[Da Coyote]

Followed shortly by promised power grid improvements.

Not.

[CMailBag]

“”The U.S. was supposed to have one million plug-in vehicles on the road by 2015””
According to BIGEARS

[central_va]

And technically, battery success depended on the amount of energy you could put in, and how long it took before it began to fade or weaken, and the overall cost of ownership.

The author missed the mark. The problem with batteries is not the charge or the cars range, IT IS THAT IT TAKES A RIDICULOUS AMOUNT OF TIME TO RECHARGE.

I would trade range for fast recharge time any day of the week.

[Navy Patriot]

The race to barbarism, go USA!

[2ndDivisionVet]

So you’re saying that the Germans are smarter than we are? I already knew that.

[Cobra64]

Y'all can keep those Prius thingies the gays in San Francisco drive. I'll take a Vette, .

https://youtu.be/NuDZZAvI3W4

[catnipman]

Production of a powerful, energy-dense, rechargeable battery is essentially impossible because there are NO rechargeable batteries in nature, living or otherwise: all dynamic entities in nature consume fuel to produce the energy needed for their operation (also inherently producing substantial useless waste heat in the process) until no more fuel is available, at which point the dynamic operations cease.

And because no rechargeable batteries exist in nature, we are unable to make good ones, since all we do is discover that which already exists. We’ve been working on batteries for several hundred years now and are only marginally ahead of the original lead-acid battery.

[Gideon7]

The following is graphic from the US Energy Information Administration. It shows the percent of inputs into the power grid relative to the outputs:

Note how 25% is wasted in power-line transmission and conversion loses, and how 40% is used up in generating the electricity at the powerplant in the first place.

Thus for every unit of natural gas, solar, or whatever fed into the system, less than half of it is available to feed into your electric car.

Then factor in the cost in the manufacturing resources and energy required to build these big Li-Ion car batteries (which wear out after a few years).

The bottom line is that electric-powered vehicles are one of the most resource-intensive and energy-expensive methods that you can pick for use in personal transportation.

[DH]

but at the end of last year this had only reached about 290,000...

290,000 total stupid idiots who don’t know that their vehicles will be worthless when they try to sell them due to the sheer cost of a new battery.

What idiots!

[dfwgator]

[Gay State Conservative]

I just did an overnight test drive of a BMW I3 a couple of weeks ago.Interesting...a bit strange...not at all impressive.My diesel has a range of 700+ miles on the Interstate and can be "recharged" in about 4 minutes at any one of about 30,000 "recharging stations" nationwide.

Electric? No thanks! Particularly now that I've driven one made by one of world's top car makers.

[MisterArtery]

I heard a talk many years ago along these lines. The speaker said, “There are three kinds of liars. Liars, damned liars and battery engineers.”

[Blueflag]

One of our vehicles is a Ford Fusion Energi- a plug-in hybrid. The car is now two months old and the dash display indicates our average mpg is 68.1 mpg. We get to burn very little gasoline because so many of our trips are less than 22 miles round trip.

Were we to take a long interstate trip on flat roads - like Atlanta to Hilton Head I get it that the trip mileage would drop to about 36 mpg.

I have to tell you it’s kinda fun to fill up your ‘empty’ gas tank with 9 gallons and have display tell you the range to empty is 670 miles.

My other vehicle is my workhorse Ford 4x4 2004 expedition that gets 15 mpg. But it’ll tow the boats anywhere and the Fusion is just for people and luggage.

Enjoy the debate. I straddle both sides.

[minnesota_bound]

This was the same news from 1900. I imagine is 2115 the news will be the same.