Electric Cars’ Southland Debut

* Re “An Electric Start,” Dec. 6:

Your otherwise factual article about electric automobiles suffers from the flawed assumption that they do not contribute to air pollution. The advocates of this electric panacea rarely speak candidly about their pollution shell game. The electrical energy has to come from somewhere. It comes from electric power plants run mostly on polluting fossil fuels. Thus electric cars do not stop air pollution; rather they move the source of it to the power plant’s smokestacks.

Growing fleets of electric cars can reduce air pollution only if their energy comes from new nonpolluting power sources. Hydroelectric and nuclear are the only practical near-term options. Most environmentalists rightly reject the hydroelectric option. That leaves nuclear. If we really want to reduce air pollution, we must reconsider the nuclear fission option.

Until we get serious about nonpolluting energy sources, electric cars will remain an expensive folly.

DAVID V. ANDERSON

Santa Monica

* With the high price of the new electric vehicles, who can afford them other than trial attorneys for O.J. Simpson? My suggestion to make these electric vehicles “affordable” to the public is to change California’s lottery system. Instead of only one or a few lottery winners receiving millions of dollars, have thousands of lottery winners, with the prize a three-year lease on the electric vehicle. With this new lottery system there will be thousands of new electric vehicles on the road and less smog.

STEPHEN SWIATEK

Yucca Valley