>No they arent, no they won't, there will not, nnnnno.
>Plug-ins and electric vehicles are for the technically illiterate to ponder as viable transportation alternatives.
As an apparently fellow engineer, I am dismayed by the lack of substance to your argument. Do you have any facts or credible sources to back up your statements?
"As an apparently fellow engineer, I am dismayed by the lack of substance to your argument. Do you have any facts or credible sources to back up your statements?"
*sigh* The argument is so obvious if one does an energy analysis.....
Ok, here you go.....
Lets say your car has a 15 gallon gas tank. This is equivalent to about 550 kWh of energy. So, let's say you "fill up" your electric vehicle. It will cost $2.19 (about the cost of gas now) if you can find electricity at $.06 per kWh...but since you can't find electricity at that price, let's consider the equivalent cost at $.10 per kWh - which is $3.66 per gallon.
Now, I have ignored all the factors that would go into actually charging a battery (you can't do it in a reasonable amount of time), assuming you could even intergrate one that big into a "normal" vehicle (which you can't).
I've even ignored the electrical infrastructure needed in your home to make charging one of these possible in even one full day.
Lastly, I've ignored the cost of an electric car......
Of course, numbers like these make no difference to people who are so sure that electric cars are viable that they ignore physics, even financial reality.
They aren't viable. The are so unviable that really, detailed techical explanation is unnecessary. It also is an unfortunate fact that electric car fans wouldn't listen anyway.
Nobody will ever have an electric car that rivals their internal combustion counterpart. If you don't want people to have big cars anymore, then an internal combustion counterpart to some of the ultra-tiny electric cars will still outperform the electric car version.
Oh, and electric cars will never have features like Air conditioning, because AC is power intensive.
So, fellow engineer, do you believe any of the numbers I've presented, or are you content to ignore physics as well?