Guilt free driving with electric cars? Not in Australia!
Just sat down in the Qantas lounge in Sydney, waiting for my flight home. Sky News is on the TV, running a story about Nissan's upcoming fully electric production car. It's an American story, complete with interviews with electric car drivers in California, with a lot of playing up of "you feel completely guilt free when driving." This is a strange story to be replaying in Australia. You see, those people in SoCal can afford to be guilt free when driving their electric cars because it's a good bet that the electricity to charge the things is coming from a nuclear plant. No greenhouse emissions there. Transplant those cars to Australia, and it's a good bet that the power will come from coal fired plants. Totally different story now. Given the choice of coal fired electricity for the car I'd rather stick with a petrol/electric hybrid, or even just an efficient modern engine. Yes, I know there are some renewable energy generation facilitates, but at last check they only account for around 8% of our power. I think it's about time we start using some of those uranium reserves for our requirements, instead of selling it all overseas.
