{"id":49232,"date":"2019-10-29T07:51:19","date_gmt":"2019-10-29T12:51:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=49232"},"modified":"2019-10-29T07:51:25","modified_gmt":"2019-10-29T12:51:25","slug":"are-electric-cars-good-for-the-environment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=49232","title":{"rendered":"Are Electric Cars Good for the Environment?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.zerohedge.com\/news\/2019-10-28\/are-electric-cars-good-environment\">Are Electric Cars Good for the Environment?<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p><em>This article is Part 5 of an 11-part series analysis of Tesla, Elon Musk and EV Revolution. You can read other parts&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/contrarianedge.com\/signup-for-tesla-article\/\">here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>My wife loves driving the Model 3, not for all the selfish reasons I like to drive it (it is fast and quite the iPad on wheels) but because she feels she helps the environment. Is she right?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Unlike an ICE car, which takes fuel stored in the gas tank, combusts it in the engine, and thus creates kinetic energy, Tesla takes electricity stored in the battery pack and converts it directly into kinetic energy. That\u2019s a very clean and quiet process. However, the electricity that magically appears in our electrical outlets is not a gift from Thor, the thunder god; it was generated somewhere and transmitted to us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As I write this, I am slightly disturbed by how the topic I am about to discuss has been politicized. I am not going to debate global warming here, but let\u2019s at least agree that an excess of carbon dioxide (CO2) and carbon monoxide (CO) is bad for you and me, and for the environment. If you disagree with me, start an ICE car in your garage, roll down the windows, and sit there for about 20 minutes. Actually, please don\u2019t, because you\u2019ll die. So let\u2019s agree that a billion cars emitting CO and CO2 is not good and that if we emit less CO and CO2 it is good for air quality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Roughly two-thirds of the electricity\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.eia.gov\/tools\/faqs\/faq.php?id=427&amp;t=3\">generated in the U.S.<\/a>\u00a0is sourced from fossil fuels. The good news is that only half of that comes from coal; the other half comes from natural gas, which produces half as much CO2\u00a0as coal (though it has its own\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.smithsonianmag.com\/science-nature\/natural-gas-really-better-coal-180949739\/\">side effects<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 it leaks methane). Another 20% of U.S. energy comes from nuclear, which produces zero carbon emissions. The remaining 17% comes from \u201cgreen\u201d sources, such as hydro (7%), wind (6.6%), and solar (1.7%).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&nbsp;\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Are Electric Cars Good for the Environment? This article is Part 5 of an 11-part series analysis of Tesla, Elon Musk and EV Revolution. You can read other parts&nbsp;here. My wife loves driving the Model 3, not for all the selfish reasons I like to drive it (it is fast and quite the iPad on [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[10765,1004,9422,1103,369,21735,4318],"class_list":["post-49232","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","tag-batteries","tag-co2","tag-electric-cars","tag-electricity","tag-global-warming","tag-vitaliy-katsenelson","tag-zerohedge"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49232","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=49232"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49232\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49233,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49232\/revisions\/49233"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=49232"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=49232"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=49232"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}