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Comment by tibbydudeza | Hacker News Reader

I don't see the point of own an electric car if your electricity grid is still dependent on base load polluting coal or gas fired power stations.

Just that feel good factor of owning a Prius or Tesla without addressing the root cause.

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You still avoid local pollution, noise and overall CO2 emissions are all lower pretty much anywhere in the world. In addition to this, a larger amount of electric cars that can work as storage can help greatly to increase the share of renewables (e.g. by offering lower prices at times of overcapacity).

It's a hen-egg problem. You need large storage capacity to enable renewables. But without renewables, storage isn't utilized and therefore not profitable.

Even with coal, the pollution is much easier to filter and control at the one big ass stationary plant chimney than at thousands of separate moving car exhaust. And modern filters (both electrostatic and mechanical/pulse-jet) are pretty good.

Maybe so, but it will be easier in the future to change 1 coal powered plant and have millions of electric car driving people overnight become "clean" vs still having to change the coal plant and then convince millions of people to switch to electric cars because they are now finally green to the core.

Plus, cities would be nicer if the pollution was just around the plant instead of in every street.

In many places in the EU you can opt for an electricity provider that "provides" you with renewable-sourced electricity. Basically the provider is buying the amount of electricity you consume from hydro/solar/wind producers instead of coal/nuclear.

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