Here Comes the Electric Car!
Decatur Metro | September 23, 20102010 looks to be the year of the electric car. At least from a buzz perspective. The polar bear-friendly Nissan Leaf is scheduled to be the first mass-produced electric car available in the U.S, with a December 2010 launch-date.
So here’s the $32,000+ question: Will you consider purchasing an electric car in the next couple years?
Some of you may just not be interested in blowing the aforementioned $32,000+ on a subcompact. Others may be interested, but I’ve been wondering is it really so “green” that polar bears will approach you in your driveway and bestow you with namesake hugs?
From some casual internet searches, it seems to me like “it all depends”. (Cue the collective groan.) WHY?? Well, first – just like with a hybrid vehicle – there are questions about the electric vehicle’s battery. When your car is finally towed off to the scrap heap, how easy will it be to dispose of the car’s lithium battery? I haven’t found any definitive answers on that.
But even if that question doesn’t tug at your environmental heart-strings and you’re more of a carbon-emissions kinda playa, the other big consideration for the present-day car-driving, eco-junkie is how your state generates its electricity.
Here in the great state of Georgia, Georgia Power produces 64.7% of its electricity is produced using coal, according to the EPA. That’s a good 15 points higher than the national average, and 15 points higher than Oregon, which also gets nearly half its total power from hydro-electric plants.
And since coal is an even more generous producer of carbon dioxide than oil when used, your Georgia-based electric car may be no more “green” than the Toyota Corolla down the street over the next few years.
Now the counter-argument to this is compelling. Namely, that regardless of power-production today, down the road it will be easier to convert a state’s power sources to more efficient alternatives than it will be to control the emissions coming from hundreds of millions of tailpipes.
So, I don’t know. Where do you come down on the electric car? Or put a slightly more entertaining way…
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Don’t know but I saw something somewhere in Decatur yesterday that I’d never seen before. It looked like a cross between a motorcycle and a car. One way to describe it would be that it was a very, very thin car, just one passenger seat wide. Another way to describe it would be that it was a motorcycle completely enclosed in a shell. Does anyone know what that was?
Yes! i think I do. Did it look like this? http://www.monotracer.com/
I have seen it twice in Decatur–both times last May, I think. Saw it drive by while I was sitting in front of Farm Burger, and saw it again parked near Dancing Goats. I was intrigued and googled “enclosed motorcycle” and found the link above.
Yes, that was it!
I’ve seen it around a few times, over the past year or so (?). Most recently, saw it being rescued by a tow truck.
Electric cars are better than gas guzzlers. Even more powerful is eating a plant-based diet. Livestock production accounts for more greenhouse gases than all of transportation. Eating a plant-based diet is the most immediate and powerful impact one can have on the environment.
This seems to be debatable or at least more nuanced than just “eat plants!”.
http://motherjones.com/environment/2010/07/vegetarianism-worse-for-the-environment
@Decatur Metro: Perhaps you could cite scientific research rather than pop culture articles. Take a read on this before your respond:
Livestock’s Long Shadow from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization
http://www.fao.org/docrep/010/a0701e/a0701e00.HTM
Most pop culture conversation, like the article you cite, is not based in science or reality. Everything is debatable, but the science lies squarely on the side of plant-based diets.
What exactly am I responding to? That my link wasn’t scientific enough?
You agreed with me that “everything was debatable” and didn’t refute any specific points brought up in the Mother Jones Q&As, so I’m at a loss. Any chance you could point to where in that report there’s anything about everyone switching to plant-based diets to save the planet? I never said that livestock wasn’t extremely harmful to the environment on the large scale it is today. I just have general, knee-jerk skepticism when a single answer is laid on the table to the world’s trouble.
I generally challenge in hopes of learning something. I appreciate the link, but I’m not all willing to put in the effort if we can’t even get by insulting sources of information, instead of actually presenting and debating the ideas themselves.
what about soylent green?
If Nissan wants to guilt me into buying this car they would do better to show me the affects of our wars for oil.
What about warring polar bears like in The Golden Compass?
I loved those bear in armor!
As long as the asphalt on roads & parking lots is still an impermeable surface — one that pollutes rain water, creates heat islands and fragments ecosystems — there’s no such thing as a green car. Greener than the current model maybe, but only by a small fraction in the long run when it comes to our effect on the environment via our transportation.
Building more walkable, compact towns with good mass-transit access to job centers (I’m smilin’ at you, downtown Decatur) will be a more important ‘green’ step than changing the type of car engine that sustains an asphalt-laden, sprawling development pattern.
I can travel a long way on MARTA with $32,000…with no car payments, no electric batteries, no insurance, no parking fees, no repairs, and no liability.
Say what you will, this ad brings a lump to the throat of even a cynic like moi. So, I guess you could say it’s doing its job…
To answer DMs question, I’m hoping that with good care and careful driving I won’t have to buy a car within the next ten years. Who knows what will be available by then? 2020? Maybe we will all finally have our jet-packs.
More likely to have a GPS-tracked Lexus.
By golly, somebody had better get us a flying car– I refuse to acknowledge that it’s the “future” unless I get my ding-danged FLYING CAR!!! I mean it. Damnit.
True. So far the 21st century has not lived up to expectations.
The exclamation point looked like an “L” when I first saw this thread and I thought something had happened to the ubiquitous Mr. Black.
To answer your question, if they are more affordable by then and available used, I will buy one. I bought a Prius with 90,000 miles last year but I hope to be driving it for many years to come.