Re: Tesla California
Posted: 28 Sep 2012, 21:50
TC, I still don't follow your logic. It sounds like you're arguing that it's all or nothing.
Where I live, our electricity is produced by a traditional, dirty coal plant. I'd love for them to switch to a cleaner method, but realistically that's not going to happen anytime soon. But even so, if I buy an EV today, and charge it on off-peak hours, then it adds nothing to the load and takes one ICE out of service. It's a tiny improvement in the scheme of things, but an improvement nonetheless.
And if I can buy that car for the same price I'd pay anyway, and if it costs me less to operate, and has better performance, and in addition reduces my country's dependency on foreign fuel and keeps the money I would have spent on fuel in the US, then why would I even consider something else?
There are of course those who choose EV's out of principal, but the majority will make their choice for practical reasons. Up until now, EV's hadn't crossed the threshold of practicality to appeal to the mass market, but companies like Tesla are changing that.
We export a billion dollars a day out of the country to get our oil fix. A billion dollars, every day. Wouldn't it be nice to keep that money here? Wouldn't it be nice not to have the cost of oil blunting economic expansion? We can drill all we want in our own back yard, but that's just putting off the inevitable - we simply don't have anywhere near the reserves that exist in the Mid East and South America. Eventually we'll have to find another way, so we might as well start now.
It's important to understand that EV's aren't just about tree-hugging. The biggest proponent for EV's in the US isn't Greenpeace, or the Sierra Club, the NRDC, or even Al Gore - it's the hippies at the Pentagon. They know what our oil dependency means in real, present day terms - and they're scared to death of what it will mean in the future.
Where I live, our electricity is produced by a traditional, dirty coal plant. I'd love for them to switch to a cleaner method, but realistically that's not going to happen anytime soon. But even so, if I buy an EV today, and charge it on off-peak hours, then it adds nothing to the load and takes one ICE out of service. It's a tiny improvement in the scheme of things, but an improvement nonetheless.
And if I can buy that car for the same price I'd pay anyway, and if it costs me less to operate, and has better performance, and in addition reduces my country's dependency on foreign fuel and keeps the money I would have spent on fuel in the US, then why would I even consider something else?
There are of course those who choose EV's out of principal, but the majority will make their choice for practical reasons. Up until now, EV's hadn't crossed the threshold of practicality to appeal to the mass market, but companies like Tesla are changing that.
We export a billion dollars a day out of the country to get our oil fix. A billion dollars, every day. Wouldn't it be nice to keep that money here? Wouldn't it be nice not to have the cost of oil blunting economic expansion? We can drill all we want in our own back yard, but that's just putting off the inevitable - we simply don't have anywhere near the reserves that exist in the Mid East and South America. Eventually we'll have to find another way, so we might as well start now.
It's important to understand that EV's aren't just about tree-hugging. The biggest proponent for EV's in the US isn't Greenpeace, or the Sierra Club, the NRDC, or even Al Gore - it's the hippies at the Pentagon. They know what our oil dependency means in real, present day terms - and they're scared to death of what it will mean in the future.
