Originally posted by Hastobemoretolife
How about people that want to see there family that lives the entire country away? A car that can only get 30 miles to the charge is outrageously
expensive just to drive to work in.
Battery technology is making improvements, but we are still a long long way off. Then you also have the problem of disposing of the toxic batteries
they use for the electric cars.
Then you also have to build an entire infrastructure to support electric and hydrogen vehicles. Right now it takes a few hours to charge up an
electric car, and not only that but it takes a few hours to fill a hydrogen tank.
Then we also need a power grid that is able to support a few million electric cars. Solar and Wind isn't going to cut it. In fact solar and wind is
good for supplemental energy production, but not main energy production.
Gas and diesel powered cars are not going anywhere for at least 20 years. Then it will only start being phased out. Changing the entire power
infrastructure and the way we travel is not something that happens overnight. It is a long process.
Just like with the car, it became available to buy in the early 1900's it wasn't until decades later that it became affordable for everybody.
First off I was talking about plug in hybrids with the 30 mile range - that means they run off electric for up to 30 miles then can be run off a gas
engine or generator from then on - their range is identical to any gas car. The advantage is you can use cheap fuel - electricity which costs less
than a tenth of gasoline at today's rates for that first 30 miles.
Yes they take hours to charge, but it is completely practical to plug them in at night in your garage and they will fully charged for the next day,
and if you forget or don't have time, you can still drive using the gas.
Sure it would be nice to build a great quick charging infrastructure but the truth is we already have an infrastructure. Think about it like this -
every home already has the equivalent of a 28,800 baud (110v outlet) or 56,600(220v outlet) modem. Is cable or fiber optic much better sure - but
people still surfed the internet with dialup until a better connection became available.
Yes batteries are toxic, but compared to the emissions put out by oil it is still overall far better for the environment, and electricity can be
produced very clean through wind/solar/geo/nuclear which are all at this point somewhat price competitive, and in the case of wind and solar improving
in cost per watt of production very quickly.
I completely disagree with you when you say solar and wind will not cut it, I just don't think you are very well informed. Do you know that right
now there are plans to produce a solar plant so large in North Africa that 15% of Europe's power will come from it? Solar panels are getting much
cheaper very quickly, look up Nanosolar, or First Solar for examples of companies that are today already making solar energy very cost competitive.
The same is true for wind, several European countries have the goal of producing more than 10% of their power from wind, and the efficiency
improvement in just the last 5 years has nearly doubled for wind turbines as they have increased in size. Nuclear is the obvious quick fix, you can
produce a ton of power by building a few plants.
The only thing that is holding back a total electrical power system is energy storage, without a doubt it is the bottleneck. That is why as I said
there are literally billions of dollars working on fixing it, and if you watch it closely as I do breakthroughs are happening all the time.
Yes it will take years to completely phase out gas/diesel I never said it wouldn't. Nearly every major car manufacturer will have a plug in
hybrid/fully electric model available by 2012, most starting with models at the end of 2010. I am not guessing at this they have already made the
announcements.
[edit on 28-6-2009 by proximo]
