How would the environment change if everyone drove electric cars?

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jaredbiunn

Just having fun speculating and such, how much better would the environment get if the world drove electric cars.. would we physically see a noticeable change?.... I mean, this is obviously not possible in the near future, the whole word driving and being comfortable with electric cars won't be reached at least for another 50-100 years, but just to satisfy my curiosity.. how much will this benefit our planet?

Answer
How would you describe the change? It would be hard to fix an actual percentage. You might listen to the inspirational beginning of an EV world podcast: http://www.evworld.com/evworld_audio/gpastor_shanghai-to-paris1.mp3 You could read a nonfiction book on the subject: http://www.amazon.com/Future-Drive-Electric-Sustainable-Transportation/dp/155963328X or you might see a movie that featured electric cars or watch a youtube video interview:

Minority Report
http://www.youtube.com/siemens

But if you wanted to fix a percentage it would have to start with the pollution given out by the vehicles of today. How much does auto pollution presently damage our planet? You would have to look at each element of pollution separately. Also, are we counting all harmful substances or only those that will be metabolized in a fixed or variable amount of time? How do we determine how much time.

We can say with some certainty that approximately 60 to 70% of crude oil's refined products are used in transportation. The pollution will be found in the air, our water and our soils. Oil pollutes during its production1, exploration (the BP well was an exploratory well), transportation (tanker spills), refining (energy usage and byproducts, transportation and storage again (road and pipeline spills ) pumping (ground and water contamination at gas stations, and use (air pollution, water and soil pollution from "lost" oil 2) Of this we can probably attributed 50% to ground transportation that would be replaced by electric cars and trucks. (I would assume you may include trucks in you overall assessment.) This source determines the tonage per vehicle of greenhouse gas emissions: There are over 200 million vehicles on the roads in the US alone producing 1 billion tons of CO2. Refineries would add to this amount.

Are there any available electric cars that can go highway speed?

the mental

I watched "Who Killed the Electric Car?" and heard a presentation about electric cars. They seem like really great cars but the only ones that are available are low speed cars (max speed of 35 mph), right?

Answer
Sure. In fact, you can build one yourself for under $10,000. I plan to turn this into a summer project for me. You may want to check out diyelectriccar.com. There is lots of great info there to get you started. Another place I'd like to recommend is evalbum.com. This is a showcase for anyone who's built/owns an electric car. If you don't want to build an electric car yourself, you ought to check out evtradingpost.com, where people sell fully-completed conversion vehicles, production electric vehicles, and parts to make your own electric vehicle (sort of like classified ads). Whichever route you choose to go, good luck!

EDIT: You may also wish to look into the Solectria Force. It is a professionally converted car that is capable of going highway speeds, with a reasonable range to boot. These can be seen on the evalbum and the evtradingpost, amongst other places.

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