Are hybrid cars the equivalent of “light” cigarettes?
I got a chance last week to drive a Tesla Roadster around for the day. A wonderful experience, to say the least. It also gave me some perspective that you might only get while zipping around in an all-electric car. As my Clean Break column this week explains, I got a bit smug — started to judge other cars and look at them as part of a collective of individual polluters — smokers, you might say. Sure, some people drive less or drive hybrids or drive super efficient little cars, but they’re still smokers. Smoking light cigarettes or just half a pack a day instead of a pack doesn’t make you a non-smoker. But electric car owners — they’re non-smokers in a room from of a smokers, and I gotta tell you, it’s quite disgusting being in that room.
Read column here.
Tags: Tesla Roadster
Tyler Hamilton is a business columnist for the Toronto Star, Canada's largest daily newspaper. In addition to this Clean Break blog, Tyler writes a weekly column of the same name that discusses trends, happenings and innovators in the clean technology and green energy market. This blog is a personal project started in April 2005. It is not an official blog of the newspaper.
Kawanabe’s statement is annoying though....
February 10th, 2010 at 10:18 am
Sorry Tyler, you are still a smoker. The electricity used to charge your Roadster needed to come from somewhere. To build your Roadster you need steel and plastic and probably some exotic heavy metals for the battery which are likely both environmentally unfriendly and toxic to humans.
To move people away from excessive resource use, an incremental approach will work far better than trying to get a Hummer driver today riding a bike on their 20 mile commute tomorrow.
An environmental impact is an environmental impact is an environmental impact. With 6 billion + of us little humans running around each reduction in environmental impact is good.
February 10th, 2010 at 4:58 pm
Let me be the first to volunteer to test drive a Tesla…
Mr. Reynolds above seems to miss the point- a glimpse of the future, what it couild be like! Understanding what a difference an all-electric vehicle makes compared to an ICE or even a fuel-efficient hybrid- that the next step in an all-EV world will pull with it other means of generating energy, including those plants that make the steel, plastics and batteries. That starting with our cars is both a tangible step in itself, and a symbolic step that will push people to consider our carbon footprint as a whole- that if we can convert our transportation to zero emissions, that why not our factories and utilities. -sigh!- hopefully we will ge there;-)
February 10th, 2010 at 6:41 pm
Have to disagree with you Paul.
To extend the analogy, Tyler may or may not be smoking, but he’s still addicted to nicotine, which is the real reason everyone else is in that room. You can stand around chewing the gum and scoffing at everybody else there, but you’re still in the same boat.
(Or in point of fact, NOT in the same boat, which is exactly the problem. Riding around by yourself in a 2.5 ton hunk of metal, to get anywhere worth being, is vastly inefficient, regardless of the power supply)
February 10th, 2010 at 8:08 pm
B. Reynolds, I can see your point, but it’s also a very narrow take. I mean, based on that criteria, most things we eat, purchase and otherwise aggregate — need or want — as a society makes us “smokers.” From what I understand, those trying to introduce electric cars are attempting, from the outset, to make them easily recyclable, including the batteries. Yeah, riding a bicycle is better, and certainly something we should try as much as possible — or walk — but it’s not always practical for obvious reasons. Plus, doesn’t it require steel and plastic and rubber to make that bike? Maybe we should just go back to living in caves and walking everywhere… certainly the Earth would be a better place, but not much fun.
February 10th, 2010 at 9:38 pm
There’s a belief that technology can get us out of our many predicaments. Replacing an IC engine car with an all electric car that is powered by renewables is a good start. But it’s not just peak oil and climate change that we are faced with. Overconsumption and our need for constant economic growth will keep creating problems until we deal with those issues. An all electric car is a much needed bandaid. I like the nicotene analogy, it’s the gum that allows you to stop smoking. We also have to look at how we build cities and neighborhouds, etc., so that we can minimize the use of cars, and yes, walk and bike more. There will likely always be a place for an electric car, but they can be cars you infrequently rent and taxis.
February 11th, 2010 at 11:29 am
Tyler, I did and didn’t get my point across. As long as a person is alive they will have an impact on the environment surrounding them. Much the same as a cockroach, slug, horse or a whale will have an impact on the environment surrounding that organism. If each human created as large an impact as they could on the environment, with 6 billion human organisms floating around pretty soon we would have lots of impact and no environment.
The fundamental reason to drive an electric vehicle is to reduce your environmental impact. However very few people make life choices with the environmental impact first and foremost in their minds.
My point was that trying to shame? cajole? brow-beat? (that was the impression the feeling smug part left with me) a testosterone laden 20 year old male into considering his environmental impact likely won’t work. The only reason he drives a Hummer is because there was nothing bigger to buy. If we can get each person to consider something slightly better that is a big step in the right direction. If you are starting at A and you want to get to Z it is easier to go to B, then C, etc, than make the leap straight from A.
Anyway, love your blog, one of about 3 sources I regularly check for info on energy/cleantech/innovation news and, next time you get to test drive a Tesla Roadster, can I come over and take a spin?
February 12th, 2010 at 3:13 am
Finally someone understands where I’m coming from, The hole hybrid car thing is to hold on to an existing oil based world. There are excuses out there that people aren’t ready for change and that hybrid cars are the cars of the future. There aren’t enough people out there using their heads at this point, A Hybrid is Not the car of the future and are the equivalent of a light cigarette. If we all began the transition to electric cars, and people began to innovate commercial areas with green forms of energy to help create a clean energy infrastructure. That’s half the battle right there in this world of ours. Then we can start to fix the rest of the problems around us for all of the environmentalists.
February 12th, 2010 at 5:44 pm
I think electric cars are probably better than gasoline ones, if only because it gets people onto a new platform where there are all kinds of different possibilities for generating that electricity. But, it’s also a position of ignorance because I don’t know about the environmental impact of these batteries.
One thing electric cars don’t change is the fact that we still need to build and maintain all these roads and hightways for them to drive on. If there aren’t a lot of cars driving on them, the whole project is a waste of money because it’s only cost-effective when there’s massive use of them to justify paying for their upkeep.
If there was no future for the car at all, we might start thinking about different ways of arranging life — where we live, where we work, how we move people, etc. But, the promise of an electric car makes that unnecessary, or perhaps maintains that threshold of “not necessary enough”.
No matter which way you look at it, and whether it’s electric or gasoline, personal transportation is a waste in this format. You are always expending more energy to move the car itself than the person inside.
February 13th, 2010 at 9:36 pm
This article offers a perspective on hybrids or all electric cars that rely on a large number of batteries for an energy store – eventually all of those batteries have to go somewhere and in the meantime you are doing multiple energy conversions from one form to another all of which introduce inefficiency.
http://greenideastoday.com/2010/02/is-north-america-allergic-to-diesel/
February 17th, 2010 at 3:21 pm
Um, I’ll buy this line when you bike with me to work.
February 18th, 2010 at 2:51 pm
In the words of Michael C Ruppert: “there will never be a mass use of electric cars because if oil prices rise from peak oil you have to remember that there are 7 gallons of oil in every tire, there are thousands of gallons of oil in the plastics, the paints, the resins, the metal and that electricity is not an energy source, electricity is generated by burning some other source of energy.”
Electric cars = same shit, different pile.
Not to mention, let’s say theoretically we completely make a shift from combustion engines to electric cars, the amount of increased energy production and stress on the grid that would be created from that is astronomical. Where is the energy sources going to come from? How much of an increase in taxes would this cause etc?