The fundamental flaw

Where does the electricity come from when re-charging of the battery takes place?

Your article "Electric Dreams Come True", reporting on the Nissan Leaf Electric Vehicle, notably fails to address the fundamental flaw in the concept of electric vehicles - namely, where does the electricity come from when re-charging of the battery takes place?

Answer, from the National Grid, which still relies on fossil fuels for over 80% of the nation's electricity. So the lack of a polluting exhaust pipe is totally misleading - the pollution is instead being discharged up a power station chimney during re-charging. And don't let anyone tell you that "we'll get the electricity from clean wind power (or other renewables)" - another totally flawed argument. If the wind is blowing at the time, then the wind generators will already be feeding into the grid as being of low marginal running cost (albeit having cost a fortune to construct) they will be first choice for the grid controllers to operate. So when the car is plugged in for a re-charge, it will be a high marginal cost power station which is called on to meet that demand - and for a very long time into the future that will realistically be a polluting, fossil fuel power station.

So welcome to the economics of the madhouse - £5000 subsidy for cars which are no cleaner than existing petrol or diesel models. Why not spend the money on some truly, non-polluting nuclear power stations?

Moreover, it is becoming almost criminal to continue burning gas to produce electricity (a low efficiency process as explained by Mr Rankine, albeit slightly bettered in combined cycle generators), when we can extract the inherent energy at high efficiencies (in excess of 90%) in domestic boilers for generations to come.

Stewart Price, Painswick, Gloucestershire

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