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Comment by doczoidberg | Hacker News Reader

I just want to mention some facts. EVs are interesting and the future for sure but thinking EVs are the holy grail is just stupid.

http://www.digitaltrends.com/cars/hold-smugness-tesla-might-...

How do you can capture carbon?

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I think what jedberg meant was that if you are producing the electricity at a centralized place (like even a coal-fired power plant) you could theoretically capture carbon using massive scrubbers on the exhaust towers. Developing similar technology and installing it in all of the individual gas-burning cars would be near impossible.

My 2c: The real "secret plan" here is that converting us to electric vehicles paves the way to develop (and creates structural demand for) 0-emission ways to recharge them, like:

- resurgence of large nuclear plants

- self-contained micro-nuclear reactors that you could bury in your yard

- solar on your garage (paired with a Tesla Powerwall to recharge your car at night)

These 'scrubbers' and nuclear plants are already in my calculations of battery manufacturing C02 production. Base of the CO2 production calculation is the energy mix of germany. In the US it would be even higher(?).

Source is an independent german energy research institute btw.

EVs are the holy grail, at least for the next century. Thinking EVs are the holy grail, is incredibly smart.

You link them up to nuclear, wind, or solar and drastically reduce the total pollution output across the life of the vehicle, versus a gasoline or diesel vehicle.

EVs are as clean as their energy source. Gas and diesel cars are the exact opposite: extremely polluting no matter what you do to them. EVs win period. There's no scenario in which they don't, especially over the next few decades as they leap far ahead of traditional vehicles in every regard. At worst they're less polluting than gasoline vehicles over time, at best they're far less polluting.

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