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Comment by kitsunesoba | Hacker News Reader

The difference is that electricity can be produced any number of ways, not just by burning coal, and if some amazing eco-friendly battery alternative appears at some point in the future, existing EVs can easily be retrofitted with them. On the other hand, a fossil fuel vehicle bought today will still be a fossil fuel vehicle 100 years from now, regardless of technological advancements.

No, EVs aren't perfect and may not be for years to come, but they offer flexibility to make up for that. Sitting and waiting for the perfect replacement for ICEs is fruitless; alternatives must first be embraced if they're to ever develop sufficiently.

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Even if we were to fuel EVs from oil power plants, those power plants would be more efficient than ICEs (enough to offset transmission/storage losses) and can have much better filtration systems.

Yes, I always shrug reading convoluted arguments like that. In Norway all of the grid power comes from hydro, so the (sizeable by now) fleet of EVs does have zero carbon footprint without any fine print.

I agree with your sentiment. However, wouldn't a person pitching that argument then counter that Norway built their hydro grid in part using oil exports, ie that Norway is responsible for enabling a lot of global pollution per capita in order to pay for that grid (and the on-going vast per capita oil exports necessary to continue supporting it)? What's the counter to that premise?

No, the power generation in Norway, like pretty much elsewhere, is paid for by the power consumers, not oil revenues; it also predates discovery of oil deposits in the North Sea.

Well, is your argument that, had Norway not exported oil, the actual use today would be lower?

Would countries use less energy if not for Norway's oil exports?

Norway also exports and imports energy to Europe to exploit the potential for energy price arbitrage. In effect, any country that is connected to an international energy grid has partial responsibility for bringing down global CO2 emissions.

I don't see how this is an argument against electrical vehicles. In fact electric vehicles should increase the incentive to reduce the carbon emissions of electricity production since now at least improvements there will have a material effect on the carbon efficiency of transportation.

(Norway built out most of its energy grid before the oil industry got started, by the way -- but we do maintain out grid partly using tax money from the oil sector, just like all parts of our public sector).

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