Electric vehicles aren’t clean

I am an environmentalist and I regret I must say that changing to from gas to electric vehicles is not a clean energy solution.

For example, a single electric car battery weighing 1,000 pounds requires extracting and processing some 500,000 pounds of materials. Averaged over a battery’s life, each mile of driving an electric car “consumes” five pounds of earth.

Hydrogen and solar are being left out of the conversation, which would greatly reduce the need for millions more batteries.

I attended the famous 160-mile solar car race in Visalia, Calif., on Sep. 9, 1988. This was during the Carter administration, who gave tax incentives to oil companies and other innovative sources for clean technology incentives.

Micheal Hackleman, a solar electric car engineer attending the race, lamented the fact that the electric car industry would bypass the technology available which would allow the friction of the wheels to recharge the batteries, eliminating the need for power stations. In other words, alternators.

This well-known and -used technology would save us from the need to ocean mine, an build millions of power stations and other toxic industries needed to support those industries.

We need to let President Biden know we want solar panels on our cars and hydrogen fuel cells for batteries.

Alternator technology that regenerates batteries as we drive just as we do now would eliminate the need for millions of battery powered stations. The waste product of hydrogen fuel is water

Annie Griffin

Valley, Wash.