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Electric Bus Sets Record With 1,101-Mile Trip On a Single Charge (engadget.com)
A startup called Proterra has set the world record for the furthest distance any electric vehicle has managed before recharging. The Catalyst E2 Max electric bus drove 1,101.2 miles on a single charge, beating the previous record-holder, a one-seat experimental car nicknamed "Boozer." Engadget reports: Not surprisingly, a bus can hold a much larger battery than just about any regular car. The Catalyst E2 Max carries 660kWh, or nearly nine times the capacity of a 75kWh Tesla Model S. Also, Proterra was driving in optimal conditions, with no passengers, no stops and a gentle test track. It'd be another story with a fully-laden bus wending its way through a city. Even so, that kind of range is very promising. In many cases, it could likely handle a long bus route for several hours -- it might only need to recharge at the end of a driver's shift. While it could take an hour or more to top up even with Proterra's fast charging system, bus drivers are no strangers to changing vehicles. The first E2 series buses are due to reach Los Angeles streets later in 2017, so it might not be long before you can witness this longevity first-hand. The company released a video of the record-setting feat on YouTube.
If it's true what some studies say about the CO2 emission during the production of batteries, replacing ICE vehicles for expensive electric alternatives will change nothing in the fight against global warming. The extra CO2 released during production of an electric car versus its ICE alternative is the same amount of CO2 the average ICE user releases over 7 years. This means that you need to drive at least 7 years with an electric car to break even on the condition that the electricity you used to charge the battery was created with green energy. For a country like the Netherlands, 80% of the electricity is generated by burning dirty coal.
The other advantage of electric cars is that they do not exhaust the dirty smoke of ICE vehicles. Especially the diesel engines with their rigged emission ratings are heavy polluters. But there are solutions to dirty smoke. With special filters and additives the pollution can be brought down to a minimum. But one of the biggest contributors to pollution are particulates. The majority of particulates of ICE vehicles (about 60%) are caused by using the brakes and by burning rubber. Electric cars will not reduce this kind of pollution.
I do not believe electric cars are the solution against pollution, nor against global warming caused by CO2 emission. The solution is like you say helping people off their car addiction. But this always comes at a cost. Personal freedom or economic mobility will be hampered. When you walk around in old industrial regions, you will notice an unpleasant atmosphere. You will see how the world looked like before the invention of the car. People had to live close to work in small, cheap houses without any comfort or luxury. You will understand why there was so much left wing terrorism in the 19th century. People simply didn't care. It was a choice between a certain miserable life and a miserable life where you at least tried to change the situation. It was almost written in the starts that aggressive regimes founded on fascism or communism would be preferred over the 'capitalistic misery of the nineteenth century'.
Today more and more progressive thinking people want to criminalize the freedom to choose where you live. They openly talk about punishing people who live too far away from their work, who live in villages instead of cities or who live in a too large house. The green and socialist politicians want to reestablish the 19th century style patriarchy when people lived in houses owned by the factory owner and shopped in shops owned by the factory owner and went to the church owned by the factory owner to attend a service lead by a priest paid by the factory owner while their kids went to schools owned by the factory owner and were taught by teachers paid by the factory owner. Many modern socialists and green politicians want to do the same but with factory owner replaced by government official. Thanks to American racialist sociologists, they could replace the old narrative of "it's the fault of the patriarchy" with "it's the fault of white patriarchy or white privilege". This is the source for even more tensions in European societies. People who never were asked their opinion are now considered the source of the integration problem of the many immigrants, instead of taking responsibility for allowing too many immigrants that simply will never integrate. Not only are they blamed for the polarization, they are now even blamed for the pollution and global warming and are the ones that are targeted with high taxes and regulations.
The future looks very grim this way, but what's worse is that you may not even have your own opinion without being ridiculed. A climate scientist already knows what he will have to find and conclude. Electric car must be better, the study that hinted to the fact that for 90% of the car owners, the electric car would have a larger negative CO2 impact then the ICE alternative cannot be true. The study results were released almost two years ago, but were never picked up or taken serious. No explanation, no proo