GRA said:
You can find similar reality-check quotes about the exorbitant cost per ton of CO2 reduction due to California's promotion of EVs, compared to using the same money for any number of more cost effective measures. Of course, those calcs ignore the effects of reductions due to EVs sold outside California, but the fact remains that subsidizing EVs is far more expensive than reducing Carbon/CO2 through many other methods. If anyone wants to be smug about your transportation GHG emissions, get out of your car and walk, bike or take public transit, and don't fly or drive.
He was responding to a post which said nothing about the dollar cost of CO2 reduction. The post was primarily about the environmental damage caused by producing and fueling the Hyundai Tuscon FCEV compared with producing and fueling the Nissan LEAF considering the very small amount of additional utility provided.
The facts remain:
- Producing each Hyundai Tuscon FCEV does massively more damage to the environment than does producing each Nissan LEAF EV.
- Construction of fueling infrastructure for the Hyundai Tuscon FCEV is massively more damaging to the environment than construction of fast-charge fueling infrastructure to provide the equivalent number of vehicle-miles with the Nissan LEAF.
- Each mile driven in the Hyundai Tuscon FCEV does about 4X the environmental damage that driving the same mile in the Nissan LEAF would do.
Far from being the next progression in environmentally-friendly vehicle technology that Hyundai promotes it to be, hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles are a huge step backwards for our environment. You can dance around these unfortunate facts all you want, but that is the reality today.
All of this could be forgiven if there was some future crossover point between the two technologies. It is a real stretch to try to promote that idea.