Electric Cars
* Re “Electric Cars Gain Entry to Carpool Lanes,” June 16:
Electric vehicles are claimed to be “zero pollution”--and they are, in and of themselves. If fact and scientific thinking were permitted, however, it would be obvious that the electricity to charge the batteries in electric vehicles must be generated, mostly at fossil-fuel plants.
Generating stations emit pollutants, and the quantity of electricity generated is much more than that eventually consumed by the vehicles. There are losses at each stage of the electrical-transmission and battery-charging processes, and these cumulative losses mean that more pollution is generated for each mile traveled by an electric vehicle than for a mile traveled by a modern internal-combustion-powered car.
Other states have abolished their high-occupancy vehicle lanes as an experiment that didn’t work. Leave it to Sacramento to force us to bow to its good intentions, no matter how ill-conceived and based in wishful thinking.
JEFFREY J. MAILLIAN
Newport Beach
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