Report: Plug-In Car Advocates Buy Chevy Volt

In the article 6 Myths Every Investor Should Know About Electric Cars, the author says in part:

Myth 3. Electric cars are no less pollutive than conventional vehicles because most of our electricity is generated from coal.

In a 2006 DOE report, researchers noted although most of today's power plants emit greenhouse gases with electric vehicles, the overall levels of greenhouse gas emissions would be reduced because the entire process of moving a car one mile is more efficient using electricity than producing gasoline and burning it in a car's engine.

Also worth noting is that as many of our older coal-fired power plants retire, new solar, wind, and geothermal operations will pick up some of the slack, thereby increasing the amount of clean energy being sent to the grid.

Myth 4. Our grid can't handle it.

According to a 2007 study conducted by the Pacific Northwest Laboratory, if every vehicle on the road was a plug-in electric vehicle, today's grid could support more than 75 percent of them charging at night without adding a single power plant.

It is highly unlikely that any of us will see a 100 percent penetration of electric vehicles in our lifetimes. And while many in Washington want to tempt us with the promise of ten percent penetration in ten years, it is likely that within the next ten years, less than five percent of the vehicles on the nation's highways will be electric.

So the fear of our outdated grid being unable to handle an influx of electric cars is overblown.

Myth 5. Electric cars are not as energy efficient as gasoline-powered cars.

According to the DOE, about 20 percent of the energy from the fuel you put in your tank actually gets used to move your car or run accessories; the remainder is lost to engine and driveline inefficiencies and idling.

Electric drive systems, however, see about 75 percent or more of the energy from a battery reaching the wheels. So even with transmission and distribution losses (as someone had mentioned last week), electric cars still come out ahead...