Cool, but not new. People fed up with car companies not making EV (Electric Vihicles) for the masses have started to convert regular cars to EV’s:
In fact there are small EV builds going on across the world.
My personal dream is to one day convert my car to an EV. But even if I did, whats sad is that I would not be able to drive it in Ontario. One example is ZENN Motor Co. that is actually headquartered in Toronto, but the maker of electric vehicles can’t sell its product in Ontario but they can in BC.
Ontario needs to ease up on the electric vehicle rules and make it legal to sell EV, we can’t afford not to.
Fully EV are not new technology … witness GM’s ill-fated EV1 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_EV1).
Presumably, of primary interest is CO2 emissions … and if coal is being burnt to produce the electricity to drive the car then there will be NO reduction in these emissions (you can do the calculations, but I got roughly 0.25 kg CO2 emitted per kilometer travelled for an electric car, and approx 0.18 kg CO2 emitted per kilometer travelled for a gasoline Civic). These calculations are approximate, and assume that coal is used as the power source.
So … what are the options to coal for electrical generation? This is the key question.