Where Do Your Volts Come From?

Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal's Holman Jenkins devoted his weekly column to a critical review of GM's electric car offering, the Chevy Volt. Mr. Jenkins made several important points, but perhaps the most important was recognizing that little will be gained if the electricity to recharge these cars comes from carbon-intensive sources. He notes the irony that "...the Volt rolls out amid news that an investor is abandoning a big U.S. nuclear project" (presumably he is referring to last weekend's announcement about Constellation's Calvert Cliffs 3 project).

We're all for greater use of electricity in transportation. Using electricity produced by clean nuclear power plants, electric automobiles could help reduce carbon emissions from the transportation sector and begin to displace some of the oil used in motor fuels. That strikes us as a good thing for the nation and a great way to leverage our expertise in operating nuclear power plants safely and efficiently.

More information on the Volt is available from this GM web site.

Comments

SteveK9 said…

I've been using this equation for 4 years:

Nuclear Power + Electric Cars = Bright Future

By the way, you are using a photograph of the concept Volt from 4 years ago. The actual car looks a little more practical and a little less spacy (although a lot of people loved the concept).

October 21, 2010 at 7:19 PM

Anonymous said…

The way I look at it is that we need to develop both things in parallel - we need to be developing the electric vehicle technology at the same time that we are starting to increase build-out of nuclear and other non-polluting energy generation.

October 22, 2010 at 10:51 AM

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