Fisker Inc. - 161 mph & 9 minutes to charge.

Give me about a 10 year warranty on the battery and I may be a bit more interested.... I've never seen a rechargeable battery that maintains a charge very well after some use. And I bet the battery is very expensive. How do they hold up in cold weather..?

 

I think I will be the unpopular SOB harshing the mellow of their precious instant charging.

Did you ever consider what it takes to feed a battery car? You are dealing at least in 360 volts and above with enough amperage to spin off your regular house meter. Which is one of the reasons they went digital these days.

IF you had a big enough induction pad built into your garage floor you can Charge God's Car if you like in a few moments.

But you are the electric bill payer. It will be a few hundred dollars per month when expressed in kilowatts, prior to administrative fees and fuel costs, taxes etc etc etc.

I hate to be snarky, I think Gasoline is pretty cheap these days.

 

The only way the electric car will be the wide choice is when it is more economical to do so. Finland has mostly electric. Their government removed all road taxes, licence taxes, raised those taxes for gasoline powered cars, and fuel there costs about $7 per gallon. They also have parking lots electrified everywhere and the juice is subsidized. They have a high tax rate and this is what they use those taxes for.

I am not in the camp of taxing the fuel. I would accept reduced licencing taxes and road fees and maybe even let them use the carpool lane. In my mind, if the price of oil actually goes up and stays up due to demand, not from being taxed to death, that should be the tipping point. They used to talk about "peak oil" and how the world would only be able to pull out x number of barrels per day, while consumption continues to rise and ultimately will drive the price up. Doesn't appear to be happening.

The electric car is very hazardous when it needs to be disposed of. Sure, it will use 0 gasoline, but producing and then recycling those batteries is a very toxic process. It is estimated the electric car when everything is accounted for is approximately 66% as bad as it's gasoline counterpart at the end of their life cycles, which are similar in terms of age/miles.

Still a long way off. More probable they figure out self driving cars and people don't keep their own car, rather they whistle one up whenever they need one, never worrying about insurance, maintenance, etc. It's estimated the average American car user would save 5-9 k/year $. IF that happens... Maybe some fleets will use electric, but again it comes down to price, at that point it will be a business and a business must make money in order to exist.

You're up, x1heavy...

 

I lean towards a use of a small motor of whatever fuel type to generate power, similar to how our Train Engines do it. You can generate large amounts of power in electric form on little to nothing.

You can also install hardware onto braking systems in a big truck to provide what I call regenerative power. You will be feeding it and accumulate a charge while on a long downgrade, provided that charge is in excess beyond what you consumed getting to the top of that mountain to begin with.

You can take coal or natural gas and turn it into a fuel useable by cars, trains, planes etc. Germany did that for decades, particularly during world war two until certain places that produce it finally got bombed into oblivion.

You can even toss wood into a barrel, add a couple more barrels and pipe the results into a engine and go on down the road. Or boil water and you have a steam car.

Basically my position leans on history of what people have done long before we were born. And many of those vehicles did well, even trucks and tractors etc. Due to economic difficulties of the time they did not make it into modern times much.

I think it's wonderful that we have batteries big enough to run cars now. However, if you were to get into accident with them and they get penetrated or compromised beyond DOT testing limits the people inside will not survive. I rather deal with the possibility of one ton worth of deseil fuel catching fire under the cab than to be inside a battery car.

The Idea of discarding cars all together requires transport. Light rail, Subways, railroads, hire cars like uber etc. Is a very attactive one. If I wanted to discard my Tahoe and stop paying the fuel, taxes, insurance etc, I will recover close to 20% of my annual income. That will be big money to me each year.

Arkansas plan a light rail or subway type situation for US 67 and other roads leading into Little Rock within the 50 years pending. I wont be alive that long to see and enjoy it. So when the time comes for me to stop driving altogether, I will have to do it where everything is within a walking distance or a subsidized medical van or Uber or a few friends with cars for a few dollars beyond what it takes to fill their tank which could be up to 100 dollars for my vehicle. (25 gallon tank...)

My love and joyful wish book though is towards Big Trucks being able to run say a 50 horse engine feeding a bank of batteries to store power until used to go down the road. Theoratically you should use 10 gallons a day instead of say 300 for a team truck.

That should reduce costs quite a bit. Unfortuantely should it be adopted into common use, brokers will not feel the need to pay 3.00 or 5.00 a mile they will go right back to 1.50 a mile freight.

You cannot win.

 

I agree with the idea of running an engine to turn an electrical generator... I wonder if you did that, and had the electric motor power the wheels, what the end result would be in terms of mpg..
Never have to plug it in. Never have to worry about running out. Fill it up in 1 or 2 minutes process is same as today. Could we get double the distance from a gallon? Would be an interesting test.

 

Here's the problem. Why on Earth would anyone care what the performance capabilities are when it's autonomous. Think about it. These companies rave about performance then talk about it driving itself. Americans still love to drive. If they want to sell the car on performance, sell it on performance. Want to sell it as autonomous sell it as such. Can't have it both ways. Why would you?