The American Spectator

Reader Mail

(Page 6 of 14)

Hybrids and electrics are little more then a marketing gimmick that has little to do with the price of energy or the reduction in the dreaded motor vehicle produced carbon dioxide gas output. The energy must come from somewhere and the physics of it say that the most fuel efficient way to produce it comes from the internal combustion engine. Pure electric cars like the Volt or a plug-in hybrid still produce CO2 and consume some equivalent quantity of oil unless the power source used to charge the battery comes from renewable or nuclear energy source.

p>The Prius is the only electric powered vehicle that makes any kind of technical or economic sense. It was optimized for city/suburban driving and has limited capability for long distance high speed travel. The other hybrids cars are just for show and a way for Toyota to con people into overpaying for a car. Diesels do far better in every objective, i.e., non EPA, study I have ever seen. GM would be far wiser to invest in clean diesel engines then in wasting billions of dollars on a vehicle that will have less utility then a Prius. br> -- Jerrold Goldblatt br> Arlington, Virginia /p>

The most interesting part of Eric Peters's article was this: "The Prius costs about $20k..."

Since he's comparing the Prius to the new not-yet-available Volt, I assume he's talking about the price of a new Prius, not a used or wrecked Prius.

Can Mr. Peters tell us where to buy a new Prius for about $20K? How long is the waiting list?

I guess it all depends on the meaning of "about."

p>Thanks! br> -- KT /p> p> Your Mr. Peters discusses the future GM-Chevrolet electric car; in this discussion he assumes the electric power is there for the taking. Let us discuss the energy balance of such a car. When you put 1,000 BTU's of gasoline in your conventional car tank, you get about 200 BTU's worth of motion -- the rest is spent on motor friction, air resistance, tire friction, and the thermodynamic limitations of the combustion process. Before you plug your electric car into the power grid, you have to produce that electricity in a power station. There, when you put in the same 1,000 BTU's of whatever fuel you have -- gas, oil, coal -- you get some 300 BTU's worth of electricity. Now that 300 BTU's worth of electricity flows into the batteries of your new electric car and is turned into some 60 BTU's worth of motion. The energy balance of a perfect electric car is therefore about three times lower than that of a normal car (200 divided by 60 = 3.33) -- and forget the initial cost of such an electric car that the writer estimates at about 150% more expensive that that of a normal car. The total output of carbon dioxide ("carbon footprint") of such a combination is also 3.33 times greater than if you burned the gasoline directly. Of course, if you had nuclear power plants available for bringing you the necessary electricity to your garage plug, your "carbon footprint" would be much smaller even though the energy balance would stay about the same (3.33 times worse) -- but then our "environmentalists" have killed the nuclear power some 30-odd years ago.

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