MINI-E #250 Is Now Truly a Zero Emission Vehicle

My new solar electric system is up and running so I'm now "charging on sunshine" as some of the others in the MINI-E trial lease program that have a PV system like to say. My system will generate enough electricity to charge my car plus provide about 90% of my home electricity needs. I know of three others that have a MINI-E and a solar array at their home. Peder Norby drives MINI-E #183 in California, Don Young drives #364 in New York as does Gordon Miller with  #217. There are probably more since many that are involved in the MINI-E program are definitely "energy conscious" individuals.

I'm still getting familiar with the system but one of the great features that SunPower, the system I went with, offers is online monitoring. It's a really cool feature that allows you to access your systems production from any computer. It gives you real time production figures and you can look at the daily, monthly and yearly production from the system so you know exactly how much electricity it has produced. I will soon have an link on this blog for anyone that wants to see these figures (as soon as I figure out how to). Maybe Peder can help me with that as he had it set up on his MINI-E blog since he has a Sunpower system also.

Finally, I can now say the car is really a zero emission vehicle(or at least as close as you can get). One of the arguments that electric car detractors always use(because they have little else to fight with) is that electric cars that charge off the grid aren't zero emission vehicles because the power plants that provide the electric burn coal and other things so electric cars are no better than gasoline burning cars are. This is called the "long tailpipe" argument whereas the electric cars tailpipe stretches all the way to the electric producing power plant. There is some truth to that argument and we need to find alternative ways to produce cleaner, renewable energies. However, the pollution generated from drilling for oil, transporting it across the world, refining it and then transporting it to gas stations where you have to drive your car there to refuel, then have carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxides, hydrocarbons, sulphur dioxide and particulate matter constantly spew from the rear of your car everywhere you drive, is much worst than the impact from driving an EV that is charged from a coal burning power plant no matter how you look at it.

Plus, you CAN generate your own electricity from a clean, renewable source. Which is something you can never say about gasoline.