[palmer]

"The idea of paying $2,000 for what amounts to a dryer plug irritates a guy like me,"

The fact that he is stupid enough to buy an electric car irritates me.

[devere]

What is the advantage of electric cars?

[Keith in Iowa]

How ‘bout a Honda generator with enough power output to charge the electric cars? :)

[Florida native]

Or...

"How to prep your home for higher electric bills"

[USNBandit]

"The idea of paying $2,000 for what amounts to a dryer plug irritates a guy like me,"

If you are already blowing $30k on $20k of performance, why not blow another $2k so you can actually use the thing?

[Lazlo in PA]

Once people have to deal with battery maintenance and start getting high electric bills from the utilities, the magic will disappear on this stupidity.

[exDemMom]

"The idea of paying $2,000 for what amounts to a dryer plug irritates a guy like me," he said. Instead, he's going to use his wall socket for a while, and eventually install chargers himself at his home and his farm, 40 miles away.

He just better not forget his lunch when he goes out to the farm, or hope he doesn't have to leave for an emergency. At 8 hours charge per 40 miles drive, that's an awful long time to wait for the car to be usable again, if he needs it in a hurry.

Also, I wonder how people think these things are going to save energy? Electricity doesn't just magically appear in the wall socket. And enviro-whackos are dead set against building new power plants, making it anyone's bet where all the electricity is going to come from if significant numbers of people start buying electric cars.

[the invisib1e hand]

let's settle this once and for freaking all. There's this thing called drain. Resistance. Friction. And the more interlopers you have between your energy source and your energy application, the more friction, resistance, drain you encounter. And resistance, friction, and drain cost energy to overcome - energy that wouldn't have to be expended if there were no resistance, friction, and drain.

So, you put freaking electric motor in between your IC engine and your drive drain, and you use more energy, not less.

So your car isn't buring gas? Well, the power grid is (or something else), if you're plugging your car into it.

I know it's naive, and it's only Physics 101, but it is what it is.

Windmills, electric cars...healthcare...Fortheluvofpete I'm getting sick of all these fairy tales.

[raybbr]

The extra electricity demand from a home charger can overwhelm small neighborhood transformers and kill power to a whole block.

This is plain BS. The thing requires a 30A circuit. No more than a dryer.

Even if everyone on the block turned it on at the same time it wouldn't hurt the x-former.

[nagdt]

I find it funny that the greenies actually think this crap is going to save the planet.

The only thing it is going to do is drain wallets.

Stupid fools. All of them.

[freedumb2003]

Rush said it best — electric cars coal-driven. They are not NON-polluting. They merely shift the pollution from the car exhaust pipe to the electric generator smokestack (most electricity in the USA continues to be generated from coal).

It just delivers more misplaced liberal smugs.

[EVO X]

Buyers qualify for a federal tax credit of $7,500 and additional state and local subsidies in some states.

Kind of irks me that we are going to subsidize wealthy college professors..

[FrdmLvr]

How is all of this electricity demand supposed to help the environment? I thought generating electricity was supposed to be a bad thing.

[Libloather]

But the most important near-term reason to smarten the grid is waste reduction. Cutting tiny inefficiencies can have dramatic effects on the entire system. Consider the case of the humble incandescent light bulb. By the time power has been generated at a plant, transported across high-tension lines, and sent to the lighting fixture, a measly 0.8 percent of the power is converted into light. More efficient light bulbs, like light-emitting diodes, could vastly alter that equation. Widely adopting LEDs in the next two decades could save $265 billion in energy costs, remove the need to build 40 new power plants, and cut the demand for lighting electricity by more than 30 percent, according to the Department of Energy.

Most Americans are completely unaware of how much power common household items like the light bulb fritter away. So smartening the public is as critical as smartening the grid itself. Individual smart meters that replace the traditional power meters installed on homes can show consumers how much power their home is using at given times of the day and how much that power is costing. Indeed, policymakers and utilities hope that giving people the true costs of their electric appliance use will naturally change their behavior and give them an incentive to make cheaper choices.

http://politics.usnews.com/news/energy/articles/2010/04/07/a-smart-electrical-grid-could-secure-the-energy-supply--.html

[sionnsar]

First Electric Cars Have Power Industry Worried (FR thread):

"When plugged into a home charging station the first Leafs and Volts will draw 3,300 Watts and take about 8 hours to deliver a full charge, but both carmakers may soon boost that to 6,600 Watts. The Tesla Roadster, an electric sports car with a huge battery, can draw 16,800 Watts. That means that adding an electric vehicle or two to a neighborhood can be like adding another house, and it can stress the equipment that services those houses. The problem is that transformers that distribute power from the electrical grid to homes are often designed to handle less than about 12,000 watts so the extra stress on a transformer from one or two electric vehicles could cause it to overheat and fail, knocking out power to the block."

[The Great RJ]

What will the electric car do to your electric bill? How many kilowatts will be needed to charge the battery? I could see the cost per mile for your electric car could make $4 per gallon gasoline look cheap.

[A.A. Cunningham]

Where’s the link?

[quantim]

[KeyLargo]

[bigbob]

Move near one of these, and toss an extension cord over the fence: