Cities Scramble to Prepare for Electric Vehicles
Electric cars sap a lot of electricity out of the grid, and many vehicles charging at once can cause unprepared cities to blackout.
Cities are courting the big automotive manufacturers to begin installing infrastructure in their cities:
"Nissan, Ford and other electric vehicle makers said they look at three factors in picking cities for rollouts: large numbers of hybrid owners — a sign electric cars will be embraced — friendly public policy and supportive utilities.
"We need to get the right policies in place, moving forward, soon. And when I say soon, I mean get them in place over the next six months to a year," said Howard Learner, executive director of the Environmental Law & Policy Center in Chicago, which is participating in the consortium."
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Great -- time to start
Great -- time to start burning some serious coal in those power plants so we can prepare for that fleet of electric cars.
Coal generates 54% of our electricity and is the single biggest polluter in the US:
http://www.ucsusa.org/clean_energy/coalvswind/c01.html
I hope someone out there is thinking of ways to sustainably generate all this extra electricity. Assuming, of course, that electric cars are eventually priced to sell for the majority of car buyers.
Personally, I think electric cars are an empty promise when it comes to sustainable living. They'll still run on asphalt roads and park on the same water-basin-polluting surface parking lots as gas cars. And they'll continue to enable the car-oriented sprawl of our built environment that fragments precious, native ecosystems.
I'm holding out for walkable smart growth as a savior of the environment instead of electric cars.
Exactly!
At long last, someone claiming to be environmentally conscious who actually *gets* that electric cars not only don't reduce our carbon footprint, but they might actually worsen it. Good post, reet!