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Comment by justinator | Hacker News Reader

I guess the devil's advocate is similar but it's coal to produce the electricity compared to the diesel truck. Thinking both aren't great.

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Only 19% of electricity generated today in the US is from coal, trending toward 0. Then consider larger fossil fuel power plants are far more efficient than the tiny engines in vehicles.

"Coal is used to power electric vehicles," is an argument that is more noise than signal.

This is regional dependent. The last time I looked in Colorado, and electric vehicle is actually spews more pollution when running than a gas car b/c of the amount of coal power plants that we run - much to the chagrine of all the Boulderites in their Teslas.

This site suggests a Tesla 3 in Boulder gets 66 mpg-equivalent (more if they have solar):

https://evtool.ucsusa.org/

Colorado is 30% NG and 30% coal, probably because a lot of coal is mined in adjacent Wyoming and MT. The rest are renewables. The coal number keeps dropping, so EV use will improve over time without upgrading the vehicle.

EVs emit less CO2 than diesel trucks even when the electricity is produced using coal power plants. And the best part is that coal is on its way out, rapidly being replaced by gas and renewables, so EVs get even better over time!

This study is from Sweden, and there are no coal power stations in Sweden. They closed the last in 2020.

You are arguing against coal power plants. No one is disagreeing with you there.

I think I'm arguing that we should look at the long tail of power source/generation of both diesel and electric vehicles.

The problem may be that "both aren't perfectly great" and maybe the best solution, despite Capitalism, is to use less as one of the only ways to well: save ourselves from destroying the Planet.

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