Electric Cars and California Mandates

Moonyean Kistler (“Governor’s Stall on Electric Car Fuel’s Fellow Republican’s Ire,” July 8) may call herself a right-wing ditto-head Republican, but her romantic ode to electric cars reflects the naivete, fanciful reasoning and obliviousness to inconvenient facts normally found on the left.

Her belief that our ability to land on the moon will magically give us the means to dramatically improve a mature technology like the storage battery is charming but groundless. Burning fuel to create heat, converting that heat to electrical energy, pumping it through miles of wiring into a battery to be changed into chemical energy, and finally turning it into mechanical energy, is the least efficient possible way to power a vehicle.

And its impact on the environment is an illusion, since generating that energy inefficiently in a power plant will create more pollution, per mile traveled, than doing it under the car’s hood. It just moves the pollution from the air Kistler breathes to the skies above the power plant.

Engineers who want to create a lucrative new industry, aided by government dreamers, use the glamour of electric cars to distract us from an awkward truth: Most of the pollution in the air is produced by a small number of older cars whose owners simply don’t bother with engine maintenance. The way to clean our air is to use inexpensive remote tailpipe sensors with license plate cameras to identify these smog belchers and get them fixed or junked. GENE FELLNER South Pasadena