts from coal too, but you don't have to use coal to power the car, there's plenty of clean renewable sources to choose from that have to full potential to power the entire civilization, like solar and geo thermal. Seriously, either one of those can give us all the energy we could ever use.

Yes, I've heard the same thing too and I've concluded that not only is this true but also: electric cars need to be recharged and the only place you can do that without someone getting angry at you is your home. Guess how much electricity you'll go through every month and compare that to almost any gas powered car and you'll see that it's no better, if not worse, than driving a normal sedan.

I always thought it was funny that people would buy into those hybrid electrical cars, yet probably didn't give it a second thought about where electricity gets its power source from.

Honda has a car out called the Clarity.

It runs on compressed gas and water.

It's emissions is H2O.

However, the car costs over $140 K and right now can only be leased and not bought.

Depends on many factors like: how much gas are we talking? My SUV gets 15 MPG so thats not cleaner on paper. But since I only drive it 3000 miles a year it is, because the mining of the Nickel for the battery, use of coal for some of the electricity etc erases the benefit of the electric vehicle. But again, it depends where the power is coming from. Mine comes mostly from hydro-electric power.

But in the end, environmental issues aren't that political. My main concern is that I want to support our troops. And I don;'t see how buying oil from fundamentalist Muslims who like to kill Americans is very patriotic or wise. Screw the environment, I'll pay more to wean ourselves off of oil for national and economic security reasons.

Shh! Don't want to make peoples' heads explode.

I've always wondered how electricity would be generated when Obama wanted to shut down coal-fired power plants because he wanted to see us pay high energy bills. But at the same time, he was excited about the production of electric cars.

Same as other people. Where do you guys think electricity comes from?

The UN admitted the other day that the "Green Movement" and "Global Warming" hoax are about nothing other than redistribution of wealth, but any reasonably thoughtful person without an agenda to push can see the obvious. It takes far more fossil fuels to create "green energy" and when combined with their hybrid engines which are not truly electric but a combination, they end up increasing pollution, not decreasing it.

The same goes for Hydrogen and we've seen the disaster that happens when government subsidies corn production for alcohol to add. People starve.

Electric cars move the emissions to the power plants.

Abracadabra - Now Liberals think they are clean.

Hydrogen is similar - it's a b itch to compress, and you still need power to create it.

The world is full of slick politician using environmentalism as the opiate of the masses.

Obama thinks a job becomes magically profitable because if you paint it green.

That is like asking how much energy it takes to manufacture all the components in a fluorescent light bulb and does it require more energy and create more toxic waste than you will expend when you use an incandescent light bulb.

Liberals don't like such questions. They just want you to tax you to subsidize the manufacturing of their illusions.

Build nuclear power plants to charge our batteries so we can have nuclear powered automobiles.

i know for a fact my gas powered car does not emit as much pollution as a coal fired power plant,

clean up lib polluters!!!