When you start with previously concentrated hydrocarbons (i.e. "coal") your cost of production doesn't include the additional cost of concentrating non-concentrated hydrocarbons (i.e. "atmospheric CO[SUB]2[/SUB]).
I'm not saying that it cannot be done - or even that it might not be a good thing to do - but I do question the economics of doing it. So far I haven't seen any "cradle to grave" economic analysis that shows that "electric cars" are actually less "energy intensive" or actually produce less pollution than really efficient gasoline powered cars (and I include "advanced hybrids" in that category) let alone to show that the "lifetime purchase and operating cost" of "electrics" are lower than for really efficient gasoline powered cars (same caveat).
An interesting statistic concerns the pollution benefits of buses vs private cars. Most (IC powered) buses emit around 20 (or more) times more pollution per vehicle than does a private car. However the capacity of a bus is around 40 passengers which means that the pollution per passenger is only one half that of a private car with only its driver as a passenger. This, the supporters of mass transit will tell you, means that we should switch to buses because one bus produces less pollution per passenger than does a private car with only its own driver in it.
Unfortunately what those people sort of neglect to deal with is the fact that, over the course of a full day for most transit systems the
average passenger load
per bus is LESS than 20 which means that in actuality, the pollution per passenger is HIGHER for (IC powered) buses than it is for private cars.
For major urban areas, overhead wires powering buses are practical and, if regenerative braking is used very feasible. For less travelled areas, the overhead wires are not as feasible but there is always the possibility that something like the
GYROBUS (but with better technology) could well work. For "interurban" transportation, again, overhead wire powered trains are practical.
[ASIDE - During the 1950s the BC Electric company ran interurban trains from Vancouver to Chilliwack (about 60 miles) using overhead trolley wires. Those trains used regenerative braking and the energy produced through braking was used to "run up" a massive flywheel/generator station which could then feed power back into the overhead lines when needed. The whole system was designed so that the load on the electrical grid was constant throughout the day - that is to say, at night when fewer trains were run the power draw was used to speed up the flywheel/generator which gradually lost power during the day only to be "recharged" then next night. This was, in effect, the application of the "Gyrobus" concept on a massive scale.]
