You cannot assume that just because an EV cannot perform as well as a gasoline car in every respect that it cannot compete. There is still much room for improvement in battery technology, and improvements will come: although batteries have been around for well over 100 years, nanotechnology is in its infancy, and has already been responsible for enormous strides not only for batteries but for supercapacitors and other energy storage systems as well.

You are doing no one any favors by trying to use your educational background to convince others that EVs will not progress any further than they have so far.

Gasoline power is much more of a dead end than batteries ever could be: with millions of Indians, Chinese and others suddenly competing for the same rapidly dwindling oil resources; even if EVs somehow do not satisfy your idea of what a vehicle should be, you have to start looking at alternatives, since gasoline will disappear much faster than OPEC is willing to admit, and unless everyone is ready to start pedaling bicycles, there must be a replacement.

The way OPEC is set up is a kind of insane honor system: each country says how much oil they supposedly have in reserve, and how much oil they claim to have determines what percentage of oil they’re allowed to sell at any given time. Since there is no system of verification of claims, there is no incentive for member nations to be truthful, and there is plenty of reason to believe that they are all members of an international Liars’ Club. Suddenly and soon, we’ll start seeing the beginning of the end of cheap, easily accessed oil; what oil will be left will be of lower quality, will be more expensive to get to, and will be in smaller quantities.

Even if that were not the case, it’s insane to assume that we will not suffer irreparable environmental and health damage with increased use of fossil fuels to power our cars– we need to develop alternatives and must do it quickly.

Gasoline in California is already straddling $4. a gallon… regular is just under that price, premium a few cents over… it continues to increase an average of about a penny per day, and the rest of the nation is just weeks behind price-wise.

You cannot be quite so smug about just what is acceptable or not about the performance of EVs: if, tomorrow, you drive down the street and every gas station is selling gasoline at, say, $10 a gallon, or worse, if you start seeing lines of dozens of cars lined up waiting for gasoline, what you will find acceptable will change quickly. ($10 a gallon may sound inconceivable, but I’m sure 2 years ago, $4./gallon seemed inconceivable to you as well.)

Even if EVs somehow hit a brick wall today and ceased to improve their performance envelope, they are already quite practical.

Take the Phoenix Motorcar, which is made in California. There will only be a few hundred made this year, almost all of which will be sold to utility companies such as Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) and Southern California Gas Company, and there will only be about 6,000 or so made in the coming year, but their production will ramp up dramatically, other companies will be building similar vehicles, and they are typical of what we can expect in the near term.

The Phoenix only has one moving part– like a hair dryer, electric drill, table fan or kitchen blender– they need no transmission (not even a reverse gear), no pistons, valves, cams, fuel pumps, fuel injectors, smog pumps, timing chains, etc… all of those moving parts eat away at the efficiency of the car… from oil field to gasoline delivery truck to tailpipe, there is only perhaps a percent or two of the power delivered to the drive shaft.

By comparison, a Phoenix needs no delivery truck for its fuel; its one moving part spins very efficiently on its own center of gravity; it’s quiet, needs no oil changes, air filters, tune-ups, smog checks, transmission service, etc… it will run year after year virtually without service; its batteries will last for decades without need for replacement; and its electricity currently only costs about 2 or 3 cents per mile, and is unlikely to ever cost much more than that– in fact, with the new, high-efficiency, flexible, inexpensive solar panels from Nanosolar that will be installed on 100,000 homes per year or more, people will be able to power their cars virtually for free.

For now, EVs need to be recharged every 100 miles or so… but so what? This would not be an issue for 95% of the travelng most people do– to work, the market, school, and back home where it only takes a couple of seconds to plug in the car, and unplug it again when it’s time to leave– that is certainly far more convenient than spending dozens of hours per year gassing up, getting tune-ups, smog tests, etc. Watch: you’ll be seeing charging stations popping up in unusual places, such as Costco, Starbuck’s, Target, etc., so that you’re multi-tasking effortlessly and very inexpensively.

The batteries, motors, controllers and other parts needed to make EVs are far from as cheap as they will become when economies of scale kick in: EVs will probably be significantly cheaper than gasoline cars within just 5 years or so, they will have far better performance, and are likely to increase in range between charges significantly.

Do not dismiss EVs flippantly: trust me, there is one in your future much sooner than you realize, and when you do have it, you’ll wonder why you didn’t get one much sooner.

Gotta go now… I’m converting one of my BMWs to an EV… I have to pick up the metal I’ll be using to fabricate the mounting brackets for the electric motor, and then will be picking up something called a Hall sensor, which is what you use in lieu of a gas pedal in an electric car… yeah, I’m excited. I should have it running by the end of the month.

I don’t know why someone would criticize a guy for buying a Tesla. If I were rich, I probably would have bought one myself. Remember, for many of these people $100,000 is equivalent in percentage of income terms to what a good dinner might be to you or I, and if the Tesla fails, it’s not like they have no way back home – their Mercedes S-Class or Porsche 911 is still there.

D

Oh, OK. I didn’t actually read any of Jason’s stuff, just heard him talking about it on TWIT. And he didn’t say anything about the Tesla he was driving being a loaner, IIRC. But then, when you’re that rich, have a big ego, and you’re constantly having people criticize you because you spent $100K on a car that still doesn’t exist, would you mention it was just a loaner?

I wonder who has P3. I’ve heard scattered rumors that it’s been shipped to a customer, but nothing solid and no information about the customer. I was hoping it was Jason, but apparently not since the car being demonstrated is clearly Elon’s.

D

The air goes in through some kind of scoop, it travels through some chambers that create/play with the pressure waves, and voila! instant brrrrrrrrrRRRRRRRRR sound!

I’m no physicist or fluid dynamicist, but is that kind of thing possible starting with taking in air, but no or little sound?

A Tesla currently costs $ 0.02 per mile to operate, per their web site.

A car getting 20mpg at $3.50 per gallon costs $ 0.175 per mile.

If we drive 25,000 miles per year, that would cost $500 on the Tesla and $4,375 on the 20mpg car.

That savings, over 10 years, is $38,750 or about 40% of the price of the Tesla.

If you compare that to a Porsche 911, then, a Tesla is significantly cheaper to operate right now, without even having to assume $4/gallon gas for a long period.

Finally, personally I really like the turbine whine noise the Tesla makes a lot better than the internal combution growls and grumbles. Maybe I’m just new-fashioned :-).

D

With gasoline already topping $4. a gallon here in California, and analysts saying it may double in price again within 18 months, electricity– which does not use foreign oil and can be generated from a number of clean sources, including home solar panels– typically costs a tenth as much as gasoline to power a vehicle, and the price differental will widen greatly as times goes on.

Electric vehicles typically have a range with today’s technology of between 100 and 200 miles, and many people see that as a problem, but they are not fully thinking through. Every driver today wastes many hours a year standing next to their cars, waiting for their gas tanks to fill, breathing hazardous fumes– electric vehicles typically are charged at home… you pull up, connect a charger– a two-second procedure– and disconnect it again when you get ready to leave. No time lost at gas stations.

Two large companies are investing major bucks in special charging stations that will be able to quickly charge our cars when we are driving longer distances, such as cross-country, or if for any reason we need to charge up while we’re running around town. Remember, we will need no where as many of these stations as we would need of gasoline stations, since gasoline cars MUST be filled from gas stations, but EVs will be charged at home most of the time, where it is more convenient and cheaper.

Critics like to suggest that if we start to use lots of EVs, that it will put a huge burden on our electric grid– but the exact opposite is true. Google V2G, or Vehicle to Grid… electric vehicles that are not being used can actually level the load of energy used in metropolises. Also, companies such as Nanosolar, with their new, vastly superior and cheaper flexible PowerSheet solar panels will start to install their products on 100,000 homes each year, dramatically reducing our need for the grid, and dramatically reducing the cost of driving. It will also decentralize our power needs to a great degree, so that many homeowners will instead be selling their non-pollutiing energy to the utility companies, who will redirect it to sell to businesses.

EVs do not need oil changes, oil filters, air filters, muffler replacements, expensive transmission work (EVs do not need any transmission at all, not even a reverse gear), they use regenerative braking that makes their brakes last much longer than today’s cars, they can have as little as one moving part in the entire drive train for a full-sized vehicle, and they require far less maintenance… and NO smog tests ever.

A recent study showed that if you live within 500 feet of a freeway, your health suffers as a result… and the closer you live, the more pronounced that health impairment is. When electric vehicles such as the Phoenix Motorcar SUV and the Tesla sports car take up more of the traffic on our streets, you’ll notice subtle differences: less noise, fewer people in emergency rooms for asthma, gasoline prices will drop because of decreased demand, our cost of living will drop dramatically since electric vehicle use will have a ripple effect in our economy. What gasoline we buy will be supplied domestically rather than from Saudi Arabia and Iran, so they will not be able to afford to finance terrorism as they do now.

Shifting from gasoline to electricity to power our cars will require no where near as much adjustment as many people expect. It will be easy, comfortable and painless for most people, unless you work in a gas station, transmission shop, smog test center, parts supply house or similar business that relies on gasoline vehicles.

One more thing– those of us that follow developments in the EV industry are scratching our heads at Tesla Motors, who stubbornly use older, more problematical batteries for their vehicles. The kinds of batteries that Phoenix uses can be rapidly charged when needed, they are not susceptible to fires and explosions, and they will last for decades… why they insist on using thousands of laptop batteries is unknown, but it’s unfortunate. It makes the electric car industry look less viable than it really is.

EVs will change our lives for the better, and sooner rather than later.

See, I want to drive my car, something that wasn’t really a part of my last golf cart experience. If driving feel could somehow be added back in when the IC engine is removed I’d be more for it.

I’m pretty meh about going green, but I like driving.

(1) I could normally afford a new $100,000 car (i.e. a new Mercedes S500, Porsche 911, etc).

(2) It had a good ride as well as handling (I’m not sure about this)

(3) It could regularly get at least 150 miles per charge (this seems to be controversial at the moment).

What any EV seller has to offer is the ability to instantly (and inexpensively) access a larger vehicle (full-size sedan or pickup truck) as the customer’s needs dictate; possibly through agreements with car rental companies.

Edit: Yes!

Then I’ll use my gas savings to buy an older 911 for weekend fun.

Like a lot of folks here, I can’t justify the buying proposition on an economic basis. But I do like the idea of supporting the American economy and telling the bigoted dictators of the world to go fly a kite.

Even if it were a few hundred gallons, it would be well worth it.

He also claims that the solar panels that he is installing at his home and office will be able to charge this Telsas.

He said that it drives better and faster than his Corvette.

He has a lot more money than the average Joe. So good one him I guess. He claims to have been driving it for two days now. So perhaps Telsa was finally born?

I’m amazed that you are worried about an electric car. I have a Prius which is a very very short range electric car with an onboard charger… I’m on my second one. My radio works fine in the Prius. Unlike my home radio if it is held close to the microwave oven in the kitchen.

See the point? Electricity in the homes and in our cars – including my and every other hybrid electric car – could not possibly be dangerous or nobody would build them. Consider how litigous our society is.

Just remember – don’t stand too close to the microwave in your kitchen when it’s on. And replace the microwave every 2-3 years whether you think you need to or not. They’re cheap.

And our last microwave, which was only about 5 years old, and appeared totally fine, burned my arm. I was wearing a medical alert bracelet for allergies and the microwave leaked radiation. “Ouch” was an understatement.

Yes, I would drive and own electric car and hope to before I retire in a decade and a half.

My provisions are: $25,000 cost or less (in today’s currency value equivalence of course); ability to use the vehicle in any Michigan weather condition; at least 80% savings over gasoline fuel costs for running costs; at least room for two and a Newfoundland dog in comfort.

I’d LOVE an Aptera electric if and when they ever produce it and sell it where I live.

But sadly, history is littered with corpses of companies trying to bring innovation to the automobile. I hope Aptera succeeds.

Studebaker (first front caliper disc brakes in the US), Rambler (first average priced car with dual circuit brakes, likewise E-coat body rustproofing, first car with seat belts in 1950)
Tucker (3rd headlight steered to help you see around corners, safety cage, pop-out windshield)
Reo (first car with self-shifter “automatic” transmission in our post-modern lingo – 1934-1936)

I don’t see any turn-key factory made electrics worth owning right now for under $20K, most are actually in the $30K to 50K range and up. I expect the situation to change when electrics are mass-manufactured and economies of scale kick in, but not for the next 5 years or more. For now, an electric is for all intents and purposes a custom made car and priced accordingly.

My initial research says that a usable conversion can be done for between $8K and 10K U.S.; of course, I would discount my own time and effort to construct it.

With an electric in my stable, I would still prefer to keep 1 or 2 gas-powered vehicles around for hauling big stuff and taking long trips out of town. But for 90% of my driving, an electric with a 50 to 60 mile range and big enough for 2 adults and 4 bags of groceries would more than cover my needs.

If I was a betting man, I’d put my money on electrics as the city/commuter car of the future.

I am considering putting together an EV motorcycle to see what it is like. That and to have a cheap sporting vehicle for the road. If I like it well enough, may go for a conversion of a car after that.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flux_capacitor

-ted

Until legislation removes personal choice I’m going to drive what I like.

That and the feel of ICE. It has character that electric lacks. I love ICE–I guess that’s my vice–and I love the tofu analogy for electric. Having said that, if the cost, the range, and the refueling time on the electric weren’t that much different from ICE, and the cost of fuel was $6/gal vs $3/gal-equivalent, or thereabouts, it wouild start to be tempting.

It would be cool if they could eliminate the need for very heavy batteries by powering the cars from the street level. Range would become a non-issue, cars would be lighter and cheaper to make.

Remember electric blankets? (Turn ‘em off before you get into bed.)

Remember overhead power lines that cause cows to abort? Or cause your radio to go dead as you drive under them?

Cell phones you shouldn’t hold too close to your brain?

There’s a lot to yet be found out about submitting yourself to driving around in a steel box full of radiation.