While reading a Washington Post article about the debut of Tata Motors $2,500 car, I ran across this boilerplate quote about the “problem” with electric cars:

Others tout plug-in-and-go electric cars. True, they produce no carbon, but if the source of the electricity used to power the car is coal — the most common source of electricity in the United States and the preferred fuel for the scores of new plants being built in China and India — then the electric car won’t save us.

I find this line of thinking to be irritating. The whole advantage of an electric car is that you can change the ultimate fuel source with no modifications to the car itself. I can put up a wind turbine in the backyard and charge it off that. Same with solar panels. Or cow poop. When we find better fuel sources, drivers won’t have to throw out their old cars to take advantage of them. Moving to electric cars means we’re trying to solve an energy problem instead of both a car problem and an energy problem.

The rest of the article drones on about how Detroit is in trouble and how these $2,500 cars will only be affordable for a tiny sliver of India; never mind that at the end of the day, more Indians will have cars, meaning access to more opportunities.

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