If all the governments on the planet told you they were going to stop using oil and you had to buy an electric car would you argue?

I for one would say the oil industries robbed us of so much money that they(oil companies) should provide us with one free,but thats not the question.

Originally posted by rtcctr
If all the governments on the planet told you they were going to stop using oil and you had to buy an electric car would you argue?

What's the difference? In the U.S., I'm required to use electricity that comes out of the wall at either 120 volts or 240 volts. Hey, maybe I'd like to use electricity that was 1,000 volts, along with appliances that would run on it. But do I get to? No.

And hey, maybe I'd like to drive down the left side of the street. Maybe I see better on that side, and I'd get in a lot less accidents. Too bad for me, huh?

Or what if I wanted to receive my television signal as an analog broadcast, instead of digital? I guess I can struggle to keep my old analog TV alive as long as possible. But someday I'm going to be forced to get a digital TV, with all of its secret monitoring devices built in.

Sometimes, if you want to be a part of society, you gotta do what the government (a representative of the society) decides.

I don't see how the electric cars could be charged up without a supply that is powered by fossil fuels in some way...so not much difference, it will just mean that the power stations would have to burn more fuel to handle the increased demand.....

If however the electricity was a renewable supply then it would make more sense. Not 'coz i'm 'green' just 'coz I think its a bit pointless if your just going to use the oil in the electricity production rather than in the car...at the cost of buying a new electric car when you have perfectly good petrol one....as this would not solve any problems; like what we're going to do when the oil runs out

The cars would have to have comparable performance to diesel and petrol cars as well otherwise I would object.

so.....

I wouldn't object if:

-the electricity supply was from renewable energy sources

-the electric cars were similar in performance to petrol/diesel cars

-this didn't cause a huge price rise in electricity, especially in britain where over 70% of the price of fuel is tax...they gotta get that tax back somehow so an electricity tax would be predictable

What about all other engines though? trucks, tractors, diggers, boats, jets, planes, motorbikes, chainsaws, etc.

Would i argue?

No.

Would i buy one?

No.

I'd tell them to stick it where the sun does not shine.

Whose going to pay for my new electric car? Thats all im worried about....

If they forced me to BUY one myself, I'd tell them I couldn't afford it and to eat my big smelly pile of you-know-what, and I'd boycott the auto industry and get a really nice bicycle.

My GUESS is that nobody seems incredibly worried about the so called "oil crisis" or the "environmental crisis", so there's two scenarios I see most possible.

Either we have a lot more oil than the public thinks we do, and all of this 150 dollars a barrel nonsense is just people getting greedy and compensating for the loss of the dollars value by charging more for everything (inflation, I guess), mostly oil....

OR

We ARE having an oil crisis and whatnot, but they aren't too worried about oil running out, because they already have warehouses upon warehouses full of technology that can replace gas permanently, and can bring an end to heavy pollution of the environment. The only reason these are not being implemented now is still the same reason as the first, greed, play for power, the usual.

I just don't see the power elite of the world letting the "sheeple" completely destroy the world that THEY are living on, too, just to make some more money and gain some more power. What good is power when everybody's dead?

So... we should only buy into an alternative method of energy production/consumption if it can permanently fix those two key issues: pollution and lack of availability.

I just don't see electric cars alone creating solutions for those problems. There's too many hidden factors there, like what's being used to generate the electricity? If you want Nuclear Power to do that instead of gasoline, you're basically trading one deadly poison for another extremely deadly poison: radioactive toxic waste, and not to mention the possibility of nuclear meltdown or explosion.

If you're looking for biofuels to answer your prayers, there's two problems with that:
One problem being that, in order to replace the demand for energy that oil has abandoned, farmers worldwide would have to increase their crop production by outstanding amounts, and more land will be devastated, and as the availability of reapable soil grows smaller and smaller, the energy industry will be competing with the food industry over land and crops, thus creating food shortages, and further destroying the environment.

Another problem with biofuels is that we're still burning things and releasing the emissions into the atmosphere, replacing one dangerous emission with another.... no doubt chemicals would be added during the fuel's creation, and we just can't predict what those kind of emissions could build up to. It's too risky and we need room for food production a lot more.

So what are we left with?

Hydrogen power (water as fuel?) and the much talked about mythical free energy devices that are rumoured to be of ET descent...

I can see possible meteorological anomalies arising because of the excessive moisture created by burning water, and I hear that messing with straight hydrogen power is an unstable science as of yet (I picture driving a tiny version of the H-bomb)...

So, no I think that would be a rreally stupid idea to implement the electric car, when obviously they have better technology waiting in the wings. If they did that, it would be like they were just trying to put oil "out of sight, out of mind" from the public, but I think too many people are aware of the oil monopolies' games now. I don't think they could slip that one by us.

If the entire world would start driving electric cars tomorrow, the oil companies would stay in business since they would sell their oil to the electrical power generating plants, replacing coal as the world's #1 source of electrical power generation -- but coal would still be a close 2nd.

...(and there would be the same amount of pollution inthe world).

I don't have a license to drive, so I'd do what I always do: take public transportation or, if the place I need to get to is nearby, walk to it.