So, what about “Buy American”?
That’s not a contract I would want to have, especially after EV sales tank for the ultimate (hopefully!) time.
Cart before the horse??
And we plug these in where?? I live in an apartment....and then there's winter here in Upstate NY...
And how much will a charge cost??
Johnson Controls is an American company. They make among others the DieHard batteries sold by Sears.
Political Contributions by Johnson Controls Employees
Follow the money....
By as early as 2009, our demand for electricity will exceed reliable supply in New England, Texas and the West and, by 2011, in New York and the mid-Atlantic region. A failure of a power plant, or a summer-afternoon surge in the load, could make for a blackout or brownout. “There really isn’t any excess in the system,” says Rick P. Sergel, chief executive at the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC).
Price shocks are already occurring. In May, long before peak summer demand, the wholesale price of juice jumped twofold in Texas, to $4 per kilowatt-hour, 25 times the average retail rate in the country. Prices exceeded the allowed rate of $2 for seven days and threatened the viability of power resellers who contracted to deliver cheap rates to consumers. New Yorkers may suffer a summer of price discontent if regulators are right about peak wholesale prices jumping by up to 90%.
In the past few years, in dozens of utility regions such as Georgia, Louisiana and Ohio, price hikes have ranged from 20% to 80%. Overall, the cost of electricity, which declined (in real dollar terms) for the last two decades of the 20th century, has been relentlessly tracking up since 2001.
Brownout
Mark P. Mills 06.30.08, 12:00 AM ET
What happens when you don’t build more power plants? Get ready for spiking electricity rates, brownouts and even blackouts as demand soars.
http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2008/0630/038_print.html
I woman that works with my wife drives over 50 miles to work each day in her Ford Escape Hybrid...she fills up the gas tank twice a month. Try to find any story about this kind of experience either from Ford or even in the news. The failure of auto companies is not only their products - they are as bad at marketing as the Republicans.
I'm curious of how much energy will be lost in the conversion process from fossil fuel energy (heating value) to electrical energy (kwatt-hours) to mechanical energy (joules).
There will be huge conversion losses along the way. Not to mention transsmission line losses. It may turn out that the net effect is a much larger net "carbon footprint" per electric vehicle than a conventional vehicle.
