Electric cars: Major Tom to ground control?

Whither (and wither?) Snowy 2.0? Coal-fired 'pumped hydro' or coal-fired cars? Both, I hear you say? That answer sounds like more coal, more gas, more liquid fossil fuels and more power (especially base-load?) in total.

For 'green' EV-driving consumers: don't want to fill up at the pump? Prefer to plug in at home, or some subsidised re-charging facility?

Go ahead, if you've the time. You may feel more virtuous (unless you think about where the re-charging power is coming from).

What a 'broad church' coalition supporting EVs! What could possibly go wrong?

Not so fast.

Who pays? In the 'green' power world, the poor subsidise the rich. Generous 'feed-in tariffs' for solar panels for better-off people are paid for by those who can't afford them. Subsidies and excise avoided for expensive EVs will be paid for by poorer people living in the outer 'burbs, driving long distances to work, who can't afford them, and favour inner-suburban well-off EV drivers. 'Twas ever thus.

The 'green' world is strange – indeed, literally other-worldly. Space X has just launched a Tesla car into space. The hope is it will go into an elliptical orbit around the Sun, as close in as Earth and as far out as the orbit of Mars. Why? No tyre traction in a vacuum (so much for 'ludicrous drive'). No re-charging sockets available either. Flat battery for sure.

Despite large economic and environmental launch costs, this car payload has no intrinsic purpose once up there (apart from being marketed as an 'up there' monument?). Yet more costly resources will be needed – forever? – to track it.

It reminds me of the New York scene in Crocodile Dundee where the hero is threatened by knife-wielding muggers.

Updating his reply to cover the recent Tesla car launch, he might say:

You call that space junk? This is space junk!

Do we need this particular waste of scarce resources? We have lots of fast-moving, dangerous, space junk up there already.

Australia's current electricity generation fuel sources mean pushing EVs now gets 'the car before the (green) horse(power)'.

One last question. If we shift from petrol mainly to coal to fuel our EVs now, do we increase greenhouse gas emissions or not?

If the answer is yes, what's the point of EVs again?