In a post yesterday, I scored U.S. News & World Report’s Marianne Lavelle for (among other things) passing on an estimate from an advocacy group called “CalCars” that “with today’s electricity prices, drivers would be paying the equivalent of 75 cents per gallon.” In fact, it would cost you almost $3.50 to get the same amount of BTUs from electricity that you get from gasoline in this country (assuming, of course, you are paying the national average price for electricity). This morning, The Daily Kos takes me to task for not going further and taking into consideration the greater efficiency with which electric motors convert BTUs to energy vis a vis internal combustion engines powered by gasoline.

Fair enough. Concentrating simply on BTU costs doesn’t tell the whole story. I did not, however, read Ms. Lavelle’s claim as anything beyond a claim about the cost of electricity versus the cost of gasoline — that is, the cost of fuel.

A good walk-through of the conversion efficiencies in play can be found here. The environmental calculations therein, however, are more problematic in that the authors assume the fuel used to produce the electricity in question comes exclusively from natural gas. That’s not a very good assumption.

Despite claims to the contrary over at the Daily Kos, neither I nor libertarians in general have any axe to grind regarding electric motor vehicles. I am not “for” them or “against” them. When electric motor vehicles become economically attractive, I’m confident that auto manufacturers will produce them. If that were to happen over the next year or two, I would have zero complaint. And to the extent to which I have any opinion on the matter, I think it would be a very good thing if battery technology advanced to such a degree that electric power could compete with petroleum in transportation markets. I simply don’t think government subsidies or mandates are likely to hasten the day in which that wish will be translated into reality.