You betcha! The redhats make snide remarks about the Teslas around here because the ohso rich in Seattle also fly airplanes and boats and the miners getting lithium out of the earth for batteries burn diesel. So true!
But, that is too easy an out from the suicidal urge coming from the Trump environmental denialists. Yes, I have read these arguments and even worse in regard to efforts in Germany to eliminate carbon while some of their electricity comes from Poland and other places Trump might call shitholes.
The fact is, cooking the Earth took a long time but, if we want to survive, cooling it will need to be quicker. One step in doing that is electricity. Even if the rotten plants that made coal and petrol need to be burned for some time, having the vehicles able to run on cleaner fuels is a valid step in that direction.
A good example is China’s problems. They are desperately trying to grow while also trying to clean their air. That does mean still using carbon though far less now per capita than we do. There is no doubt that Xi Jinping’s cadres are working very hard on adding clean electricity to their fuel supply … they will need it to run the fleet of electric vehicles they already have,
That kind of effort is harder here both because of our more diverse social/economic structure and because of the bizarre anti-science view of the GOP.
Electric vehicles will be popular with consumers if they meet the average consumers needs. This has little to do with whether we are baking the planet or not by gasoline vehicles. The fact is simply gasoline is pretty wonderful stuff and makes our cars go, and our whole economy needs cheap energy. We choose to move away from a rail economy because it was inconvenient, not hip, and we built the federal highway system. We became a car centric nation, and it was good. Now we still have a ton of SUVs on the road and life is just to fast to sit at the bus stop or wait for a train, no we all gotta punch in at nine or so and enjoy the great ritual of the rush hour in our cars electric or petroleum based. Can,t stay o the farm or small town, nope gotta live this modern life style.
We can always test the thermonuclear winter theory and cool things down in a hurry, or a couple of bombs in Yellowstone Lake could do the trick.
Of course both those scenarios suggest the downside of cooling is where agriculture fails. Farm vehicles for the most part are not going electric and farming does require diesel and gasoline in substantial quantities, or at least the North Koreans found that out in the 80s.
So we all have to live in a efficient city space on a small footprint, yet that is not happening in Seattle no matter how much it could reduce global warming and reduce the homeless.
Hopefully electric vehicles will save suburbia or help us from discussing what our post gasoline world will look like. Will there be a local nuclear plant on the shores of Lake Washington? Will we dam up the rivers and rub out salmon and the local Orcas? Or could discuss real pollution issues in Washington state like runoff from the municipal golf course….golfers can go Scottish and golf in taller grass amongst the sheep, no golf carts allowed.
I don’t see the GOP’s anti-science posture as an enduring problem. It means evolution will eliminate them before the rest of us.