Electric cars and solar power kills babies

Well, they needed to be pguegld in on a regular basis to recharge. If your commute took up it's cells, then you had to be able to plug in to recharge in order to go home. VERY few parking garages have outlets, and regular parking lots never do. When they cells got low on charge, the power in the car was pathetic and you could easily get stranded. They were also a royal pain in the butt on long trips. Finding a place willing to let you plug in your car and run their electric bill up that high was hard, or even impossible.This made the electric only car very unfeasible. They could come back today if people would build an electric solar hybrid that used storage cells to store solar power. These cars could be feasible, although long lasting bad weather would mean you would need to plug in again.

Electric cars might be ok, but nothing beats a good nuclear plant. If you want the level of energy that will be required for a world of electric cars you have to go nuclear.

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While this article is full of "Facts" it is also filled with logical fallacies. Let's not even mention all the money we give to foreign countries, and all the soldiers and civilians killed in the pursuit of gas. Following the same logic in this article everyone who owns or rents a house is also killing babies because they could rent a dirt cheap apartment and use the extra cash therefore by not doing so they are killing babies. Everyone who eats steak dinners at home are killing babies because they could eat pasta for much cheaper.............. Give me a break, it's good to help people and it is absolutely our obligation to do so but saying we are killing people because of what car we drive or how we power our house is overboard and irrational. Regards, Timothy Nelson

If we follow Mr. Rako's logic, then with every dollar we spend on technology and innovation we are killing babies. Heck, if we take into count money we spend on ANYTHING, we are committing genocide on half of Earth's population! Hey you, how dare you buy a 3-bedroom house and kill some babies when you could have bought a 2-bedroom and kept those babies alive? Mr. Rako, your logic is ridiculous. Even if you have a point, your choice of venue to defend it is a poor one. I do have to say, the title of the article is intriguing enough and gets people to read it.

Remember those electric slot car toys we played with? That's the answer to heavy batteries -- find a way to electrify the highways such that, like the slot cars, real cars could draw energy from the road itself. This is where at least some of the research should be going.

The website of the Cambridge (UK) professor mentioned earlier is www.withouthotair.com I recommend it strongly to everyone here, having had the privilege to hear Prof MacKay lecture on the topic of green energy last year. By the way petrol (gas) is now around $8.50 and diesel $9.50 per US gallon here in the UK. It is starting to affect behaviour. Our government also proposes to raise road tax on most medium to big cars to about $800 / year, including all those registered since 2001, which of course affects poorer people most. You ain''t seen nothin'' yet in the US of A about how bad this is going to get.

I can only say one thing about this.Of course you may be knowing about this, as this was said by prominent person. "IT IS VERY DIFFICULT FOR A PERSON TO UNDERSTAND SOMETHING WHEN HIS SALARY DEPENDS ON NOT UNDERSTANDING IT. What I mean to say is that,here salary means mostly his earning for his pleasures(greeds)not for his real needs.As such speaking,your view point reg. electric ,solar and other non gas vehicles appears to be completely hypocritic.There is no link between killing babies and solar or electric vehicles usage.If that is the case our mere living in this world kills ,degrades,poverises many of the people in third world countries.As such speaking,if we give up our craving for our greeds and develop adjusting for our real needs,many people arround the world will be saved, even envt.problem.So in my view point your view point is completely irrelevant. Frankly saying ,there are some skeptics in the world who will try to wash out the new ideas of moral and just living because it may cost their own name,fame and property.I think you belong to this category, or else you belong to acategogy of hypocricy as what I mentioned early.The new green revolution need to start early then only we have the guarentee for the evolution and living of our children to come.For this just technology improvements for gasolene vehicles will not do.My sinciere advice to you is try to be broad minded in your perceptions.Dont be narrow minded.After all what is really needed to us is the true goodness as the end.So we have to thing deeply about the truth and not just be hypocritically washed out by our own instinctive and irrelevent thoughts, though seemingly intelligent but untrue.We have to think always about the true needs.This will definiely save not only the environment but also children of the third world.I will tall you one thing what Mahatma Gandhiji,Father of non-violence revolution has said earlier. "NATURE HAS EVERYTHING FOR OUR NEEDS BUT NOT FOR OUR GREEDS." This is verily true.

Can't wait til this technology is mass produced, so guys like this can put their foot in their mouth. Electric motors are 80% + efficient. Thank you oil industry for $4 dollar gas to drive us to mass produce electric and alternative fuel technologies. 2 more years til cars are on the market. 5 more years and you will see some serious competition. Chevy Volt - 2010!

SORRY.): BUT STILL, I DO!

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They will do good for sure zapworld.com

ya even i have heard about ZAP. it seems they are doing a great job.

At first it was water now babies,we need to look at future look at ZAP !

I support moving to technologies that reduce (or eliminate) our dependence on foreign oil, but let's take this a step further. Encourage telecommuting. It will drastically reduce the amount of driving (fuel use, wear & tear on roads & vehicles), reduce congestion on over-crowded roads. I can work anywhere I have cell service and a high-speed Internet connection. Let's reduce the number of stupid bosses that need to see people sitting at their desks, and you'll see major changes for the better.

Great thoughts everyone- at least you are thinking! My story: In 1975 I wanted to go diesel power for my vehicle, a VW product and air cooled. I worked with a person in California to build an adapter for the transaxle and engine fit. The car gained about 250 pounds in weight plus added weight for the 10 pounds or so for the heavier fuel. The total weight for the 1963 VW was 2100 pounds with the heavy Kubota 30 HP engine. I added a larger overdrive 4th gear to 0.68:1. I would get 60 MPG at 60 MPH. I used the vehicle for 17 years going to work. In all around driving I never got below 45 MPG. Because of the hills in central coast of CA it would not get more than that except on the freeway.I did look at the economy of electric vehicles, at the time lead acid technology, for around $7500. The diesel car fuel cost would run at about 3.33 cents per mile when diesel fuel was around $1.50/gal.After I expended about $4500 on the conversion and the $1000 on my used car purchased in 1970, it turned into a long term investment. Overall the insurance costs were the major costs for the conversion

About 100 Kilowatts spent to move 200 pounds for 10 miles? The whole idea is bad no matter what kind of "fuel" we can get. Today we can solve all of our daily chores using the phone or our computers, but should go to our work -usually far from our home- and spent 8 hours before a computer screen. A wiser move will be to develop alternative methods like virtual workplaces and telecommuting. And buy a bicycle...it will be good for your health.

You make a claim of practicality here, and yet you know nothing about the subject or about economics. Your 3 pounds to one belies the experience of every hotrodder on the planet. They take a standard car, drop in an engine and tranny that weighs hundreds of pounds more than the original, change out the springs and shocks, leave everything else stock and are off to the street if not the drag strip. With an opportunity to design the system into the car, the battery system is not just dead weight added to the vehicle. It''s support system, and the batteries themselves can be designed to provide structure for the car. Certainly, electric vehicles for the ordinary commute are not soon going to match the hotrods of the world, but they can get you there and back at any legal highway speed over a distance of at least 100 miles and more probably 125-200 miles. As gasoline prices mount, the cost of electricity will go up, but at not nearly so high a rate. With volume, the price differential for electric cars will drop. Oh, and even with the current rather primitive battery technology, the average battery life is showing up to be over 8 years rather than the 5 years you trot out. The same principles apply to solar power. Yes, early adopters will pay a premium, but without them, volume will never be achieved. Again, as the price of electricity increases, their payoff period can do nothing but decrease. And, again, your numbers are several years behind the curve. Systems are steadily reducing in cost, and then there is the incremental cost of power production. Solar systems and wind systems are already competitive on that scale, which is the reason that utilities are trying to integrate such systems into their range of power production. Granted, the way to solve the issue of power production is not to be found on this Earth. We need satellite based solar power, which is ultimately clean and almost limitless. It trumps all the issues with clean coal, nuclear, corn ethanol(what a bomb), wind, tidal, and every other alternative to our current methods of power production from hydrocarbons.

How many people have been doing research on renewable energy technologies, and for how long? Time and time again people have to drill into the chemistry of biomass, and metal hydrates, and carbon bonds, and the physics of photons interacting with condensed matter, and so forth. Over time, people begin finding approaches that yield progressively better results. We have a lot of stuff that fits the minimum economic threshold for commercial viability. Utility scale wind turbines, for instance, are selling for a $1 a watt (gepower.com). A number of companies are building PV plants as fast as they can (evergreensolar.com, Energy Conversion Devices, etc.). 90% of these initiatives are going to be a waste of money. It's the remaining 10%, however, that more than make up for it.

Hey, I like the way you write! Forget all the do-gooders and stick with reality, even if that's not a popular currency these days. The new religion of Green is more blank-stare, wide-eyed than anything the Inquisitors displayed...

fuc* yall

As an ex Mo-town boy, who has also designed motor drive systems, motive battery chargers et cetera... The Electric car is only about 6% to 7% efficient as compared to cars that are 20% to 25% efficient when you measure Fossil BTUs or Kilowatt hours from fuel to rubber hitting the road. So Electric cars may make the smog better in the valley (if everybody buys one) but the environmental impact from fuel to generator to line losses to transformer losses to charger converter losses to electrochemical losses during charging to inefficiencies on the final output power conversion make pure EVs a complete environmental flop. YOU GOTTA BURN MORE FUEL FOR LESS RESULTS... MAMMA EARTH AIN'T GONNA BENEFIT BY THAT...

Has anyone given thought as to how easy it is to repair one of those hybrid cars ? Seems like everything that is done to create a good gas mileage vehicle ends up being more and more technically complex. What we really need are for the auto manufacturers to think about the consumer and provide the tools necessary, both sofware and hardware, to work on our own cars to save money. Only the very rich can afford a so called green car. Right now I''m driving an old beater, but you know what? , no car payments. Gas has to go up in price quite a bit for me to make a switch. The way things are going, I''m sure we''re not too far away from this reality, but when this happens, the total cost of living will also skyrocket. I guess we need more super social engineering to happer so we can all live next door to the local factory, or work from home. Something will have to give.

I wanted to point out that there is an alternative to electric powered cars as a commuter vehicle: Its CO2 emission is only about 2 grams per mile, it has successfully demonstrated ranges of around 150 miles between stops and it runs on bio-fuel readily available anywhere in the country. It is called a bicycle.

come on solar power is great it helps avoid pollution and you save money on gas over the years.

What a moron.

Well, my comment that the electric car crowd has its share of religious fanatics is proved by many of these responses. How an engineering analysis is supposed to connote allegiance to a politician is beyond me. As has been observed by others, ideas are not so much based in logic as in allegiance to a group. So the caring make-the-world better-group, which I heartily endorse thinks I am attacking them. On the contrary, I applaud you all for giving a crap about the planet. My point is that embracing bad technology is worse that doing nothing at all. Hydrogen is pretty impractical, did you know that disassociating it from water needs a ton of energy and if you don't use platinum electrodes much of it will re-associate back to water? A recent editorial in Wards Auto World says: "One study from the University of Minnesota claims rising food prices caused by the demand for ethanol and other bio-fuels could cause as many as 600 million more people to go hungry worldwide by 2025." (wardsautoworld.com/ar/auto_article_18/)It also points out that hydrogen has been tried and dismissed as dangerous and impractical but the same issue says electric vehicles are inevitable. I wonder. He goes on to say: "All these critics do is confirm the obvious: There is no perfect substitute for gasoline. It has been our fuel for the past 100 years because it is the cheapest, most energy-dense choice available." Now, the people that talk like we are going to wake up one day and all the oil will be gone are practicing a common religious belief-- that we are all evil and that we have original sin and that there will be an apocalypse where only they will survive. Sorry, I agree fossil fuels will run out, but liquid fuel never will. It is too good a way to store energy for mobile uses. You pay less for it than you do for your bottled water (bottled water-- talk about struthers!) We will just synthesize it as is discussed in another article in this month's Wards Auto World: wardsautoworld.com/ar/auto_ic_engine_plugged/ Now the real crux of the biscuit is that we need to conserve. That is why I drive a motorcycle as opposed to a car. That is why my "rain car" is a 1992 model, so that the planet is not melting steel and molding rubber so I can feel good about keeping up with the Joneses. Read Thomas Kuhn's Structure of Scientific Revolutions. He talks about the huge blind alleys that science travels down. I think electric cars are one of these alleys. So is hydrogen. So is ethanol. I am an engineer, so I will constantly reevaluate this position. Next week I will work up the number for the cost that a battery, any battery, has to achieve to be competitive with liquid fuel. Another thing that just flabbergasted me is the resentment people have for foreign oil. Is it that the people who sell it to us are brown? Or is it because they speak a language you have not learned, despite many of them learning English? Is it because their churches have a point on top instead of a cross? How about we trade worthless American paper money for all the foreign oil we can get? After all, if it is going to run out we should get this precious resource before Russia and China and India does. I will be the first to use electric cars if it will save me money. But spending $100k on a Tesla is not going to do that, and spending $4k more on a hybrid is not going to do that and spendings more to just promote something is just stupid. We all could use a personal jet. Should we all go and buy and Eclipse just to help them out and get the cost down? Ohh-- and big thanks to Larry S. He is a real engineer. He understood the intent of the post, analysed it and found a serious flaw in my argument. When the lithium batteries came up 570 pound penalty I knocked off 170 pounds since an electric motor is lighter than a gas engine. But I forgot to include the weight of the gasoline itself. Kudo's Larry, you are the best. I am not sure where he gets his numbers but I knocked off 170 pounds for the engine and transmission so lets take the 11 gallons of gas at 68 pounds, round it up to 100 pounds so there is a 300 pound penalty in the battery car instead of 400. My mistake, sorry. As to the fellow that is going to cancel is EDN subscription over my blog post I wish you would reconsider. If you are an engineer, and that is who we are trying to reach, I cannot conceive of how an engineering thought experiment would get you so agitated that you would deprive yourself of access to the best EE trade. You know, you don't have to read my stuff, and there are plenty of other opinions here.

This year, we will spend well over $300 billion on oil imports - over 40% of our total trade deficit. In the coming years it may very well end up costing us over $500 billion a year in oil imports to fill up our cars. The housing bust caused a less than $200 billion fall in the demand for new residential housing and some economists are already talking about the inevitability of a recession. Well, here we have $300-350 billion being taken out of our economy every year, and we wonder why it's so much harder for the economy to stay afloat today, despite impressive productivity growth, compared to the late 90's (when the oil imports cost us only $50 billion a year). That is why switching to plug-in hybrids would be of a huge benefit to the economy in the future. Even if it's going to be more expensive, nearly all of the value added of this extra cost will come from within the United States, driving domestic demand and domestic investment. Given the fact that the vast majority of the oil that we use is imported, Lou Dobbs will remain for me a clown for as long as he does not make a six-dollar gallon of gas the central part of his public stance. Not only is oil a far larger part of our trade deficit than Chinese trinkets, it is a far more serious threat to our national security. The extra $3 in federal taxes for each gallon of gas sold will allow us to slash corporate taxes (which are uncompetitively high) and thoroughly restructure our tax system to encourage a much, much higher savings rate in the country (which is currently negative - American households have spent more than they earned for the last 8 or 9 years). We need to stop taxing savings, pure and simple.

Echoing the above comment from TJ - EVEN if your sums were right & justified, why pick on this form of consumerism. Buy cheap, buy twice seems to fuel our cheap Chinese / Asian consumption in every aspect of the western marketplace - why pick on this obscure minority segment of the economy?

it drives economies of today. The faster we use it, the faster we find an alternative energy source. How about dilithium crystals? :) ;

Austin, I don't know much about Mark Twain but here's a quote for ya, "I'll be back". Arnold is back and he's been building the hydrogen super highway while you've been busy waxing that old gasoline jalopy. He has 25 active and 12 planned hydrogen stations under his belt. There are 179 hydrogen vehicles on the road in California today. That's just California.....I read somewhere that that North or South Dakota opened a solar powered hydrogen station a few months ago....North or South Dakota !!! They just need a few years to work the bugs out and hopefully get these hydrogen cars to market under $30,000. I've also seen a company online that is working on a hydrogen refueling station that you can install in your garage. It will cost approximatly $500 and provide enough hydrogen to take you about 100 miles in an overnight refuel. Plugin hybrid and electric cars will be out in a few years too. Exciting times we live in !!! All we need now is to keep our heads when oil comes to that crucial moment. Remember WWII when they stopped production of cars and retooled the assembly lines for tanks and planes? We need to use that same mentality when the time comes...and boy is in coming !!! We need the government to take all the money they planned on spending to secure those oil fields and retool the car plants for the new electric, hydrogen, biodiesel (ect.) cars. !!! Do a round the clock emergency broadcast on the major tv stations telling people to car pool or ride their bikes until we can get the new cars in their hands. Recycle all the old gasoline jalopys so we don't need to make new steel. Within a few months I be we can make the transition if we had to. Yes Austin....we can replace the gasoline engine. As a matter of fact, we already did it (pending production models)!!!!

The author of this article is an editor for this website - puts into question the accuracy of all articles he has edited! What poor logic and false / unproven assumptions and conclusions!

My son went to a high school debate competition where one student argued that cars should be powered by "Happy Thoughts". I think some people's ideas of bettering the gasoline or diesel engine border on the same kind of possiblities. My daddy once said "Son , just be thankful that dreams and wishes don't cost a thing!"

Yeah... Electic cars are a gimmick... a gimmick that reduces the demand for oil-based products. Even if it doesn't make the best economic sense *right now* (depending on what you INCLUDE in economic calculations), so what? Hummers generally don't make the best economic sense either. But there are people who *want* a vehicle that's big, brash, takes up lots of space and resources and intimidates others. And there is a segment of people that wants to stick it to big oil and its supporters... electric cars are for those people. And with each dead soldier, and with each 'smog day', it's a market segment that will continue to grow. The point is... Paul Rako DOESN'T HAVE A VALID POINT. Every "economic sense" argument he makes could also be applied to Hummers, Ferraris, Cadilacs and just about any other premium vehicle. Actually, if you were to be REALLY strict with the "driving a given car kills", then NOBODY should drive any car... we should all be ride bicycles... just for obesity and cost reasons alone. Nothing is cheaper than riding a bike. And obesity is becoming a more and more expensive problem. Excercise is one of the best ways to solve both problems. Can't go grocery shopping with a bicycle? Not true. You can get trailers for bicycles that will give you all the storage you need. Now get up off your pasty out-of-shape butt, get on your bicycle, sell your car and give the proceeds of the car sale to Sally Struthers.... that is if you truly believe what Paul Rako has any validity.

You guys are completely missing his point. Until the total economic cost of driving an electric car is less than the total economic cost of driving a conventional gasoline-powered car, electric vehicles will remain a marketing gimmick. Today (Sept 2007), it makes much more economic sense to drive the gas-powered car and directly invest the savings difference in the cause of one''s choice than to buy an electric vehicle and claim to be saving the planet. The technology is just not there yet....

LOL! You are either the dumbest or the most sarcastic dude! But maybe you should first correct spelling errors before publishing? BTW, being a Ford or GM engineer means you don't know anything about EVs, batteries or motors. GM got rid of all its good engineers.

I finally see the light! We need to ignore alternative every sources and stay with what we know. We need to continue using finite petroleum products at an ever increasing rate in order to save money! The war in Iraq is only costing about 200 billion a year or more, who cares, and after we have conquered it and occupy it we will have plenty of petrol for another few years. After that runs out we can attack, conquer and occupy Iran for their oil, were surely going to need it, the way we and China keep increasing our usage of oil. These screw-ball greenies with their silly ideas of switching to another energy source just because the ice caps are melting and the price of oil is sky-rocketing because it is running out, they should get their heads examined!!!

The environmental effects of hydrogen sit at one extreme, that of 'zero pollution'. H2 combustion produces only water. The simplest hydrocarbon is methane (CH4) which is the hydrocarbon with the greatest ratio of hydrogen and burns the cleanest. Methane and Ethanol (C2H5OH) are hydrogen rich and energy density poor. With gasoline (hexane, heptane, octane, etc.) energy density is better but pollution is more likely because combustion involves more complex chemistry. Diesel (cetane, 16 carbon) is even messier.

Propane(C3) seems to make a nice automotive fuel because it burns cleanly and is dense enough to give vehicles real range, although it requires an oversized tank in the back. It is another fuel with a fair amount of infrastructure already in place. It also requires little in the way of current automobile reengineering. Propane, like all the other alkanes, can be generated using FT synthesis.

'2,5-Dimethylfuran' (2,5 DMF) is a six carbon oxygenated hydrocarbon that can be synthesized out of sugar. Plant matter is made up of cellulose, hemicellulose, and lignin. Cellulose and hemicellulose are polymers of starches. Starches are polymers of sugars. In short, break the cellulose into starch and the starch into sugar, then make the 2,5-DMF from that sugar, and you have a renewable automotive fuel that does not take food out of babies mouths.

One thing electric cars do easily would be the automotive equivalent of the 'third rail'. In short, it's hard to refuel a gas car while it's driving, but an electric could conduct large parts of it's trip on rails, or some other controlled (and energized) path. In such a situation, range and energy density issues diminish substantially.

Oh, one more thing, one poster questioned my 1 pound of payload adds 3 pounds in structure rule. Well actually what I remembered from the auto business was a rule of 5-- one pound of payload (or extraneous weight) adds 5 pounds in the structure of the car. I could not find that or any other number on-line. I did have several friends tell me that aeronautical engineers use 10 pounds to one pound of added payload. So I wrote my buddy Bruce, who works at Nissan and asked if they would give me a verifiable number. Bruce's engineering department has not replied yet but I feel secure in the three pound number. I will keep searching for a peer-reviewed number, but you will admit there is some additive effect beyond the 400 pound penalty.

Thank you everyone for your comments, especially the guy that called me a fat idiot-- that will get me back in the gym for sure. The one person that did hurt my feelings is the guy that implied I was a shill for the oil industry. I put Big Oil right up there with Microsoft, the Phone Company, Realplayer, Vonage and X10 as true dirtbags. Yes, there is a valid social component to depriving these scumbags of revenue- but the electric utilities are no angels. I did not address this-- because I had to limit the analysis to strictly economic. Many many of you bring very valid points. Bob H. was right on bringing up the Innovator's Dilemma. I too fear I may be scoffing at disruptive technology just like the steam shovel people scoffed at the hydraulic backhoe people. But the backhoes made economic sense for a different market and I don't see that happening with electric cars. That factor of twenty is really really tough to beat. Yes, gas engines are getting more efficient and diesel is much better yet. And another very valid point, also brought up by Margery Conner is that the batteries can be used over and over, while the gas just gets burned. True, but it is capital expense and operating cost that are the fundamental basis for any analysis. The electricity is cheap, but when you have to buy a new battery pack every 5 years, well that has to be added to the costs. I also don't want to get into the "oil subsidies" thing. Sure, if you count the war in Iraq as a petroleum cost, then we should factor that in. On the other hand the highway bill is the biggest pork project in the government. Other than the geopolitical horror of oil envy, I suspect the price of oil is distorted but close to true market value. Same with electricity. So that is why I feel we should just stick to a engineering and economic analysis. And no, making us all buy electric to force the price down may be appealing to some, but central planners almost alway bet on the wrong technologies, so if electric cars and solar can not make economic sense without tax benefits or religious adherence, then we are better off putting our money elsewhere. You may feel good driving an electric commuter vehicle to work and back and charging it every single night, but it will have to be a second vehicle and the cost of that vehicle will far outweigh any gas savings, as one poster pointed out. I also will not address carbon dioxide, if you think going from 0.03% to 0.04% CO2 will plunge the earth into a catastrophe then there is nothing I can do to dissuade you. I also dispute whole peak oil calamity. The oil won't disappear like an empty milkshake. The price will gradually go up until we can synthesize something from plants or squeeze it out of oil shale or turkey fat and use that in our cars. There is just so darn much energy in the chemical bonds of hydrocarbons it is impossible to supplant that with an energy storage system, now or soon. I do agree with the one poster that nanotech may make the energy densities go higher but it will still be a long time, if ever, that electric cars or hybrids supplant internal combustions. If you want a low horsepower vehicle that can go fast now and then just put a nitrous kit on your car. But realise that no company can sell an underpowered car because when the nitrous is out or the batteries are dead, the company will be liable when you get creamed on an on-ramp. No, several of the posters are right-- we have to conserve. I drive old Sportsters. Bob Pease drives a 1968 bug. That is leaving a pretty small footprint compared to a brand new escalade that burns a ton but also needed 60 grand of economics to build. Oh, and good catch on the kill vs kills grammer, right again-- my copy editor will kills me.

And what about the millions of people we're slaughtering to get that oil? How many Prius' Struthers'-worth are equivalent to the million Iraqis we've just murdered?

So just because it's cheaper to burn all the oil in the world in the short term this is good and morally superior?

Wow, so I just wasted 3 minutes of my life reading this article and I cannot imagine how many brain cells died in the process.

God there were a lot of techincal mistakes in this article. Do you even have a college degree? A two year old with a rattle could have shaken his way through a better analysis. Don't listen to the corn-fed hick people.

I have commuted in electric cars for the past 7 years - first the GM EV1 and now the Toyota Rav4EV. They have both been wonderful cars and I have had zero maintenance for motor or batteries. Nearly everyone I know who has driven electric loves these cars and would much rather spend a few seconds plugging in at night instead of the weekly trips to the gas station. My cars have used NiMH batteries with around half the energy density of Lithium Ion, but range of 120 miles or so is perfectly fine for all but the occasional long trip when we take the other car. Mr. Rako might try reading the "Innovator''s Dilemma." New technologies take a while to surpass old ones in all dimensions. His arguments sound like someone arguing that mainframes will never be replaced by PCs.

I also built my own EV and have driven it for the past ten years. After all that time I can clearly state EV's make great second cars, and they will cost you more to operate than an equivalent gas car. EV's aren't terribly different than their gasoline counterparts when it comes to total cost of ownership. Insurance/registration, tires, rock chips in the windshield, etc, plus the inevitable chassis repair or battery pack replacment over a nominal time period all swamp out the cost savings of the actual source of energy (kWh's vs gallons). It all comes down to what value you assign energy independance. You also have to factor in that personal transportation isn't the sole consumer of fossil fuels. Even if 100% of the population had zero-oil, economically practical automobiles, you still need petroleum for industry and other forms of transportation (synthetic products made of oil, JP4 for aircraft, heating oil, etc). Solar power can't fuel an airliner, tidal power can't heat homes in the winter, you can't make plastic out of wind energy. So all you do by reducing the use of oil for personal transportation is slow down the ever increasing overall demand for oil by some incremental amount. Can technology solve this problem? Perhaps, but the answer isn't electric or hydrogen cars. All these do is delay the inevitable. Oil is still the logical choice as long as it costs less than any alternative. Once that threshold is crossed you may see it become supplanted by alternatives, but not until then, and oil will never be totally eliminated as a resource. You can artificially force that threshold to be crossed sooner by legislation, but at what economic cost? Who gets to decide when, and by how much? Do you trade an economic calamity for an environmental one? Who says either one is a certainty? Bottom line is that it's a self solving problem. On a planetary scale we're either going to burn up all of the easily recoverable oil or kill each other off trying. Can't see how an electric car would change any of that.

Paul, you are a dinosaur. This is the kind of short term, in the box thinking that put GM and Ford on the track to extinction. Progressive companies like Miles, Phoenix, Lotus and Tesla will be delivering what you say is not practical or can''t be done. Batteries from Firefly, and Altairnano are throwing your math out the window. Do you really think there will be breakthrough developments in the ICE? Even so, serial hybrid electric technologies have proven to be more efficient for decades. What was your processor speed to dollar ratio of your first computer? Some factions within the auto industry, the oil industry and extending into the government (by way of lobbyist''s and PAC''s), would just as soon not have us upset apple cart.As for the hungry children in Africa, how many could have saved by buying a cheap Timex over a Rolex? Besides, crop failures from global warming will put us all on the Sally Struthers show. Your argument is immaterial.

Ok, I don't have 10 years (or any years) as an automotive engineer. Nevertheless, it seems that the case you make is flawed by your presenting this as an either/or alternative: either gas or electric. If I'm not mistaken, the GM presentation regarding the Volt has suggested a 40 mile capacity on the initial electric charge, after which the gas enegine kicks in to recharge the battery. If, for comparison purposes, we assume that a totally gas powered Volt would average 30mpg of gas, 17.6 MJ of energy would be expended in a typical 60 mile trip. The A123 battery capacities would suggest that about 47 Kg of A123 batteries would provide that much energy, or about 59Kg if you factor in your 20% efficiency loss for the implementation system. That?s about 130 pounds of batteries, not 570. I dunno, maybe 130 or so pounds of weight savings can be achieved in this electric with gas backup type system.

A question being missed here is: how are you planning to generate all the electricity needed for these "clean" electric vehicles? Might I suggest nuclear power? You can forget wind, bio-mass, and solar; the real-estate and overall support costs will sink you. Also, the overall efficiency of electric power generation is not all that good, except perhaps for wind. Also remenber that more refined batteries and generator technology will not change basic physics; specifically the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics.

Basically correct; but comparing developing technology costs to starving baby costs is fuzzy at best (misdirection 101). As for electric vehicles being green and reducing oil dependency, good luck? pollution and waste, from coal, gas and nuclear plants, used to recharge the batteries is not a very good trade off. PYP (Pick Your Poison)

I fear you may be suffering from hardening of the categories. The Tesla car has a 250 mile range, which is quite acceptable for a purely electric car. So it serves as an existence proof. The problem with electric cars has always been the batteries, as you point out. Battery powered electric cars are now at least feasible. The best current design seems to be the pluggable gas/electric hybrid that allows you to optimize the gas/electric trade-off to get the best combination of range, fuel efficiency and fuel cost - including the "fuel" from charging overnight. In a pure electric car, it looks like you have compensating trade-offs: heavy gas engine with no batteries vs light electric motor vs heavy batteries. The Tesla can go from 0-60 faster than a Ferrari yet with a 250 mile range. To me, this means that the battery-electric power to weight ratio is competitive. You raise the point of "Why electric?" I can think of several simple (non-religious) reasons. 1) Assuming a hybrid with a tiny gas engine for long range, I can have a Really Fast hot rod. When you hit the accelerator on an electric car, there is NO delay. Bad reason? Tough. It will sell cars. Plus, you get to feel good/green about it. 2) Low maintenance. No oil to change, etc. An electric car makes a gas car look like a steam engine - full of belts, oil, moving parts and fix-ups for pollution control, etc. An electric car is to a gas car like a jet plane is to a piston powered plane. Simpler, more reliable, less hassle. Final notes: a) batteries will get better, but they are good enough now. b) Different topic: solar cells are dropping rapidly in $/watt installed. In the not too distant future, they will be directly competitive with conventional power plants. True, they only make power when the sun shines, but that is when you need the power for air conditioners. And to charge your pluggable hybrid at work.

The biggest fallacy here is the assumption that if someone didn't buy a Tesla Roadster, he would otherwise send his $100,000 to the starving children in Africa. That logic could apply to any kind of luxury item, but realistically people aren't going to stop buying all luxuries and start sending their money to starving children just because Sally Struther wants them to. If they were inclined to do that, they could have done it before now. So. . . This isn't about a Tesla Roadster versus the starving children. This is about a Tesla Roadster versus a Ferrari, or a Porsche, or a Lamborghini. As for the difficulty of getting an electric car to compete successfully against gasoline cars. . . Well, the Tesla Roadster appears to hold its own reasonably well against those Ferraris, Porsches and Lambos -- despite costing considerably less than most of them, and that's before you even get into the savings in fuel and maintenance. Duplicating that success in a BEV or PHEV family car will be a tougher challenge, admittedly. The ultimate impetus for electric cars will come when oil becomes expensive and scarce, when there are real shortages. When gasoline is $8 per gallon -- if you can find a station that has any, and if you have a ration card allowing you to buy some -- then people will want electric cars. Any limitations they have will be outweighed by the ability to charge at home and drive whenever you want to.

...also... It is not right to compare a full tank of fuel that you fill up once per week to a battery that you recharge every night. Multiply the calculations by 7 and you approach parity for the energy supplied by batteries over a week and for that supplied by a tank of diesel. All without the local pollution, noise and carbon footprint.

Finally -- an apples-to-apples economic comparison reveals both the hype marketing of the so-called Eco movement, as well as the lowered level of intellegence of the EDN readership. When I went car shopping recently, I quickly noticed that the vaunted Prius cost $8000 more than a comparably equipped car. No matter what the price, $8000 buys a heck of a lot of gasoline. Or, is that 4 struthers....

It took you a while, but you finally got around to stating the crux of the problem - "there are just too many highway miles in the drive cycle of American Consumers to justify hybrid cars". Many of our transportation related problems, be it air pollution, traffic congestion, dependence on foreign oil, whatever, are directly related to miles driven.

Here2njoy - Right on!! The nano-retroencabulator is the solution to the revolution!!!

The comparisons made between petrol and electric cars are irrelevant to me. I want to move to a low carbon lifestyle. Even a short range electric car would be a great help. I can get the train if I need to go 30 miles or more, but local journies to the shops and work only need a low power electric vehicle. 40mph - fine. Cycling is obviously better, but not when you are collecting timber or logs, or if its raining. Electric cars are meant to change our lifestyle not replace petrol cars.

Keep up the good work Paul. Your comments only spurn on innovation. I love the first person's comments. We have an awfull lot of electricity that gets wasted because we need the peak demand during the day. Recharge batteries or store it as hydrogen but save the energy non the less and just like the pc and the microprocessor watch how nano-technology continues to revolutionize the world. "Long live the revolution of evolution!"

A fat idiot

You ignore fuel saving costs too (both now and in the future). Ummm, have you ever actually sat down and thought about this at all? You can't use the current state of oil and the current state of batteries and expect that to apply to the future. That would be dumb. You are looking at everything the wrong way. Even solar is showing potential to give larger economic returns with all of the projected efficiency increases in cells. It's not always going to be like it is today. In the end that is your problem, you are acting like the future doesn't exist and technology will never progress and all prices of all things will stay the same. If you were in charge we would be riding horses, so why don't you do a horse vs. gasoline ICE car comparison? You have no vision and are very narrow-minded in your arguement, you don't see the big picture, the future picture, and in general are the dead weight that slows down progress. Thank you for letting us all know that. Next time just post something like "I am an idiot".

Ummmm, obviously from an all-around performance point of view gas beats batteries right now. But you are totally ignoring other issues like dependence on foreign oil from unsavory countries, the impending spike in oil demamd from China/India, the impending drop in oil supply due to the limited amount on Earth, and the possible environmental problems associated with oil. The gas spike prices are coming. They already have come to some countries. You ignore that our gas prices are kept artificially low by government subsidies to oil companies. You are also ignoring the fact that battery technology is increasing significantly as of a couple years ago and is showing more potential through use of nano materials. You are ignoring that these new batteries are not yet mass produced, which will drop their cost tremendously. You are ignoring the fact that plugins will mostly be charged at night using off-peak energy, making power companies operate more efficiently at night. You erroneously say the extra weight on the freeway makes hybrids unfeasible, when in reality airflow resistance is the dominant freeway energy consumer. Your 1-to-3 payload ratio is retarded, please cite the source. Also cite the source that says future BEV''s drivetrains will be any heavier. Also you don''t even go into maintenance cost differences at all