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Comment by ransom1538 | Hacker News Reader

"About 65% of this electricity generation was from fossil fuels"

These EV cars should be renamed "Coal Cars" so people understand the true harsh carbon footprint. Because you plug the car into a wall doesn't mean the energy is clean.

https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=427&t=3

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> These EV cars should be renamed "Coal Cars" so people understand the true harsh carbon footprint.

That's just incredibly dumb. If you do this, you have misunderstood the entire point of EVs.

An EV could be fuelled by coal today, and wind/solar tomorrow. They are extremely flexible and becomes greener as the grid does.

If you're concerned about the environment and green technology, you're obviously going to fight for both EVs and a cleaner grid. Both those solutions are absolutely necessary to solve the problems.

Meanwhile, an ICE is just not part of any viable solution at all.

The only time perspective that matters for the environment, is the long term. It doesn't matter what 100'000 EVs emit today. What matters is where we are in 20 years: hopefully with 100s of millions of EVs charged by a mostly clean grid.

This "EV fuelled by coal" talking point is primarily pushed by the fossil fuel industry btw. They are not concerned about the environment. They're just interested in protecting their industry. I haven't heard anyone who actually cares about the environment focus on this, because if you do care, you know better.

Even with unsustainable generation the carbon footprint of one big generator is less than the footprint of lots of tiny ICEs. https://www.withouthotair.com/c20/page_131.shtml

This has been proven false back in like 2008. Even if electric cars were to run off coal plants, they would still be more efficient because the plants can capture and reuse heat with boilers.

That being said, coal has to go anyway. I run my electric car from 98% hydro power and 2% wind power and I pay 6,9 cents per kWh, and that's Canadian money, pretty cheap.

The amount of energy it takes to refine one gal of gas my EV drives about 27 miles. ICE cars double dip:

https://greentransportation.info/energy-transportation/gasol...

Maybe in certain parts of the world, where they're still stuck in the industrial era.

Ontario's power generation is primarily nuclear, then hydro, then wind, with a small percentage being gas turbines. https://cns-snc.ca/media/ontarioelectricity/ontarioelectrici...

I can charge my electric car here and comfortably assume that it is clean energy.

From my view I have 2 nuclear power plants, a couple of natural gas/oil generators, a bunch of small solar plants, and a single coal fired plant in the state for our grid. No one from this part of the state is getting their power from coal in any appreciable quantity. So no, coal cars is not an apt name since not everyone is getting power from coal.

Depends on where you live. Not all states are coal states.

Where I live (NY), coal is either gone or on the way out. Electricity comes from hydro, gas and nuclear. Coal is getting killed by natural gas.

How does the emissions of a coal plant (plus the loss from transfering over the power line, battery, into motors) compare to the emissions of a regular petrol or diesel car?

Don't forget to carbon footprint needed to process/make that petrol/diesel .. that oil from the ground needs to be processed and transported too.

As I understand it, even electricity generated from coal is significantly cleaner than the equivalent in gasoline.

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