[Gay State Conservative]

There's at least one serious problem with electric vehicles...in *this* country,at least.Osama Obama (& pals) have declared war on coal.IIRC Osama once promised to “bankrupt” the coal industry.My understanding is that his battle plan is working very well...coal fired power plants are closing left and right.And given that just a few years ago coal accounted for about half of our electricity it's tough to see where the juice to charge all those batteries will come from.It's highly unlikely that it will come from solar or wind.

[Wonder Warthog]

"And given that just a few years ago coal accounted for about half of our electricity it's tough to see where the juice to charge all those batteries will come from.It's highly unlikely that it will come from solar or wind."

The only reason coal has such a high percentage is that James Earl Carter (now demoted to the second-worst president of the US in history) forbade the construction of natgas fired plants, because the US was "going to run out of natural gas", and needed to "save natgas to heat homes".

At that time, the only other practical choice was coal.

But I fail to see why any existing coal-fired plant cannot be converted into a combined cycle gas-turbine/steam turbine plant. Surely some bright engineer types could figure out how.

[ckilmer]

And given that just a few years ago coal accounted for about half of our electricity it’s tough to see where the juice to charge all those batteries will come from.It’s highly unlikely that it will come from solar or wind.
..........
agree, the obama admin is killing the coal industry. the power plants are shifting over to natural gas.

10-15 years out however,4th generation portable nuclear reactors will likely come on stream. these will likely be lftr thorium or waste uranium reactors.

there is a very big push in the nuclear community to make this happen.