That's for the future. Apropos, the source of power for electric cars is a frequent discussion issue among environmentalists. In some parts of the country, for example the Northwest, there's a lot of hydroelectric power, so an electric car is better for the environment than a gas-powered car. But in places where most of the power is generated using coal, it's not so clear-cut -- owning an electric car or a gas-powered car might have roughly equal effects on the environment.
Factor in nuclear-as-drop-in-replacement for coal, or future solar / wind generation capacity then purchasing an EV now still makes sense. Cars are on the road for 20+ years, new generation capacity is coming online constantly, so I think it makes sense for people to buy EVs.
Out of curiosity, what do you think needs to change for them to make sense for most people?
I personally feel the Model S has made an enormous step towards "makes sense" for a lot of people, and I have to think the X will "make sense for most"
Really? When I researched this last, even the worst power source charging a Tesla outpaced internal combustion pollution (at the point of power generation only, not counting the cost of making the batteries).
Keep in mind that what matters is not just the amount of power generation capacity, but the ability of that capacity to respond to demand.
Some background: The bulk electricity market (at least in NY state) is run as a giant linear programming problem to satisfy the demand for all regions with a set of supply curves that suppliers bid into the market. They all get paid the same price that the marginal watt (the last watt you need to buy to meet demand) costs.
So, natural gas turbines, who can turn on and off relatively quickly, will bid high and are likely to be the marginal watt. Nuclear plants bid very low and occasionally negative because it actually costs them money to shut down because they then can't start up again soon. So, they want to be sure that they are going to be scheduled.
This is oversimplified and ignores the difference between the day-ahead market and real-time market, products like regulation (we pay money for people to be ready to turn on/off and keep things at 60Hz), and inter-zone transmission)
The point is that a nuclear plant can't suddenly turn on in response to a spike in demand from quickly-charging car batteries. A bigass flywheel or a bigass battery (shameless plug for Sadoway: http://www.ambri.com/) might though.
I guess one of the benefits is that you're decoupling the energy transfer method from the energy source. If there is new development of solar, wind, geothermal, wave energy etc. electric cars will be ready to receive energy from them versus trying to replace ICE cars. Even if the energy is derived from coal, cleaning the waste products at the factory is easier and is easier to upgrade the filters rather than replacing catalytic converters with better ones on regular cars.
