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Comment by deletes | Hacker News Reader

Prius emissions: some value

Tesla emissions: 0.00

You could say that Tesla is just moving the problem to the power plants. Well, they solved the problem, now it is time for the power plants to do the same.

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When people say that you are moving the emissions from the car to the power plant, they forget one fact: To refine one gallon of gas it takes approximately 7.5 kwh of electricity. My Volt can drive around 32 miles on that amount of electric power.

With ICE engines, you are producing CO2 out the tailpipe, in the refining process, the transport, etc.

That's a very interesting figure I haven't heard before. Do you have a source?

electricity can be produced, stored and delivered by many means; no so for gasoline and other fossil fuels. by moving the problem to the power plants it is much more easily solved in a single location with greatest efficiency, without the consumers knowing or having to worry about it. it's separation of concerns, right there in real life :)

Given energy input, you can manufacture gasoline from atmospheric CO2.

I had no idea that was even a thing. Does anyone have any resources about this, how viable is it in reality?

Although if you are getting your fuel primarily from the atmosphere, you might prefer to redesign your engines to burn a refined algae product instead of gasoline.

Theoretically. That's not exactly practical at the moment (though slowly edging closer)

What about disposing of the batteries? and the rest of the car?

In the US, 60% of the battery can be recycled.

http://www.teslamotors.com/blog/teslas-closed-loop-battery-r...

The car and batteries are very recyclable.

Nuclear power solves that problem.

Well, I will say this as an advocate of nuclear power - the more important thing that it does is just get the cars to charge from the grid, which means the car user does not have to worry about where the grid gets its power.

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