Posted on 04/08/2009 4:22:32 AM PDT by Scanian
Isaac Martin pointed out in yesterday ’s American Thinker some of the problems with the new technology behind the proposed switch to electric cars -- there are many other issues as well.
A few of a multitude of problems are the high cost of the batteries, $25,000.00 for the Tesla’s (6,831 batteries) pack, the pollution problem of replacing and disposing the packs, and the relatively short life span of the batteries. (For example, the life of a lithium ion cell phone battery seems to be about a year and a half. Finding exact information on the actual useful battery life is difficult.)
Let's give the battery manufacturers the benefit of the doubt and say the useful life is four years. The cost per year is $6,500.00 before the cost of charging the car. Add to this, four dollars per charge. Let’s say you use the car to commute to your job and tool around on Saturday matching the mileage in Martin's article of 100 miles per day. This equals 31,200 annual miles. That is $24.00 per week times fifty-two = $1,250.00 in additional costs. Therefore the annual fuel and amortization cost is $8,000.00.
Battery packs are very susceptible to temperature extremes both high and low, thus making their use impractical in the northern and southern halves of the country. This limits their use in these areas to spring and fall when temperatures are moderate. So, you will need another (evil gasoline) car for cold winter and hot summer days. Another problem with the batteries is that the charge/ length of their use cycle gets shorter and shorter with every charge/use cycle.
Next it the problem of heating and cooling the passenger space. This will significantly affect the range of the vehicle. Lithium ion’s energy density is significantly degraded in hot
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
The electic car promotion is another example of libs not being able to see The Big Picture. Like recycling, when the total costs are figured in, the juice is not worth the squeeze. Maybe in time there’ll be a viable electic car. But it will most likely come from private industry and demand driven and not from the screwball desires of leftist bureaucrats.
Um, after two halves, what is left?
Of course that’s a model that really won’t work in mass production. Most people in the sunbelt don’t have outlets near where they park their cars. In the snowbelt where the infrastructure already exists it might be fine, but our population is fleeing the snow. Down here in the sun no apartments and very few houses have an outlet near the parking, that creates a cart-horse problem, the cars aren’t useful without the outlets but there’s no reason to make the outlets without the cars. The plug-in hybrid will be a tough sell.
The fruity, nutty (left of) center.
Maybe in Michigan, down here in Tucson not really. Even our “cool” summer nights are higher than most people have their thermostats set, and people with swamp coolers turn them on sometime in May and pretty much leave them on until mid-September.
You're bringing back memories for me, but not really good ones.
I lived south of the Rub' al Khali for while. We would get 40°F temperature swings day/night through the summer. It would cool all the way down to 85~90°F most nights.
That’s the real desert. That’s the kind of place I think about during our summers to remember it could be worse. Probably not much in the way of AC to find out there either.
Yeah, most vistors to the job site said the place looked like the moon.
Probably not much in the way of AC
Heck, we were 60 miles to the nearest paved road. It was over 100 miles past that to reach anything you would call a town.
One of the coolest things about places like maps.google.com is finding my old job sites.
http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&t=k&om=1&ll=15.591706,49.133563&spn=0.015997,0.027037&z=15
I was out there before we poured the first foundation. Some of the really early site guys lived in tents in this place.
That is well and truly the middle of freaking no where. You’ve got to be pretty comfortable with yourself and your co-workers to be in that kind of environment for more than a couple days.
http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&t=k&om=1&ll=70.344565,-150.930004&spn=0.011231,0.054073&z=14
I think Offshore platforms are harder still. Those I never over-nighted on, just day trips.
Good old oil business. Hard work in the middle of no where. I think I like software better, easy work within walking distance of a dozen restaurants (some of them good).
What people also ignore is that the government gets money to maintain the roads via a motor fuel tax. As plug in cars become more popular, they are going to figure out some way to tax those cars for their road use. I’m guessing that they’ll require special plugs and outlets that can be metered or they’ll require drivers to submit their odometer readings.
No that’s why plug-in hybrids are doomed. The majority of Americans have no where to plug the thing in, so it’s really just another hybrid, which itself is a bad idea because you’re using two engines to run 1 car, with a completely useless added feature. Hybrids are a bad idea because they do two things poorly instead of one well, my all gas Sentra gets better millage than most of the hybrids advertise. Plug-in hybrids are a bad idea in search of non-existent outlets.
No one with more than a speck of common sense and understanding will stop using gasoline* to haul their self-respecting a$$.
*which will always be available at a reasonable price.
Yes, it's a renewable resource ( the erf makes it, it's organic)
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