Stopping once for a 30 minute top off on a 500 mile trip wouldn’t inconvience most people. True it isn’t as convienient as a 5 minute gas top off, but then again you are talking about $3-5 for 300 miles of electricity vs. $40-60 for 300 miles worth of gasoline. Since after driving 300 miles, I would trade the extra 25 minutes grabbing a cup of coffee for the $50.00 savings any day.
I don’t understand your point about “capitulation to our country’s inability to provide for it’s citizens.” I don’t want the country to provide electricity for me, I would prefer to purchase it myself from a private power company. That said, these power companies must maintain the generator capacity to cover the time of peak demand during business hours. Of course, this means that outside of business hours, there is an excess of capacity and anytime that supply exceeds demand in a free economy, the price of the product in question (in this case electricity) is discounted. Therefore, a smart person would plug his car in at night while he slept to take advantage of the much cheaper electricity rates at night. Of course, if I happen to ocassionally need a quick charge, or a charge during business hours, I would just pony up the extra money to pay for the convienience.
Do you really think that the fuel cost disparity will remain? How does the government plan to pay for road maintenance if they don’t tack on a hefty tax on electricity for use in vehicles. And yes, I would mind waiting out on I-5 in the heat for half an hour to charge up my vehicle. And here we are, on the one hand, we are shutting down reliable coal fired plants, while we are trying to convince a stupid public that electric cars are the immediate answer. Now, if we had gone ahead with nuclear power, the case for electric vehicles is a good deal more plausible. I just read the other day that when you look at a Nissan Leaf (all electric) and a Honda Civic (with an IC engine) that when you factor in the generating efficiency, and the transmission and charging losses, that the true MPG of the Leaf is about the same as the Honda if the generating source is oil-fired. I am a professional Mechanical Engineer, and I believe in technology. That said, electric vehicles as a transportation solution are not much more than a technical curiosity at this juncture despite the fact that as a prime mover, an electric motor is much better than an IC engine. Finally for what it’s worth, I have a neighbor who has both a Chevy Volt and a Prius. He says that the Volt, by far is a much better vehicle. It’s big enough so you feel comfortable and it’s overall efficiency is better than the Prius. I guess how these vehicles get deployed depends on the uses to which people want to put them. Even with the high cost of gasoline today, it is still not the major cost associated with owning a car.