Prius and Prejudice: A Case against the Electric Car

The most obvious blunder this professor has made is to claim that the Prius (or the Chevy Volt) gets 2.5 miles from a kilowatt of power. The Volt, just like any 3100 pound electrically propelled vehicle, gets about 5.5 miles per kilowatthour. He is no doubt confused because he saw that the Volt's battery pack has a 16 kilowatthour capacity and the Volt travels 40 miles on battery power alone (which is enough, interestingly enough, to avoid 94% of gasoline during commuting and 95% for other activities, even without workplace recharging). However, the Volt's battery pack is never allowed to go beyond 80% charge nor drop below 30% charge, meaning that only the middle 8 kilowatthours are actually being used. This is to allow for a 10-year-plus battery pack life. The professor has made the same mistake many others who are unfamiliar with the Volt design have made.

As to the idea that the only reason for electric cars is carbon reduction, that's totally absurd. Crude oil avoidance is the number one reason people want to go electric, not carbon reduction. Dependence on crude is a far more imminent threat and one about which there is no debate. There's plenty of debate about the need or effects of any carbon reduction. (I just read a paper by Australian astrophysicists who claim that a 1 to 2 degree centrigrade drop in temperatures will occur during this decade and will last for over 30 years, and that this always occurs when the Jovian planets are in alignment, causing the sun to stay outside of the center of the universe. I'm waiting to hear contrary arguments, but so far haven't heard a peep.)

If nuclear plants hadn't been stymied for the past 30 years and coal plants built instead, there wouldn't even be any concern about carbon levels. Any carbon induced global warming has been caused primarily by anti-nuclear environmentalists. That's easy to prove.