Someone gets it. I laugh when people talk about electricity as if it's something that is always clean. I guess they never saw a coal plant. LOL. As for nat gas and Picken's dreams - you have to remember - you need a tremendous change in infrastructure - how many gas stations exist in the US? How many provide nat gas? How long and how costly would it be to convert? No easy answers.
Yeah no kidding. In order for America to afford these vehicles, the manufacturing industry is going to have to be revived. Manufacturing takes enormous amounts of electricity. If people want these plug-in cars, they take enormous amounts of electricity to manufacture and run. All roads (no pun intended) lead back to massive, and very likely, insatiable demands on electricity. All at a time when the fleet of coal-fired and nuclear-fired power plants in North America are mostly on their last legs. Where is the capital going to come from to rehabilitate even the infrastructure, pathetic that it is, that already exists, nevermind build new infrastructure? Why has the past decade been one of huge unemployment for electrical engineers, when these challenges have been known for many years? Why were investment bankers and stock traders exalted as saviours of the new economy, when, in fact, engineers will be the only ones who could possibly save whatever is left of the 'economy'?
In fairness, electric cars will improve the air quality in some cities. But I'd suggest that downsizing the financial industry, and stopping people from commutting to useless jobs, would accomplish far more in pollution reduction and CO2 reduction, than would 'electric cars'. Seriously, the NYC financial sector could be wiped off the map, and there would be no reduction in the prosperity of the United States. A lot less pollution in the NYC area too, people would live better lives, and the resources that are currently being wasted there could be used to build sustainable manufacturing (to repay that debt to China).
Gasoline doesn't magically appear in cars either - you need to factor all the energy that is consumed exploring, retrieving, transporting and refining oil into gasoline. One key difference is that it is possible to produce electricity cleanly even if most of it today is not produced that way...the option is there.
Exactly! Its not a simplistic issue like "electric cars are 4X more efficient than gas cars". Well, one thing that could be done to new cars immediately is to switch them all to using diesel engines that are no larger than 100hp, give or take. The fleet of new cars would immediately, with off-the-shelf engines, and existing fuelling infrastructure, go to getting 50mpg. Whereas, with electric, there's not a lot of room to grow efficiency there, without tackling the innefficiency of the electric grid itself. And even if you tackled the electric grid, there's plenty of other applications that need clean and cheap electricity before cars.
I think that many of you guys arent giving the govt a chance here. Afterall these politicians are smart lawyers and know quite abit about all kinds of things including manufacturing consumer products. Look how many successful products the govt has produced and now markets. The only reason there aren't these cars now in every garage is that the greedy corporations kill the technology and the consumers are too dumb to buy what's good for them. And remember, they can always outlaw regular gas powered cars and offer big tax incentives for buying them. And they can always fund the shortfall like Amtrak. Sounds like win-win to me ! OK - - don't throw crap ! Its a spoof !
Just a little tidbit of info to add to the plug in/ICE debate: Yes, internal combustion engines only get like 18% efficiency, and, while there are problems with electricity transmission and such, a massive coal fired power plant is much more efficient and cleaner than millions of little engines erupting with controlled explosions billions of times per second.
In Australia, LPG is readily available and quite viable for cars. It has been widely used for fleet cars such as taxis for a long time (~ 30 yrs). Conversion of a petrol engine to gas or dual fuel costs around $500 - $2500 after a government subsidy of $2000 per car. It is much cheaper than petrol. Your fuel bill is probably 60% of what it would be with petrol so the payback period is quite short. With modern gas injection, there is no appreciable loss in performance as compared to petrol. Gas burns hotter than petrol and produces less pollutants including CO2.