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Comment by jdc | Hacker News Reader

Aren't there significant carbon emissions released during the production of a Tesla car and its components?

After accounting for emissions during manufacturing, even if you powered an electric car with coal power only, carbon emissions of an electric car are roughly a 25-30 MPG car equivalent.

However, those numbers get much better as the electric power generation mix improves (at both the car factory and your garage). In California, now, an electric car is about equivalent to a 70 MPG car.

Note that significant efforts are underway to reduce the carbon-intensiveness of our electricity generation, so these numbers will get better over time.

http://shrinkthatfootprint.com/electric-cars-green

I think it's a bootstrapping issue. What does one do first when they want an entirely new power ecosystem? I would argue it's wiser to start with the sexy public facing segment on the demand side (awesome looking electric sports cars) and have the public start this exact conversation and demand the infrastructure changes. Because it seems like a pretty steep climb for one to try to make this huge change simply by supply side first.

It only needs to release less than an equivalent ICE vehicle. Comparing it to "zero" is unfair.

It's hard to imagine any process that doesn't have some interaction with carbon-based fuel. So while he is willing to pay the cost along with everyone else, the conflict of interest is still there -- his company will benefit _at the margin_ with a much higher carbon tax, so there's an extent to which he might be talking his book.

That all being said, as a matter of simple fact I think he's correct with only relatively straight-forward caveats (like, "within the lifespan of currently alive humans"). So the issue isn't him talking his book per se as it is him attempting to set the public agenda in a way favorable to him. This isn't something I typically worry about, although given how totally non-surprising the headline is to anyone who has paid attention to energy policy in the last couple decades, it might be worth bringing up.

The benefit of a carbon tax is that no one has to calculate whether the lifetime vs production CO2 cost is greater; it shows up in the prices of either.

The downside of carbon tax is that it harms developing nations and the poor the most.

The impact on the poor is easy to fix: prebate everyone an amount of money equal to the poverty level energy consumption. It cancels the income effect while preserving the incentive to cut back on any marginal unit of CO2.

It is theoretically possible to develop technology that makes electric cars greatly more co2 efficient over the lifetime than internal combustion engines ever could be. That puts Tesla at an advantage in the long run.

That's not a theory -- given the trends in the electricity markets, that's expected.

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