[nascarnation]

Locomotives use diesel electric because they have to drive all the wheels (steel on steel coefficient is quite low, in the range of .1)

A mechanical system to drive that many wheels is not practical/economical.

[Rebel_Ace]

Well, yes, and that is why I said,

"...There are certain economies of scale and size in this arena..."

However, regardless of the number of wheels being driven, the CONCEPT of Internal Combustion mechanically driving a generator to send power to an Electric Drive Train is well established as fuel efficient and road worthy. That was my principle point, not to get lost in the many and varied differences between locomotives and personal transportation vehicles.

[Wurlitzer]

“A mechanical system to drive that many wheels is not practical/economical.”

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On the contrary, real 4 wheel drive using the 4 wheel assemblies as the motors (albeit must keep weight low to minimize un-sprung weight). This would minimize/eliminate all the drive train stuff we currently use.

When cornering, a CPU could easily drive each motor at the exact speed to provide equal drive to each wheel as all 4 wheels need to move at different speeds.

Same with traction control. Rather than applying braking, again each wheel would be given the appropriate speed command to eliminate slip.

An electric drive using a gas/diesel engine->generator->battery is superior to an electric motor physically coupled to the same drive train as the gas/diesel engine. Much less weight and fewer parts.

Like others have said, batteries, batteries, batteries, are the main problem and the enviro-wackos need to be bitched slapped to remind them all this electricity needs to come from somewhere and their solar panels and windmills cannot possibly provide even a small percentage of what we need.

ORRRRRRR, how about designing an electric pick up like a trolley car/electric train for the highway and only use battery power on the secondary roads? That would be a nice public works project which I am sure the union slugs would love to get into. Now that is something which could be constructed while we started to bring electric cars on line.

I don’t know if any of you have ever driven a well equipped electric but boy can they accelerate. However, we need the will and that is seriously lacking.