Scientific American article about EV's and Plug-Ins

Scientific American is blowing smoke up your bung, sorry to say. Too bad you'd decide to buy into their crock - on mere faith ... just because they call their self scientific. As darell says around page 5, here:

http://priuschat.com/forums/environ...hicles-theyre-only-green-your-grids-fuel.html

Whether an EV, or a PHEV ... it's the same principal.

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Leaf starts at $32k. Prius starts at $22k. How much GHG reductions does $10k buy you? (Not really a fair comparison since the Leaf comes with NAV which is an expensive upgrade on the Prius, but will suffice for this example)

Well - considering that TerraPass let's you offset a year's worth of GHG emissions offsets from a "hybrid or efficient car" for $36 - that's enough for 278 years of driving.

So yeah - obviously there are much more cost efficient ways of offsetting your GHG emissions.

But there are a lot of other reasons to buy an EV - and people rarely buy cars based purely on what makes the most economical sense, so they? If so - the only cars that would sell would be $10k stripped down base models and Cadillac, BMWs and Mercedes along with all the other luxury cars would not exist.

 

You mean I could have bought a more fun car, and just bought a terrapass to offset my bad? Would it have reduced importation of oil or funds going to dick Cheney's house of evil, the house of saud and acbinterroristajad? Would that pass have helped reduce ozone action days where I drive? Would it have saved the hundreds of billions of dollars in energy costs that the oakridge study pointed to? My electricity comes from wind (though its shared with the other utility users), my hot water and stove come from gas, and I try to bike when I can instead of drive. For some of us its not about the money. Drees your point is exactly right.

 

i could care less about carbon footprint. My primary concern is using less gasoline and sending less money to the middle east where it will eventually get in the hands of some terrorist.