GTS, Your point is well taken regarding the future of clean energy. Just curious as to your statement that nat gas isn't a alt fuel... Honda already has nat gas powered cars. Emissions are much lower and gas is abundant here in america. How is my argument weak about the source of electricity? Won't we use the cheapest input ie coal and others. Solar, wind, geothermal et al are very costly. Who is going to put this capital up? Taxpayers? Not right now lol. Trying to make this constructive not a pissing match
I may be off-base on the definition of alt fuel - I checked Wiki's page before I posted (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_fuel) but in checking around in google it seems that others define it as anything other than oil/gas....guess its not really important anyway so I apologize for the cheap shot. In terms of forcing the adoption of non-polluting methods of generating electricity, well there are two options, wait for the fossil fuels to get more and more expensive to produce as the supply runs out (not good) or the gov't could either aggressively subsidize alternative fuels/generation methods and/or tax fossil fuels to get the desired result. As with everything the costs will come down as adoption spreads but its a classic chicken and egg problem. My point is that you can't get away from oil as long as it is the only way to power cars...its true that going completely green via electric requires 2 steps (change to electric cars and change how we produce electricity) As long as we are going to fundamentally change how cars are powered (e.g. all new infrastructure) it makes more sense to me to go electric (maximum flexibility in terms of source generation) rather than replacing one fossil fuel (gas/oil) with another (nat gas) If anything in the short term we should use nat gas to power the electric plants then you get the benefit of less pollution without requiring that we create a whole parallel infrastructure for distributing natural gas to vehicles.
As I mentioned before. I don't see the gov't subsidizing. And good luck taxing the average joe on his gasoline prices. (Recall the oil spike in 08) people went ballistic. However with nat gas prices incredibly low it appears to me that the economics are in its favor. I believe there is a public company that sells the systems to switch from gasoline to nat gas FSYS. I am clueless when it comes to mechanics stuff so don't ask lol. One other not mentioned benefit of nat gas is the jobs/infrastructure which would come from this conversion. Much more politically feasible.
It truly amazes me that during a discussion of electric vehicles people ignore human behavior. Several months ago I sent an informational request to Southern Company to discuss how prepared they and other power companies are for ANY type of large scale transition to electric vehicles, which they refused to answer. Southern Company is currently building a new reactor type generator and are collecting from current customers to build this, which after its built will allow them to charge more for power. The specifics I wanted to know given the current condition of power generation, power transmission (lines & capacitors, etc) 1... IF they could handle a simple 5% switchover from gasoline to electric vehicles during the 5 pm to 7 pm time frame (people getting home from work & plugging the car in) without any brownouts / blackouts? 2... What infrastructure changes / upgrades would be required to handle the extra power requirements for 5%? 3...What amount of lead time to build out these changes? 4...What would be the expected cost for infrastructure upgrades? 5...How would these increased costs be passed on (all customers or just users)? 6...What provisions to infrastructure have you made or are considering to recycle / dispose of the old batteries? (these are a big pollution problem, along with storage and distribution) And quite a few other questions. Gasoline may be a bad thing, but you must consider that the infrastructure IS in place to refine it, distribute it, and make it readily and easily available to the customer in the quantities they desire at a reasonable price. Not so with electric cars with batteries, and don't forget the replacement cost of the batteries (product, installation, shipping, storage, disposal and life expectancy). Switching to alcohol even at 10% level was a horrible idea and has increased costs for everyone in the automotive pipeline from manufacturer to customer through product changes and lower expected life from things like fuel pumps, injectors, etc.. Furthermore do you really think IF the world switches to electric cars that the price of electricity will remain cheap?
You know, if all cars were electric right now and someone proposed drilling wells to extract oil, transporting that oil to refineries, shipping the refined product to distribution points and eventually gas stations all of which had to be built you would say that is crazy and there is no way we could afford to switch to such an inefficient source of fuel and build that expensive elaborate infrastructure...and yet that is where we are today. Upgrading the existing electric infrastructure incrementally and recycling batteries is not nearly a big deal....but of course you can make it out to be insurmountable if that is your bent.
Tesla is teaming up with Toyota http://money.cnn.com/2010/05/20/autos/tesla_announcement/index.htm?hpt=T2
I don't get why people are so down on this company... an American business that actually makes stuff, on the cutting edge of a potentially major new industry. Not to say that I will buy into their IPO, but it's a glimmer of light on a pretty dark landscape. I hope they succeed... and especially hope they choose not to ship all their technology, capital, and jobs over to China as so many other businesses have.
Any american business can make stuff easy enough. The problem is they cant price it to be competative with the rest of the world. Why would someone buy a Tesla when they can buy some other high performace car for less money? (and one that goes faster than the teslas 125 mph top speed) I find it odd that the tesla costs $100k, but yet on the front page of their website, they write about how you can save up to $131 per month on gas as if someone who drops 100k on a car is worried about saving a few bucks on unleaded. http://www.teslamotors.com/
Did you guys miss the story that Toyota is taking Tesla into it's orbit? Tesla was brilliant to first build the car everyone wants, the electric Lotus....rather than a glorified golf cart which is what pretty much all of the other EV companies offer. Tesla sold every car they made and will continue to do so. They technology they are continuing to develop will find it's way into whatever version of everymans car they come up with. They have negotiated most of the curve of learning the auto manufactoring business and will be a player going into the future.