Great post, Mort.
I agree that 'clean energy' is very important, and it's essential that we should base our lives more on the clean energy sources whenever possible.
But, i was thinking more about the 'conventional' users. Those of us that didn't 'care' too much about the car is 'clean' or not and simply wanted an easy, convinent and cost effecient way of transport. I used to work for a rather large news group in UK and had the chance to test drive many of those new energy cars. For example the Chevy Volt, Mitsubishi's I-MiEV, Bimmer's 7-series 'active hybrid' prototype, Mercs small Electric cars and the VERY expensive and hardcore Tesla based on a Lotus.
To be honest, my first impressions on those cars 'r all quite good. they're all very quiet, smooth, clean, runs just like a normal car and seems that they all secured 'a very bright future'. But, they all had a common problem : 'Why the hassle? '
They spent billions of $'s on developing such vehicles,and the manufacturing process was long and tedious. For example, a $48,000 Mitsubishi i MiEV, to build those batteries, they mined the raw minerals in Canada, processed them in Europe and the States, then transported the pre-processed raw materials to China so the commies can turn them into some sort of raw battery 'juice' because it's a nasty and polluting process that most European countries would simply ban such industries. Then ship the 'juice' to Japan so they can make the fresh batteries. Yes, the Japanese can then use an army of robots and roll a car off the line every minute and claim their car is so clean and quiet that you can even operate them in a house full of sleeping babies. But, Why?
Then, there's the problem of using them. Yes, I can use my regular home socket and charge the car up over night. And if im going very far, I can use my normal car. But, why? Because it's clean? And it's cheap? No. They ain't cheap. I can usually buy a small diesel hatch back for much less, and it can go well over 50mpg. it's quite clean aswell and i can fill it up whenever i want in a matter of minutes thanks to a place called 'gas station'. .
Finally, the running cost. Yes, if i use a normal home socket, it'd be very cheap to charge up the batteries, but don't forget it's just not the tiny cell-phone battery you can buy off the ebay for 10.99. They r big, costy and heavy. They r usually the most expensive part in an electric car, and they ages rather quickly. Car manufacturers won't tell you how much it is and how soon it'll age in the manual (just like they won't tell you how soon you'll have to change the batts in an iphone) . But really we are talking about 5-6yrs, then you'll have to replace them . Although the average price per KWh dropped over the years from $1000+/KWh to around $400~500/KWh. But still, they only last about half the car's actual life-span (say, min. 10 yrs per car) -----> and expect $10000+ for a fresh set of batts in under 5~6yrs. Tesla roadser can sell you set of fresh batts for ~$12000, that's because they sold you the car SOOOO expensivily in the first place. But how about those 'cheap and cheerful' electric cars that the manufacturers and govt. claim they r losing money on every car sold? ---- So, why?
Seriously, although i sounded like a crazy petrol head that aims to burn every last drop of fuel and turn the planet into a dingleberry. But i'm not against energy saving, cleaner cars. Yes, i love my big V8, but i also own a 4-pot Fiat 500 which i totally adores.
It's just that those electric cars, they're not ready and i think they'll never be ready. It's like one of those tedious puzzles---- this is a car build so differently from a normal car yet the car is trying so hard to act like a normal car that it just isn't in the first place
EDIT : hydrogen fuel cells, like the honda FCX. That's more like the future, you can fill them up just like normal cars. But unfortunately it's not ready as-well ---the total effectiency is even lower than electric cars because of the highly complicated manufacture-transport-storage process...
