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Nearly six of 10 Americans — 57% — say they won't buy an all-electric car no matter the price of gas, according to a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll.
That's a stiff headwind just as automakers are developing electrics to help meet tighter federal rules that could require their fleets to average as high as 62 miles per gallon in 2025. And President Obama has set a goal of a million electric vehicles in use in the U.S. by 2015.
It's no surprise, the current electric car has limited usage and is expensive.
In the areas where an electric car could do the most good there are hardly an places to recharge the car. Cities are comprised of apartment buildings, not single family homes with garages.
With the economy in the tanks, people being slapped with increased taxes, rising food costs and the general perception of the electric car being toys for the rich obama's goal will never be met.
Who really cares what the gas mileage is of an electric car when it can only go for 60 -70 miles before an overnight recharge?
And you have to either own another car or rent a car if your trip is over 80 miles away?
Have you paid attention to the humongous sprawl what USA is (both residential and employment), I did and it's scary thing to behold. It's a death trap, simple as that. Without cheap energy & cheap transportation we are toast, 50-60 miles radius, you are kidding, it's less than one way commute of the great many out there. We seek to maintain untenable, wasteful "way of life" using other technological means. We seek to cure "poisoning" with more poison, as in: cheap personal transportation created a snow ball of problems. Solution?, hmm, more of the cheap & affordable electrical personal transportation, obviously :>
Last edited by RememberMee; 05-27-2011 at 12:29 AM..
It's no surprise, the current electric car has limited usage and is expensive.
In the areas where an electric car could do the most good there are hardly an places to recharge the car. Cities are comprised of apartment buildings, not single family homes with garages.
With the economy in the tanks, people being slapped with increased taxes, rising food costs and the general perception of the electric car being toys for the rich obama's goal will never be met.
Who really cares what the gas mileage is of an electric car when it can only go for 60 -70 miles before an overnight recharge?
And you have to either own another car or rent a car if your trip is over 80 miles away?
But it's better than a horse and cleaner than both a horse and a combustion engine, if you charge it with solar or wind.
Have you paid attention to the humongous sprawl what USA is (both residential and employment), I did and it's scary thing to behold. It's a death trap, simple as that. Without cheap energy & cheap transportation we are toast, 50-60 miles radius, you are kidding, it's less than one way commute of the great many out there. We seek to maintain untenable, wasteful "way of life" using other technological means. We seek to cure "poisoning" with more poison, as in: cheap personal transportation created a snow ball of problems. Solution?, hmm, more of the cheap & affordable electrical personal transportation, obviously :>
So what then is your solution? Liveing in jumbled masses of humanity, limiting population growth through forced steralization? What exactly would you do that is afforadably to the majority of Americans?
I don't want to buy the first electric car off the assembly line but I certainly will buy one after its been time tested. I expect the first models to have issues. Issues that I don't want to be the guniea pig on.. but after that intial stage, I will certainly be in line for buying an all electric car..
What exactly would you do that is afforadably to the majority of Americans?
How about going in the European direction and having diesel vehicles to start and using their standards for enviromental control. They have cars with the same names and specs (except for the engine which is diesel) that get nearly double the mileage of their American counterpart version.
If we want to go to battery powered cars, then give the contract to Apple. All their electronics last longer than their competitors.
Historically the battery problem should have been resolved way before the first car rolled off the assembly line. We've been playing with battery technology for over 30 years. Just follow the growth of the Cellphone from its day of being a 14 pound device to what it is now.
It's no surprise, the current electric car has limited usage and is expensive.
Early Adopters are not as concerned about upfront expense as the common folks -- and if sharp money folks play it right, it can cost quite a bit less than a conventional car.
Let's slow the game down and take a slow walk through the Dollars and Cents, and Sensibilities of the US of A? Follow along and you can sort this game out.
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In the areas where an electric car could do the most good there are hardly an places to recharge the car. Cities are comprised of apartment buildings, not single family homes with garages.
Not so much "apartment folks" in the target customer market.
Think a little ways up the economic scale.
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With the economy in the tanks, people being slapped with increased taxes, rising food costs and the general perception of the electric car being toys for the rich obama's goal will never be met.
Lotta wealth worship in the US. The Great Recession still has not wrung that "value" system out of US.
If they can sell some million -- or whatever the numerical sales target is -- of them off to wealthier folks, the goal is met and it becomes identified as sort of a Greener-Than-Thou status symbol for the "not-so-poor." And by the marketing game -- that makes it desirable.
Not saying that is good nor sensible, just the way the US consumer market mind seems to work. Meanwhile, last year's fashion goes out of date. The 10 mpg Hummers become hand-me-downs to the poor folks in the 'hood. Those poor folks keep buying the gasoline, and paying the motor fuel tax, and that keeps the game going.
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Who really cares what the gas mileage is of an electric car when it can only go for 60 -70 miles before an overnight recharge?
The folks we run across in the business end of things want the recharge stations at work. And that charging station powered by PV Solar. So that they have no actual energy bill -- no motor fuel, nor electricity bill, no taxes on any of it. Sharp business and money folks hate seeing money go out of their pocket.
I guess the thinking is that if they live 50 miles or so "out of town," (in the Gated-Community Suburb ) they could charge-up at the house overnight where they also have PV Solar with net metering (sends power up to the grid all day, takes it back off the grid at night -- zeroing out the bill). And then daily drive into the city for the day, park-and-charge at work, and drive back home at night. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Net result is no fuel bills and no electricity bills on either end, and take the tax credits, grants, rebates, depreciation, and business expense for the whole thing.
Do you follow this can make the whole thing essentially "free" for them? But generally the folks that can do that have to have some stable business, and already have some money to lay-out to get the game started.
The rich get richer, as it were.
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And you have to either own another car or rent a car if your trip is over 80 miles away?
If you are using a "Volt" style electric (with built-in gasoline back-up) you would just drive electric for the first portion, and then switch to the gas engine. Not that big of deal, and it cuts the gas use from half to a third on a such a trip. From the savings on the reduced motor fuel use, even that would pay for itself.
But you are smart enough to already know this . . . .
So what then is your solution? Liveing in jumbled masses of humanity, limiting population growth through forced steralization? What exactly would you do that is afforadably to the majority of Americans?
Majority of Americans (and not only) would trash everything in their sight to secure an acceptable perch in the social/wealth pyramid. It's doesn't really matter for them if the Pyramid will be located in an underground bunker. I'm afraid there is no affordable solution for the current breed of humans. No, no, it's not like we are more "evil" & shortsighted then previous countless generations, probably less, but we share the same developmental "paradigm" with them while having more means to accomplish it, like: world is resource to exploit, space is the space to populate, lesser forms of life have no right to exist independently of our needs, our unchanged ape like hierarchical nature multiplied by our capacity to accumulate "stuff" to keep a score doesn't make things any better.
Again, it's not like other animals are more mindful of theses things, it's just that predator-prey equilibrium + food limitations keep their propensity to populate the Earth with a double layer of their own in check. We overcome our predators (other than microbes) and we robbed other species of their share to increase our food supplies well beyond any scientifically grounded ecological limits. You don't really need to have a crystal ball to see an outcome of this mindset, if human technological provess will be up to snowballing challenges (not a fact). Actually the outcomes are well described in prophetic SciFi and dystopian novels 40+ years ago . Endless technological patches ultimately snowballing into human managed Space ship Earth devoid of the most non microbial life forms and subsisting on rat based protein cocktail while human "passengers" are induced into the state of a chemically induced dormancy creating an illusion of paradise like existence. Ultimately, even Space ship Earth will become an inadequate solution to a task. And nothing short of a warp drive and Terraformers will help us. Don't kid yourself, an "electric car" is just a small step in that direction.
My solution? First, I would start explaining the options to the people. Instead of chanting slogans like science, technology, growth, jobs, prosperity, etc., etc., to the scientifically ignorant. If we to decide rationally that Space Ship Earth is our the most "humane" solution, it's a common sense to redirect the bulk of human resources into "warp" drive research, noting short of that will sustain human plague for much longer.
If we to decide against that, it will take humongous societal, economical and personal changes to have a shot but I have no time to write utopia outlines
How about going in the European direction and having diesel vehicles to start and using their standards for enviromental control. They have cars with the same names and specs (except for the engine which is diesel) that get nearly double the mileage of their American counterpart version.
A little bit better (or even a lot better) mileage is sort of a delaying tactic in a losing battle.
Since in the end, we must stop importing and borrowing the money to burn Oil -- or else we will go broke -- and then have to stop importing and borrowing the money to burn Oil . . . we might as well stop importing and borrowing the money to burn Oil.
End game -- we either go off Oil, or else we go off Oil.
So the object becomes to begin with that end in mind.
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Historically the battery problem should have been resolved way before the first car rolled off the assembly line.
It already has been, just have to convert the overall system over time. Most tech transitions take about 20 to 40 years -- so this is all developing
at a normal pace.
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We've been playing with battery technology for over 30 years. Just follow the growth of the Cellphone from its day of being a 14 pound device to what it is now.
A+
Bag phones the size of purses, and rare -- that was *just* a little over 30 years ago.
Now everyone who wants, has one -- cheap enough, fast enough and good enough.
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) they could charge-up at the house overnight where they also have PV Solar with net metering (sends power up to the grid all day, takes it back off the grid at night -- zeroing out the bill). And then daily drive into the city for the day, park-and-charge at work, and drive back home at night. Lather, rinse, repeat.
. Endless technological patches ultimately snowballing into human managed Space ship Earth devoid of the most non microbial life forms and subsisting on rat based protein cocktail while human "passengers" are induced into the state of a chemically induced dormancy creating an illusion of paradise like existence. Ultimately, even Space ship Earth will become an inadequate solution to a task. And nothing short of a warp drive and Terraformers will help us. Don't kid yourself, an "electric car" is just a small step in that direction. 
