Who else fears the day of the all-electric vehicle?
Well of course all electric vehicles AREN’T carbon neutral so long as we get electricity from coal and natural gas power plants. Also much of the plastics and carbon fiber and the asphalt in the roads are from oil – so these electric vehicles only reduce oil dependence. There are several fundamental problems w/ electric vehicles. The batteries have a low energy density, degrade within the life of the vehicle and have a low recharge rate. Even if you had an E-vehicle w/ a 300 mile range, you can’t drive it cross-country if you need to wait for a 5 hour recharge every 300 miles. Then there is the life cycle cost and disposal problem. At the current time you may be able to create a little commuter vehicle that would be effective for a large fraction of the vehicle-miles, however climate has a lot to do with this. Batteries become rather inefficient in cold, and running an electric heater or AC in an E-car can use more energy than the drive-train ! Again if you are getting your power from
The issue wit hybrids is that you’re carrying around heavy batteries AND a heavy internal combustion engine. I’m not saying that hybrids are a bad thing, it’s just that all-electric improves on this issue by dropping the heavy engine. Hybrids also have two systems that need maintenance, while electrics only have one. I’m very sure that if we ever get to an all-electric world they’ll have solved the issue of short range. Consumers won’t let it get to that point if they don’t sort that out. Most likely this will be solved by having ‘swap-out’ batteries. Out of juice? go to the station and they’ll swap in a charged battery for your dead ones. It might even be faster than fueling up.
