Electricity generation is the single largest greenhouse gas emitting industry in the world. As long as people understand that their cars are being powered by coal power(the energy source that fuels nearly all new demand), then keep daydreaming. How many new coal power plants do you think need to be put online to soak up the extra demand of charging deep cell batteries several times a day? Just because its clean out of your tail pipe, doesn't mean it isn't dirty somewhere else.
Do you think anyone and everyone will allow you to plug your car in for free? Does your cord have a meter on it so that if you are stuck you can offer to pay for the electricity you are taking?
Don is onto something with ZAP. ZAP has major financial backing out of the middle east and are selling EV cars and trucks faster than they can produce. The State of Kentucky has paved they way for ZAP to build a new plant in KY to keep up with demand. Gas 2.0 rates ZAP Alias #2 ahead of Prius, Volt 15-Jan-09 05:00 pm Top 10 Electric Cars Coming to the US in 2009/2010 Like the Aptera 2e, the ZAP Alias will sport a design conjured from the bowels of an alien spaceship. Although ZAP just started construction on the facility that will build the Alias last September, the company still swears that the first of these funky 3 wheelers will start rolling off the assembly line by late 2009. http://gas2.org/2009/01/15/top-10-electr... http://www.zapworld.com/
One step at a time, first you get electric cars. With them, battery technology is developed. There's also more coal to last us than oil. And natural gas. Remember people used to burn oil to power up power plants for electricity, that got replaced. Then when you have battery technology, you substitute coal plants with solar panels, nuclear plants with windfarms.
1 gallon of gasoline has 36 kilowatt hours of energy. The US consumes 390 million gallons of gasoline per day. An average solar panel puts out 1 kilowatt hour per 120 square feet. To even touch 1% of the electrical demand by solar panel, you need 600 square miles of panel. And you can't drive your cars on cloudy days. And battery innovation has come and gone. The demand for a mass electrical storage unit has existed since the day after they started generating electricity.
While the 40-80 range is an overstatement, current battery technologies are negatively effected by extremes in temperature. Toyota and Honda battery warranty costs in Arizona/California/Nevada and the extreme cold states are higher for a reason. And please, do tell what future battery technology is to come that will outperform and cost less than current $4K Lith-Ion car batteries? I'm dying to know. And don't use the VCR analogy because the technology doesn't even exist yet. Are you under the impression that the magic warranty fairy will make these costs disappear? Somebody has to pay for it, whether it be higher initial costs, higher parts cost (ALL parts, not just batteries) or government subsidies. Honda and Toyota thus far have lost money on hybrids for a reason. Yes, obviously, but so far hydrogen production consumes more energy than it produces, and current battery technology is heavy and expensive. Unless we invent a cheap way to separate hydrogen from oxygen or a 20 lb battery with an output measured in megawatts and charge cycles measured in seconds (not to mention much higher cycle life), we are 20 to 30 years away from electric cars making a significant impact on how we commute.
It's not like science just got around to looking at batteries. This has been an issue for quite some time. Do you have any idea how much the technology and patent would be worth to a corporation or what NASA could do with the technology?
Any improvement iron batteries have over lith-ion batteries is just a drop in the bucket. The only real advantage is building a battery without lithium, since there isn't enough of that material to build all the batteries we're going to need for our electric cars. And do you really trust the Chinese to build a decent car, electric or otherwise?