Kim: Some people claim that the battery-powered electric car represents a potential solution to the problem of air pollution. But they forget that it takes electricity to recharge batteries and that most of our electricity is generated by burning polluting fossil fuels. Increasing the number of electric cars on the road would require building more generating facilities since current facilities are operating at maximum capacity. So even if all of the gasoline-powered cars on the roads today were replaced by electric cars, it would at best be an exchange of one source of fossil-fuel pollution for another.
EV -> possible solution to air pollution
EV-batteries -> charged
by burns polluting fossil fuelsMore EV -> More charging facilities (b/c current max output)
Replace GV with EV -> Same Pollution problem (or just like GV, EV -> causes pollution)
What is the missing link here?
What we know: Current Facilities are already at max output production. So we need more facilities in order to power the EV. We know that in order to generate electricity, one must burn polluting fossil fuels.
More EV will need more facilities. So facilities are the main electric sources for EV. Where do they get the energy to turn into electricities for EV? Wind Turbines, Solar panels, etc.? We don't know. But Premise indicates that the electricities come from a polluting source. Hence, those facilities must use some kind of polluting source.
Let's go to the answer choices.
Which one of the following is an assumption on which Kim’s argument depends?
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(A) Replacing gasoline-powered cars with battery-powered electric cars will lead to a net increase in the total number of cars on the road.
The argument is only concern whether the EV will lead to the same amount of pollution. Net increase in the total number of cars on the road is not releavant. (A) is out
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(B) Gasoline-powered cars are currently not the most significant source of fossil-fuel pollution.
What GVs do does not help us to know the amount of pollution that EVs will cause.
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(C) Replacing gasoline-powered cars with battery-powered electric cars is justified only if electric cars produce less air pollution.
The heart of the problem is the air pollution. This one, if anything, still leaves the possibility that the facility will cause way more air pollution than GVs, even though EVs produce less air pollution. (C) is out.
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(D) While it is being operated, a battery-powered electric car does not cause any significant air pollution.
Same concept as in (C).
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(E) At least some of the generating facilities built to meet the demand for electricity for battery-powered electric cars would be of a type that burns fossil fuel.
This matches out thought and is also the last remaining answer choice. (E) is the correct answer.