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GM, NHTSA Delayed Volt Warnings To Prop Up Sales
Lauren Weinstein excerpts the most interesting part of a BBC story about the safety hazards associated with the Chevy Volt — specifically, the risk that its battery pack could catch fire after even a minor impact. While it might be unsurprising that GM was reluctant to shout out safety warnings that would dampen early sales of its much touted hybrid, according to the linked story the NHTSA was as well, and for the same reason: "Part of the reason for delaying the disclosure was the 'fragility of Volt sales' up until that point, according to Joan Claybrook, a former administrator at NHTSA."
And on the other hand the same NHTSA was all too happy to jump all over Toyota when some morons could not remember which pedal is for braking.
Nailed it. Replacing our entire infrastructure to generate, store, and transport hydrogen is the trick. So is the question of our source of hydrogen - it could still be oil based for a while. Our catalysts for splitting water aren't quite ready for industrial scale yet IMHO. Best plan I've seen so far is to dedicate a nuclear reactor to the provision of electricity for a catalyst assisted electrolytic splitting of water. I suppose you could do the same with a dam, but I bet it'd be easier to build a new nuke plant these days than it would to build a major dam.
And yes coal is far and away the most dangerous. But that's a different danger, those dangers are from normal operation. You 'could' filter out the CO2 emissions and other pollutants
The irony is that burning coal has released far more radiation into the air than has been released by nuclear accidents
Fun trivial - If you extracted the trace uranium from 1 ton of coal, it can be used in a nuclear reactor to produce more power than burning the coal provides..