Natural Gas Powered Versus Electric Vehicles
A reader notes:
I did not see a comparison to natural gas powered vehicles. It’s the most abundant fuel we have in the US, and it’s dirt-cheap.
True. Personally, I favor electric transportation because of the potential for clean transportation if they are powered with clean, renewable sources, and because of the ubiquity of the electrical grid. One can unplug one’s toaster and plug in one’s car. It is for this reason that I do not favor hydrogen; we have a landmass of 3.5 million square miles in the continental U.S. alone that would be fabulously expensive to retrofit for another fuel. Natural gas has, to a great degree, the same issue.
Other points to consider: natural gas is a fossil fuel (bad), but it’s an energy source, versus a carrier like hydrogen (good).
Finally, the reason that natural gas is abundant and thus “dirt-cheap” (as you say) is because of fracking, a practice that has considerable environmental costs that we’re just beginning to understand.
Natural gas may seem to be abundant. In fact, it seems that it abundance has increased. However, the increase is the result of hydraulic fracking which is not always environmentally acceptable. In some areas, it has caused water wells to become contaminated. Also, there is the problem of disposing of the fracking fluids.
Because laws passed under the administration of George II prohibit the EPA from investigating the environmental problems of hydraulic fracking, we do not even know the magnitude of the environmental problems it causes.