[ChrisH]

While electric vehicles are "clean" locally, ie they don't spew exhaust into your face. They may not be all that much cleaner globally. In a sense, you are taking many small distributed sources of pollution and turning them into a single bigger point source. This assumes that pollution controls are equally effective in both cases.

The bigger comes from the fact that there are conversion losses when you convert thermal energy to mechanical energy to electrical energy and back to mechanical. That is basically what happens when you power an electric vehicle. In a vehicle powered by an ICE there is only one conversion, thermal to mechanical.

At least a few years ago, when I was working on a power plant exhaust filtration project, the emision controls on large power plants were not as good as those on a car on a percentage basis as they had to deal with so much volume. Things may have changed and I'm willing to listen to any experts out there who can tell me differently, but all I've seen to date indicates that electric power plants based on fossil fuels merely relocate the problems. They don't eliminate them.

But this is a regular debate here, it comes up at least once or twice a year, so I'll shut up and wait til next time. The beauty of the Segway is that it reduced the amount of energy required to accomplish a task be at least an order of magnitude, no matter how the energy is created. That's where big environmental savings happen.

Disclaimer: I am an aerospace engineer. While like all mechanicals I studied power plants and engines and their efficiencies in school, I do not have current data on typical installations. If there are any power plant guys who want to weigh in on this I defer to your knowledge. I am just trying to point out that there is more to the issue than what spews in your face (or doesn't) as you pull away from a stoplight on your bicycle.

Christopher H Husmann, PE
Team 330, The Beach'Bots

who logged 2500 miles on his bicycle last year