[Dragar]

I am yet to understand the fuss about electric cars, except for reasons of minimising localised air pollution.

Instead of burning petrol or LPG in a relatively simple engine to produce a lot of power and distance with quick and easy refueling, you are:
• burning coal (typically) in a power station remote from the vehicle
• generating electricity at probably 30-35% efficiency, except in the rare case of a combined cycle plant
• transmitting it through an expensive network where you will suffer further losses
• slowly charging a car battery which is expensive, likely hard to dispose of and with a relatively short life

If we were generating the electricity cleanly, if we had effective and economic carbon capture and storage at the power station, I would understand. As it is, with the exception of the benefits of regenerative braking, I have no idea why people want to use our highest grade of energy (electricity) for propulsion when a readily transportable and stored lower grade fuel of high energy density is available. Fundamentally we are just shifting where we burn our fossil fuels.

Any real gain needs to look at improved generation and reduced consumption. Consumption is technically the easiest to reduce (so many ways to use less energy), but that requires people to change how they behave, which is difficult and slow. I mean, why worry about new car technologies when we could make a huge differences just in our selection of conventional cars? From SUVs to small Japanese/korean vehicles there is a huge step change both in energy consumption and capital outlay. I forget the figures but methane production from cows is a huge greenhouse contributor – a cultural switch to meat from different animals (or the much tougher step to reduced meat consumption) would be highly effective if it could be done. The level of heating and cooling for inside climate control is likewise insane – in hot climate buildings are kept freezing cold and in cold climates they are ovens.. what level of benefit if every air temperature controller in the world was asked to do 2 degrees C less work? Would anyone really suffer for it? Miraculous scientific steps aren’t needed to drop our carbon footprint, but it’s so much easier to blame an oil company or a government for our problems than to change our behaviour.

On the energy generation side, coal power plants are the worst offender, and as they have a long life and are very unlikely to be mothballed within decades of being built we really need to focus on not building new coal plants. Unless carbon capture and sequestration proves itself to be effective, reliable and economic we really need to be pushing natural gas and nuclear as the best short to medium term alternates, with solar/wind/tidal etc in niche uses where applicable. They are not close to being able to be base-load energy providers.