Micro Monday is a day to find new people to follow. We do occasional roll calls to gather up folks with a common interest. Today’s topic: electric vehicles. Drive one? Want one? Got advice to share? Leave a comment here so fellow enthusiasts can follow you (at a safe distance). 🚗
@monday I don’t delight one bit in being a contrarian here, but as an environmental (atmosphere, air quality) scientist I’m really concerned about the “full cost” accounting for current e-vehicles. Batteries are OK now; they will be really good in 10 years. But now I’m worried in 100,000 km these current vehicles will have really bad battery storage (like you phone in a couple years it can only handle 80% of charge when new or less). I’m suggesting for now we should be considering more diesels, not less. They are greener in the sense having a 300,000+ km lifetime they will get more use before going to the landfill. Modern diesels release much less CO2 then gas engines (remember e-vehicles don’t release no CO2, they just do it at the power generation end) and with more particulate filters they run very clean (certainly clean enough to be sold in places like California). Bottom line: e-vehicles are great but except in particular use cases (e.g. commuting) it might be best to hold off, at least until solid state batteries become the norm. 🚗