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No, the Tesla Model S Doesn't Pollute More Than an SUV
thecarchik writes "In an exhaustive 6,500-word article on the financial website Seeking Alpha, analyst Nathan Weiss lays out a case that the latest Tesla Model S actually has higher effective emissions than most large SUVs of both the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide and smog-producing pollutants like sulfur dioxide. This is absolutely false. Virtually all electric car advocates agree that when toting up the environmental pros and cons of electric cars, it's only fair to include powerplant emissions. When this has been done previously, the numbers have still favored electric cars. The Union of Concerned Scientists, for example, concluded in a 2012 report (PDF), 'Electric vehicles charged on the power grid have lower global warming emissions than the average gasoline-based vehicle sold today.' Working through every one of Weiss' conclusions may show a higher emissions rate than Tesla's published numbers, but in no way does a Model S pollute the amounts even close to an SUV."
The true cradle-to-grave costs of hybrid cars is not yet known. It will not be until they begin to hit the junkyards in large numbers--and there is ample evidence that this will occur considerably sooner than non-hybrid (and non-electric) vehicles, just due to the higher maintenance and repair costs of hybrid vehicles that poor people won't be able to pay (assuming that the manufacturer even continues to make key replacement parts, which they may not).
The concept of the battery-powered electric car has been tossed around for 100+ years, and it always failed on the marketplace until very recently.
What suddenly changed?
There was no major technological breakthrough at all--the event that occurred was government money got involved. The only reason we have hybrid passenger cars (as well as electric cars) is because the government agreed to pay part of the cost. And the only reason to do that is to hide the total cost.
There is a conspiracy, but it's not what you think. The conspiracy isn't about pollution; it's about money.