Saturday, January 22, 2022

Would you buy a battery car?

 For me, probably not.  Battery cars are about the same on the environment as real (gasoline) cars.  Refining the materials to make the huge battery takes a lot of energy which is a lot of carbon dioxide. Generating the electricity to charge the battery; unless your electric company is hydro or nuclear powered, releases about as much carbon dioxide as running a single tank of gas thru a real car. 

  It can take better than two hours to charge up a battery car.  We did this, I stopped in to visit an old high school friend.  He had just bought a battery powered Toyota SUV.  We drove over to the local shopping mall which had a free 440 volt car charger.  We plugged the car in and then strolled around the mall spending money.  Two hours later the car was not fully charged.  And the 440 volt charger only gives you two hours, and then it insisted on allowing someone else to charge their car. 

   In short, a long trip, longer than the battery can do, will take a couple of more hours while you wait for the battery to recharge.  My Buick will get from here (upstate NH) to Maryland, 500 miles away, on one tank of gas. 

   Battery cars are expensive; say $10K more than a real car, even with the federal government giving out generous tax breaks for buying electric.  Good use of my tax money that.

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