electric 914 kit guy Options

[spare time toys]

is this someone from here?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWPiUd9nMWA...ted&search=

[swl]

Don't mean to be negative but electric cars will not seriously reduce fossil fuel usage. That electricity has to be generated somehow and in North America most of that is with fossil fuel of some sort. The bonus in shifting cars over to electricity is that the generating plants have much better control over emissions than a car. But really - the grid could never keep up with electric cars if they were ever adopted in any great quantity.

People like Peter who have gone off the grid with their own solar panels are of course the exception to that rule. Hats off to him and others who are willing to make that committment.

[pjf]

Don't mean to be negative but electric cars will not seriously reduce fossil fuel usage. That electricity has to be generated somehow and in North America most of that is with fossil fuel of some sort. The bonus in shifting cars over to electricity is that the generating plants have much better control over emissions than a car. But really - the grid could never keep up with electric cars if they were ever adopted in any great quantity.

People like Peter who have gone off the grid with their own solar panels are of course the exception to that rule. Hats off to him and others who are willing to make that committment.

I know it doesn't seem like it but electric cars would reduce fossil fuel use in a number of ways. Electric motors convert about 90% of the energy put into them to mechanical energy. Lead acid batteries are about 75% efficient. Car engines convert about 15% of the energy in the gas so there's savings there. Yes, there is loss in power transmission but so is there energy "lost" in the transport of gas in the distribution network. Though fossil fuel is used to generate electricity, in the United States roughly 30% of the electricity comes from non-fossil sources (like nuclear and hydro). An electric car would (on average) get 70% of its energy from fossil sources where right now 100% of a gas car's energy comes from fossil sources. Oil in particular would be saved as only about 4% of electricity is produced by oil. As far as the grid keeping up with electric cars, they would mostly charge at night where there is a huge amount of unused capacity. One thing I read said that you could support 10 to 20 million electric cars without building 1 additional power plant. You're right that power plants can control emissions when they burn fossil fuel better than cars and there is even talk of building coal plants that sequester their carbon emissions in the ground so there will be no greenhouse gasses released.
Electric cars are not perfect (your trunk(s) will be filled with batteries) but they would reduce our use of fossil fuel particularly the one with the most strings attached: oil. As we bring more non-fossil or cleaner fossil sources online things automatically get better.