People think, "yay, electric cars are clean and better for the environment"... but, most of the electricity we have comes from coal power plants, so not only does it defeat the purpose, but they probably are even worse for the environment.

I concure with fulle.

Not to mention that the additional cost of the vehicle offsets the savings in fuel by a wide margin still.

Power from power plants -- even the ones powered by coal -- is much more efficient and clean than power from an ICE.

The added benefit to an electric vehicle is that it becomes cleaner as the power grid becomes cleaner. A vehicle with an ICE only gets worse after it's purchased.

I guess electric cars would only make sense in countries which produce their electricity from green sources, such as Denmark, Canada, Norway and Sweden to name a few.

I personally would see a market for Tesla in British Columbia, as our electricity is generated from hydro dams, hence the excessively low rates.

I would rather take new electric vehicles today, so later down the road they can deal with the fact that electricity is still coming from coal power plants. Just think about powering your electric car and your home from solar panels on your roof.

Taking into account 100% coal fire generated electricity, powerline powerloss of up to 500 miles, extra weight of batteries on board, electric cars still produce less co2 emissions. Although particle emissions from coal plants are often times worse for our health then co2, it does provide for global cooling. Its not in any sense a good trade off. If you factor in renewable energy, non toxic batteries with easy to find minerals like nizn(nickle zinc) then electricity becomes the best option for alternative fuels. Electric cars won't transport you from new york to LA, but planes/electric trains supported by local mass transit will do Just as good of a Job as a car and come ahead cleaner.

As long as we (Americans) feel better about ourselves, its ok. LOL

If you do the math (Life Cycle Assessment), electricity from coal/gas is still cleaner than ICE (for EVs)

Did you know that power plants don't shut off at night when we use very little electricity? There was a study made which showed that this wasted power was enough to support a something like 70% conversion of all vehicles* to electric. What this means is that with NO additional burning of coal or infrastructure investment you could eliminate the emissions from ~70% of the vehicles. That's HUGE!!!

It's about time a major car company invested in Tesla, too bad it's a German one though. I was hoping an American car company would have done the same, or that the U.S. government would have given Tesla money while they were handing out billions of tax payer dollars to GM and Chrysler. How is it that a supposedly "green" president gives billions to the Hummer/SUV gas guzzling car companies and not a single cent to an all electric, progressive, innovative company such as Tesla. I say let the giant car companies fall and give funding to those that deserve it, like Tesla.

Well, there are plants that supply a base load, and on-demand plants (natural gas among others) that turn on and off based on loading. Nuclear and coal are base plants that run continuously at 100%, so that at night, the on-demand plants can shut down. The 70% figure comes from ALL plants operating at 100% continuously.

Yay.

Now make electric cars cheaper...
And make better batteries...

The Tesla is a sexy car; cleaner AND sexier cars make the world a better place.

The big key it would seem is that more investing is required by world for proper electric transportation.
(How about a maglev train inside a vacuum tunnel for long distances? Reduce the only limiting factor: air resistance.)
And more investing is needed for sustainable energy sources.
(Solar is my favorite, especially with a recent breakthrough utilizing a crystal formation found in butterfly wings. Plus the first solar panel made by I believe IBM over 50 years ago is still running, so they last with very little upkeep.)

You're right, coal is dirty. However, it's a LOT more efficent and clean per KW than the small internal combustion engine in your car. When the world moves to cleaner energy production, then electric cars will be even more beneficial.

Thanks for the clarification.

Well, Fulle, since electric cars are powered by coal, let's just keep driving gas-powered SUVs until the gasoline runs out in about 20-30 years, then we can revert back to horses and bicycles...

I honestly can say that I love tom's hardware because with every article comes with a plethora of valuable comments with a relatively small margin of people saying worthless things.

So now Daimler comes to kill another company.

Within 2 years Ford will have at least 2 full electric autos, a cargo van early next year and the electric Focus for the 2011 model year. Said focus will be built at the old Wayne Truck plant here in michigan that once built some of Ford's largest SUVs.

But really EVs are just a pit stop on our way to not fuel cells but Hydrogen Combustion Engines.

-Gabe, from the shadow of the glass palace

Internal combustion engines are horribly inefficient and very expensive to maintain. They only transfer about one fourth of the energy in gasoline into vehicle motion.

Watch the documentary called "Who Killed the Electric Car". It is very enlightening on the topic. And oh ya, electric vehicles are nothing new, they came, were proved to good, and were killed. Covered in said documentary, it is very insightful.

Corporate America doesn't give a shit on what's good to the environment or humans. They only care about $$$.

99.99% of the politicians are sutainded by corporations! This is not only in America, it is all over the world!

Power to the people ... was a sweet lie and you still don't get it that your life is nothing to them! We need a global catastrophe, war or something else to have the guts to take back our lifes and create a new society based on real resources and with new values.

We are the only species that kills our ecosystem! YES, WE, THE PEOPLE, CAN, NOT THEY!

And maybe one day they'll invent nuclear fusion and fuel cells to replace current rechargeable batteries.

Go ahead and prove your claim. The power generation plants have a specified efficiency. The power lost in transporting that electricity over high power lines. The power lost in each and every single voltage transformation. The energy lost in ac/dc conversion. The actual efficiency of the battery conversion of chemical energy into electrical energy, both directions. The efficiency of the electric motor. The added weight of the hybrid/all electric system. Go ahead and prove that the energy from the grid is more efficeint than that inside a ICE.

It's true that RIGHT NOW electric cars might not be a viable replacement for ICE's... but as long as we have companies like Tesla burgeoning their way onto the scene and generating interest, there's hope that more and more innovators will get involved and make it happen. Stagnation is enemy numero uno.

We need mass transit systems everywhere! Our personal vehicles have to go. Even though I never bus/subway or even ride a bike the only answer is mass transit for everyone. Neighborhoods need to be developed in such a way that everything you require is within a couple Kilometers thus your car can stay in the garage.

We have become too reliant on our personal vehicles for times where it is just not required… Like going to the corner store… fuckin walk!

Funny enough NY which you would think is filthy from pollution actually isn’t near as bad as most every City in the USA because it was built before cars and has a strong mass transit system. Over in Europe the cities have WAY less pollution because of mass transit and people ride bikes….

Electric vehicles should not even be a consideration until Nuclear power is readily available (Or something better) and the grid has been updated/improved.

I love my car as much as the next guy, in fact I have driven 100,000KM in the last two years, it will be hard to let her go. Unfortunately, mass transit is the best solution.

People seem to miss the point.. Electricity can be produced by anything. Be it fallign water, burning fuel, nuclear power, solar power, wind power, hell you could hand cranl the car if you really wanted to.

Sure, a lot of power is produced by dirty means (at least in the USA) but that is no reason not to want an electric car... Once end user cars are runnign on a power source that can be grabbed anywhere we can worry about shutting down our large scale poluters. With a nuclear backbone, and suplimented by wind, hydro, and solar power we could ahve a fleet of cars that are almost (an electric motor produces ozone) entirely clean.

Here in Canada a least, we are making strong strides to replace coal and whatnot with wind and nuclear power.

To the poster who mentioned hydrogen combustion engines.. That is silly. Fist, there is already an infrastructure of electricity, why would we choose something that requires a total conversion of everything. Second, Hydrogen is not gravitationally bound to earth, the primary source would be water, and any that gets away woudl be gone forever.. do you really want to start using up our water to power cars? Sure there is lots of it, but that is rediculously short sighted. It is only thought of as an option becasue it is monopolizable.. It is hard to make hydrogen (relatively), not so much to plug in a car. Even besides all that you make hydrogen with electricity.. why the heck would we produce electricity to make hydrogen to power a car when we could make electricity to power a car? It is far more efficient to skip the 3rd step.. and that way we don't burn up our oceans on our great grand kids.

People-- stop making unsubstantiated claims!! If you really think that electric cars are worse for the environment, back it up.

When you post that electric cars are worse since electricity comes from coal, you obviously haven't done your homework and looked at the whole picture-- in the end, you don't look too smart.

FYI, Telsa is funded and run in large part by one of the founders of PayPal. So he does have a decent amount of money to invest in this. Not to mention any royalties they get from Smart sales.

The reason you would want to convert H20 into H and 02 is as a means of storage of energy in the form of matter. It is very very hard, if not impossible, to actually store electric power. We cheat by introducing an electric potential into chemical reactants. Storing it in pressurized hydrogen is more reliable than trying to store the energy in a Lithium battery.
Besides, Hydrogen Fuel Cells are NOT a combustion reaction. It is a chemical bonding that gives off an electric charge and heat. That charge powers batteries which are then converted into kinetic energy.

Anyone ever hear about algae-based solar energy?

You completely forgot that there is a HUGE infrastructure built upon trucks that are like 10-20% thermally efficient to transport the fossil fuels to your pump. Then MULTIPLY all of these inefficiencies (pumping, transportation, refining, rail transportation, truck transportation) by the 10-20% efficiency of your car's ICE. And you'll end up with orders of magnitude worse than the electrical grid. Everything you listed would have to have losses approaching 75% in order to even come close to being less efficient than the ICE in your car.

Great to hear. I'll just go out and buy a Mercedes instead.

Electricity from burning coal... yeah great for the ecofascist (who themselves are typically not financially- or mentally stable)

I'll wait for hydrogen cars, thanks. The already proven 'alternative' fuel, nuclear, makes hydrogen the ideal 'green' fuel.