http://www.mycentraljersey.com/story/opinion/readers/2016/04/03/electric-vehicles-key-future/82532428/ LETTER: Electric vehicles a key to our future April 3, 2016
[image / Mark R. Sullivan http://www.gannett-cdn.com/media/2016/04/01/Bridgewater/B9321589755Z.1_20160401171831_000_GQ4DUJ11J.1-0.jpg Electric charging stations popping up around Central Jersey, making life easier for drivers of electric and plug-in vehicles. One of the public charging stations in New Brunswick is at the Gateway Garage located along Wall Street on Thursday May 28 ,2015 ] Climate change is a very good reason to move beyond oil. Achieving real energy independence — which would cut off the flow of billions of American dollars going to petro-dictators — is something else worth achieving. Despite being told that our shale revolution has miraculously reversed decades of growing dependence on OPEC and other overseas oil exporters, the health of our economy still is tied to the global supply of crude. We can’t drill our way out of harm’s way. Even as we have doubled domestic oil production in the past half-decade, the U.S. remains as vulnerable as ever to volatility in the oil marketplace. Oil is, after all, a global commodity. Consumed everywhere and easily moved, the price of oil is generally the same around the world. We are all drinking from the same watering hole. Currently, the world consumes 93 million barrels of oil per day. Even small fluctuations in the availability of supply can send the price of oil surging or crashing. If conflict breaks out in a major oil producing nation, the price of oil can skyrocket in the blink of an eye. Any one of a number of things — fighting in Libya, terrorism in Nigeria, chaos in Venezuela or conflict between Iran and Saudi Arabia — can bring our economy to its knees. For decades, we have allowed our dependence on oil — and dependence on adversaries like Vladimir Putin and the Saudi Royal family — to grow. To some degree, our hands were tied. Oil was irreplaceable. There simply weren’t alternative fuels that could approach its energy density, flexibility and availability. In fact, Americans still consume more than 19 million barrels of oil every day and it meets more than 90 percent of our transportation needs. But we’re not helpless. Change could come very quickly. Electric vehicles are here. Though they’re still a rarity — EVs make up just 1 percent of our vehicle fleet — sales of all-electric cars grew by 60 percent last year. And this growth has come with EVs that aren’t inexpensive and come with reduced performance compared to gasoline cars. However, long-range EVs in the $30,000 price range are about to enter the market. Tesla, BMW, Chevy and Nissan, among other automakers, are all about to roll out lower-cost models with improved performance that can compete with gasoline cars. Currently, the average price of a new car sold in the U.S. is more than $33,000 per year. It’s likely that by 2020 many EV models will be cheaper and will perform better than gasoline cars. Mass adoption of EVs before not too long is possible. A new report from Bloomberg New Energy Finance projects that EVs could account for 35 percent of all new vehicles sold worldwide by 2040. Of course, the adoption rate could be much faster, if there are further breakthroughs in battery technology. If our policymakers are smart, we must continue to encourage EV adoption. That means aiding research into newer and better battery technology, providing tax credits on new EV sales and working to expand the number of charging stations. We must also ensure our power grid is ready and able to handle the coming surge in demand. We are going to need more electricity generating capacity and it has to be cleaner. A coal-powered EV is not progress. Wind and solar power are going to be critical to this effort but their slow progress in penetrating the electricity market suggests they are just part of the solution. Solar power still generates less than 1 percent of the nation’s electricity ... The time when we will have finally broken our dependence on oil is not far away. For too long we have poured billions of dollars into the coffers of some of the world’s most unsavory regimes – more than $300 billion was spent on imported oil in 2014. EVs offer a way to achieve true energy independence and simultaneously curb carbon emissions. Encouraging greater and quicker EV adoption and supporting the shift to emissions-free electricity generation should be paramount. -James McGovern OCEAN [NJ] [© 2016 www.mycentraljersey.com] ... https://google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=James+McGovern+Ocean+NJ James McGovern Ocean, NJ (*nuke advocate) For EVLN EV-newswire posts use: http://evdl.org/evln/ {brucedp.150m.com} -- View this message in context: http://electric-vehicle-discussion-list.413529.n4.nabble.com/EVLN-Electric-vehicles-are-key-to-our-future-tp4681375.html Sent from the Electric Vehicle Discussion List mailing list archive at Nabble.com. _______________________________________________ UNSUBSCRIBE: http://www.evdl.org/help/index.html#usub http://lists.evdl.org/listinfo.cgi/ev-evdl.org Read EVAngel's EV News at http://evdl.org/evln/ Please discuss EV drag racing at NEDRA (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NEDRA)
