It isn't just the wheels. It's what turns them.

Inspired by the Lib Dems' 'only carbon-free cars by 2050', and the notion that this would be via electric or hydrogen without being too clear on where these fuels came from, I dug out my Sunday clippings.

Listen up, there’s an electric buzz in the air

Great. I look forward to it all coming to pass.

But please, while the localised pollution advantages are clear, let no one pretend that there are no carbon emissions. The exhaust pipe is just in another place. OK, there's nuclear or renewables, but I don't think we are there yet.

And I'm not sure we will be even by the Lib Dem's 2050 cut-off for fossils in the tank.

It takes energy to get energy in a usable form into a car and to the wheels. You can't cheat nature.

Power cut — the stop-start history of the battery car

And just to be un-PC, let me pop in the lastest JC - The sausage dog with rottweiler bite

While I can't get with the shock-jock ratings digs now he is richer than Croesus and doesn't need the extra, I still believe him to be a good journo. So when he says such as this 'Another thing that’s beyond doubt is that you won’t be driving round in a hybrid, such as the Toyota Prius. These use just as much fuel as normal cars...' I take note, while I read this '.. and are designed only to assuage the guilt of people whose opinions come from a man so hopeless he couldn’t even beat George Bush to the White House' and think message vs. messenger. Whilst giggling a tad despite myself.

He's also not a big fan of electric. It's like he knew the other stories were coming out.

Forbes - Least Fuel-Efficient Hybrids - For balance. What worries me is the trend down as buyers find they don't live up to the hype. You wash with bad quality green, you get a stain.

Marketing Week - Car industry in uproar over cigarette-style ad controls - And it's all worked so well with fags. Should be interesting to see how this falls out.

Pipe Dreams

This seems a potentially worthwhile example of eco-cooperation: Toyota and EDF launch recharge points for electric cars

On the matter of semantics, they may be (are they in all uses, or just urban?) 'more' friendly, but no matter how wizzo cannot be deemed to actually help the environment by being made and/or driven.

My Friend's Electric... Dreams

I thought worth publishing in full as it (if true), puts what I have been banging on about for a long while as regards some 'eco'-cures and the media's reporting of same:

Letters: Electric cars
Electric cars will work only as limited urban transport

Published: 10 April 2007
Sir: Johann Hari sometimes talks sense but, on electric cars, he is talking through the back of his neck (Big Oil's vendetta against the electric car - Comment, 5 April). Battery-driven electric cars are charged with electricity from the mains, the majority of which is generated by fossil-fuelled power stations.

Electric cars would simply transfer the atmospheric pollution from the cars to the power stations.

If all road vehicles were switched to battery-driven electric it would require at least a 40 per cent increase in electricity-generating capacity. At present, we are struggling to achieve even 5 per cent of our electricity from renewable sources. But let us imagine we have Johann's magic battery.

At what rate could we charge? The largest appliance on our domestic circuit is the cooker, which might use 6kW at its greatest rate of use. Let us assume we could charge our battery at this rate for nine hours. We would then have stored 54kWh of electricity.

A modern car has an engine capable of producing a power output of anything from 100kW to 350kW. Most of the time, it is using only a fraction of that output. To drive up the motorway at 70mph probably requires something of the order of 45kW, depending on the size and weight of the car. Our 54kWh would enable us to drive for just one hour and 12 minutes.

We would need the ability to charge at a higher rate than is feasible on a domestic supply before we could think of using battery cars for anything other than limited urban use, no matter how clever our battery is.

Stan Ovshinsky's battery that Johann said "could run for 300 miles at 70mph on a single charge" would clearly require charging at about 20kW if it was charged in nine hours.

The exhaust pipe is merely in another place. So while in some ways going electric may be seen to be better than nothing, not going at all is better still. Try making a fun op-ed piece on that!

Why do so many 'solutions' involve making more stuff and simply adding to the problem?

ADDENDUM:

From Grist - - A more reasonable look at what is possible and desirable

This is truly inspirational.

I (and, I suspect, a few others - http://junkk.blogspot.com/2007/04/my-friends-electric-dreams.html ) have had certain concerns on the promotion of electric power as non-polluting.

When it is in this form, aside from the consequences of manufacture, it seems a rare beacon of solar-powered reality in transport. To get a craft charged up, aloft and to its destination with no power input other than the sun is awesome.

It seems viable battery capacity is the only restriction on realising his dream of a 2 or 4-seat version, which is where the practicalities of personal or indeed small-scale cargo (couriers?) transportation kick in.

Now all we need in the UK is the weather. Mind you, looking out the window, and with a certain sense of irony global-warming-wise, that may soon not be such a problem.

Electric Blues

More in/from Grist

I found this post and the answers interesting and informative.

When their intentions are sincere I can live with the fact that some posters may not be up to speed on every aspect of what they post about, so long as questions are posed... and especially when they get answered. So thank you, EastBayBlue, you are obviously very smart and have done the research. That could come possibly across just as well without bashing others over the head?

The legislative impediment to going 4-wheel is interesting. And I agree needs further investigation and answering. I have to say as an ad-man that the thing can be as worthy as you like, but if it looks like it will fall over (amongst other stylistic shortfalls - then again the Prius isn't exactly slick to my eyes) it will suffer consumer resistance. And that needs addressing if these things are credible solutions to emissions.

Maybe you can help me here. I have taken our UK media to task with stories on these efforts before, when they stand next to one and gush that it is' 'pollution free'. By my best estimation, they are not, depending on the source of electricity to charge them. And even nuclear still produces pollution and greenhouse gasses in the form of steam, so really the exhaust pipe is just in another place.

Then there is the efficiency of energy transfer between generator to storage in vehicle at home, and then as a % of miles covered.

Maybe you could help educate me/us further?

I am glad to say, someone kindly has, at least in part, so please revisit the link above.

However, I fear in the same breath I had to share in return less than cheering news at the same time:

That's no car, it's an eco-quadricycle