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charon wrote:

If we raise royalties on oil extraction, expect higher prices at the pump.  Your call.

PBS wrote:

The car required no fuel and could be plugged in for recharging at home and at a number of so-called battery parks.

Honest question, for anyone who knows the answer: Do electric cars actually reduce pollution or save energy, overall?  The electricity for the batteries has to be generated somewhere (just not in the car's engine).

Large scale electricity production is more efficient and pollutes less than having millions of small gas moters running around.

charon wrote:

If we raise royalties on oil extraction, expect higher prices at the pump.  Your call.

PBS wrote:

The car required no fuel and could be plugged in for recharging at home and at a number of so-called battery parks.

Honest question, for anyone who knows the answer: Do electric cars actually reduce pollution or save energy, overall?  The electricity for the batteries has to be generated somewhere (just not in the car's engine).

Higher prices at the pump? Not necessarily. Do you have stats to prove your point? If not, then your speculation is just that -- speculation.

On a recent PBS Road Trekker program, in Portland, Ore. the city provides free parking and free hook-ups for electric vehicles. A short interview with an owner revealed that his revamped combustion engine to electric fuel gave him 90 MPH speed and 50 miles before recharge.

Did you review the part on the electric car program that said the automobile and oil industry is composed of such an ingrained superstructure that going to electric will greatly damage and threaten that superstructure, hence the preferred 'shift' to hydrogen and gasoline blend which uses the same combustion engine configuration. It is this after market that makes the most money.

And, yes, to your question re electric does reduce  pollution -- at least insofar as compared to combustion engines is concerned.

Combustion engines are pure pollution, even with the catalytic converters (my brother in law (now retired) was a transmission engineer at Ford Motor Company. He invented most of the transmissions in Ford autos today -- including the chain-belt transmission on Volvos now in production today.) The added bonus to electric conversion is the greatly reduced 'noise' pollution that comes from combustion engines.