To the editor:
Electric vehicles (EVs) are the most efficient means of automotive transportation and arguably most efficient of any transportation short of walking or perhaps biking. Even if living in West Virginia where all power comes from coal, when they burn coal they use burners that are the size of a house or larger and are inherently more efficient than anything under the hood of any automotive vehicle. Size Matters!
Some businesses like the USPS should EVolve above all others for just the simple efficiency and cost to operate! Ask the average mailman or woman in a city uniform and USPS Delivery Truck, the longest route range per delivery day is 20 miles. Of that mileage most would travel highway speeds for a few moments with the 90 percent or more of their route at 15-20 mph and stopping every 20 yards or so at each mailbox. Enter regenerative brakes to make energy at every stop and not wear the brakes. Throw a solar panel or two on top of the nice flat roof of the USPS Trucks, they may well not ever need to plug in ever. EVs all get about 100-120 mpg equivalent. Even gas motorcycles top out at 70 mpg.
As a letter to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution stated, EVs have just a handful of moving parts compared to a couple of thousand in an internal combustion vehicle. I now have 42,000 miles on my Chevy Bolt on unwashed wheels for the entire time. No brake dust at all to the naked eye.
Of course every day more solar, wind, renewables are coming online on some level, in spite of the fossil fuel efforts to slow or stop it. We should close all coal plants ASAP as well as natural gas plants ASAP as the sun provides 86,000 terraWatts of energy and the wind 817 terraWatts of Energy if in windy locations like the coasts, mountains and the Great Plains. All of humanity uses16 TerraWatts today.
However our electricity doesn’t come from The Middle East or Russia. Fact: Some of our oil does. Electricity comes from right here in the Lower 48 especially, even if it is from fossil fuels. We also have a solar panel plant in Dalton, GA thanks to Governor Nathan Deal.
Andrew Lane
Athens