EPA Needs Help in Creating Meaningful Ratings for Electric Vehicles

I go on occasional rants about the lunacy of the EPA’s rating electric cars (pure EVs that use no gas, e.g., the Nissan LEAF) on their gas mileage. Apparently, John Voelcker of GreenCarReports.com agrees:

Idiocy…. So it’s come down to this, has it? The U.S. car-buying public is apparently so stupid that the Environmental Protection Agency has to rate the efficiency of an all-electric car that burns no gasoline in … miles per gallon.

I feel your pain, John.  But the truth is that U.S. car-buyers actually are not that stupid. Realize that we’re still being instructed on how to buckle our seatbelts on airplanes (which work the same way as those in every car that’s been built for sale in the US for the last 50 years). The take-away: bureaucracies ADD content over time; they don’t remove anything — regardless of how completely useless and irrelevant it may have become.  I predict MPG ratings will be applied to vehicles 200 years from now that run on solar nutrinos or gamma rays from neighboring galaxies.

Having said that, there are SO many good alternatives for the EPA to adopt. So here’s a plea to you helpful folks in Washington: Want to add honest value and inform the EV car-buying public about the costs of operating their car — or the relative effect that driving it has on the environment?  Come on, admit it — that’s a true lightbulb of an idea!  If you want some tips on exactly how this should be done, please call or write anytime.