Someone is lying about electric cars on the Internet
dailykos.com
dailykos.com
According to the fossil fuel fan club, the electricity going into your EV is somehow always from coal. Of course all the other electricity not used for electric cars is of course pure as newly fallen snow.
Of course they fail to mention that a lot of power is simply wasted at night anyway. E.g. in Ontario you could charge your EV at night without requiring any increase in electricity production.
Nor do they mention the fact that oil refining requires a huge amount of electricity. In fact it requires so much electricity, that you could have use that same electricity to drive an EV the same distance as gasoline car would drive with the gasoline refined using that electricity.
But really I think what it comes down to is that people like to lie to themselves. They like to invent little lies that will justify the actions they already made. They want to drive that gas-guzzler and so they look for fact that will support that decision.
2015 US electricity generation by source: ( https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=427&t=3 ) Coal = 33% Natural gas = 33% Nuclear = 20% Hydropower = 6% Other renewables = 7% Biomass = 1.6% Geothermal = 0.4% Solar = 0.6% Wind = 4.7% Petroleum = 1% Other gases = <1%
I've written before about the higher weight of EVs (a Tesla S weighs ~4600-~4900# vs some 80s cars weighing under 2000 or much lighter modern cars), drag coefficients (tesla is better but there have been other vehicles close even a decade or two ago), recycling of batteries, etc. The article I linked puts the EV equivalent mileage in the low 40s, which is the same as we can get with efficient ICE vehicles already. I'm not saying that their math is perfect and their picture complete (e.g. You also need electricity to make coal mining equipment and diesel to power oil tankers) but it looks like they did quite a bit of research and found that it's roughly the same right now.
I'm personally annoyed at all of the people thinking they're totally saving the environment by driving their Prius / Tesla / Leaf / whatever. I think it's ignorance at best and greenwashing a lot of the time.
The gist is that driving is bad for the environment regardless of what your car runs on. Bicycles or walking or living closer to the things you do every day is a better idea, and I wish more people would promote that vs ~don't change your habits, just buy a new car and Earth will be saved.
Where I live, I feel fortunate that work is only a 20 min. bike ride away. Surely a lot of people do want to rely on their cars less--the most in-demand neighborhoods around here for housing are the ones with the best public transit access, but of course that means there's not enough investment in improving access in other areas. Part of that though is less about the environment than the fact that traffic is unbearable.
Coal will be completely removed from generation in 5-10 years; natural gas in 15.
You are helping save the world by buying a Tesla; those 20-30% margins on the Model S and X are paying for the Supercharger network (which is required for mass adoption of EVs) and the Gigafactory (required to build out ~50GW/year of energy storage for homes, utilities, and of course, vehicles).
Cars are not going away any time soon. Therefore, its best to make every effort to make them as clean as possible.
Wasting power would be generating power and just running a giant heater outside. Nobody is doing that.
The price does go negative some times because the nuclear plants don't want to manoeuvre down, in that case the nuclear plants pay people to use the power as that is cheaper than adjusting output. In that extremely rare case you could charge and reduce your power bill.
The whole thing rings bullshit alarms.
TL;DR EVs are worse there since they weigh, on average, 24% more.
In the long term facts win because they are self evident. I find it disgusting that rich people get $8K per Tesla.