Is that a green car or a halfway house

They promised you a car that is environmentally friendly but they are short on delivery most of the time. Sure, the brochures say so and the advert guys say so! But they are not environmentally friendly, most of the time. The reason is not difficult to grasp. First of all, these so called green car can’t move an inch without burning fossil fuel. Hybrid cars are halfway measures. They only help a bit on the gas mileage and nothing to shout about. And worse of, because they help to cut down on fuel, it gives the owner the impression that they are actually saving fuel. Not surprisingly, these owners even use more fuel by doing more errands with their so called green cars. Now, that figures. In trying to cut down on fuel burning, we have unwittingly encouraged more fuel burning. Is that what we want?

True green cars must not burn gas, at least not burning gas in the cylinders as we know it. They should be run on electricity. It is OK to source electricity from the electrical grids. Although we are no where near powered by renewable energy resources, at least we are on the way of substituting those energy with solar, wind and bio-fuel. It needs time to completely wean our way away from fossil fuels. So the next time a sales guy were to sell you a green car, just ask them what octane numbers the car run on. If they even mention anything octane, then that must not be a green car and you should just say no to them.

Green cars are of course expensive to buy. It is the numbers thing. Small quantities of output will always not enjoy the economy of scales. In order to bring about a total change over to green cars, governments should put out incentives to both the manufacturers and the buyers. Somebody has to bear the cost of change over and governments, who claimed themselves as fighting for a greener environment, must be pioneer the cause. Not only that, they will also have to put more subsidies in alternative fuel generation so that critical mass is reached fast, before we have to face off critical shortage of affordable fossil fuel. So, green car for you?