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I don't think battery swaps are a straw man and I disagree with some of biccat's assumptions.

1. The majority of car journeys are short range within a city, and can be done within the range of a current electric car. Most drivers therefore will be able to charge overnight at home. They will only need to go to a battery change station when making a long distance journey.

(This is your point 2, basically.)

Also, charging points could be built into parking meters, so you charge as you park, and pay for both at the same time.

2. The average gas station sells X per day partly because petrol cars keep burning fuel all the time while braking or in traffic jams. Electric cars consume no current in a jam (except lights, etc.)

Because of 1 and 2, you wouldn't need as many battery changing stations in cities as you need petrol stations, and your stock of batteries would be lower.

3. You assume a cost per battery of $30,000. That is a more than the current Leaf batteries cost, without having gone into volume production. It is not unreasonable to assume that the cost of batteries will fall considerably as the technology improves.

4. Petrol stations not only have to pay for fuel, (three or four different types) they have to pay for the storage, pumps, and the tankers which bring refills. A lot of these costs would be reduced by electric

5. I don't know about the US, but in the UK, practically all petrol stations are owned by major oil companies who would be very capable of repurposing existing stations to electric, especially if they can sell off a significant amount of their current land holdings which will no longer be required.

Of course, I am making a number of assumptions here which could be incorrect. Only time will tell.

Kilkrazy wrote:I don't think battery swaps are a straw man and I disagree with some of biccat's assumptions.

IMO battery swaps could work, but not with : a) current battery technology; b) current car design; and c) current range.

Kilkrazy wrote:1. The majority of car journeys are short range within a city, and can be done within the range of a current electric car. Most drivers therefore will be able to charge overnight at home. They will only need to go to a battery change station when making a long distance journey.

(This is your point 2, basically.)

Also, charging points could be built into parking meters, so you charge as you park, and pay for both at the same time.

Not really feasable at 8 hours per charge (I doubt most people park at a meter for 8 hours). But even if you assume charge while you work/sleep, there's still a large number of people who drive more than 40 miles to work or use service stations continuously.

Kilkrazy wrote:2. The average gas station sells X per day partly because petrol cars keep burning fuel all the time while braking or in traffic jams. Electric cars consume no current in a jam (except lights, etc.)

True, but petrol cars also ramp down significantly when in traffic, which significantly reduces fuel consumption.

Kilkrazy wrote:Because of 1 and 2, you wouldn't need as many battery changing stations in cities as you need petrol stations, and your stock of batteries would be lower.

Not sure how to quantify this. But lets say half. That still leaves $2 million in "inventory" sitting around.

Kilkrazy wrote:3. You assume a cost per battery of $30,000. That is a more than the current Leaf batteries cost, without having gone into volume production. It is not unreasonable to assume that the cost of batteries will fall considerably as the technology improves.

I think the balance of # of batteries required vs. cost/battery would offset one another. Battery price might go down, but you also need more than exactly the number of batteries to service the average number of customers.

Breakdowns, surges in demand, and inventory rollover will require more batteries.

Kilkrazy wrote:4. Petrol stations not only have to pay for fuel, (three or four different types) they have to pay for the storage, pumps, and the tankers which bring refills. A lot of these costs would be reduced by electric

I doubt they'll be reduced by electric by very much. You still have the problem of disposal, cost of electricity, adding new electrical transmission lines, replacement parts, storage, and whatever it costs for a machine to replace the batteries.

Kilkrazy wrote:5. I don't know about the US, but in the UK, practically all petrol stations are owned by major oil companies who would be very capable of repurposing existing stations to electric, especially if they can sell off a significant amount of their current land holdings which will no longer be required.

In the US, most petrol/gas stations aren't actually owned by major oil companies, but instead by small independent operators who are franchisees of the major oil companies. I assume this is the case elsewhere, and when you see a "BP" sign, it's not really owned by BP.

Not sure what you're talking about "land holdings." I can't see stations decreasing in size very much (still need convenience centers and room to service 4-8 cars at a time). If you're talking about harvesting operations, fossil fuels are going to be used for a long time, so I can't see the major oil companies changing their positions drastically.

Kilkrazy wrote:Of course, I am making a number of assumptions here which could be incorrect. Only time will tell.

One issue that wasn't even addressed is: how do you make a battery easily replaceable? I assume the limitation of 40-100 miles isn't because the designers wanted a small compact battery, but rather because that's all the battery they could cram into the car at an affordable price. So how hard will it be for an automated machine to remove and replace the battery?

When I refill my car, I figure it adds ~15 minutes to my trip, and required every 300 miles. Will it take 2 minutes to replace a battery?

Since we disagree about a number of basic assumptions I will only respond to your final point.

I am assuming that electric cars will be designed so that the battery pack can be extracted and replaced fairly quickly. Ideally it should be done as simply as driving your car over the pit, waiting a couple of minutes, then driving off. Modern engineering can come up with something to make that possible.

Kilkrazy wrote:I don't think battery swaps are a straw man and I disagree with some of biccat's assumptions.

1. The majority of car journeys are short range within a city, and can be done within the range of a current electric car. Most drivers therefore will be able to charge overnight at home. They will only need to go to a battery change station when making a long distance journey.

(This is your point 2, basically.)

Also, charging points could be built into parking meters, so you charge as you park, and pay for both at the same time.

2. The average gas station sells X per day partly because petrol cars keep burning fuel all the time while braking or in traffic jams. Electric cars consume no current in a jam (except lights, etc.)

Because of 1 and 2, you wouldn't need as many battery changing stations in cities as you need petrol stations, and your stock of batteries would be lower.

3. You assume a cost per battery of $30,000. That is a more than the current Leaf batteries cost, without having gone into volume production. It is not unreasonable to assume that the cost of batteries will fall considerably as the technology improves.

4. Petrol stations not only have to pay for fuel, (three or four different types) they have to pay for the storage, pumps, and the tankers which bring refills. A lot of these costs would be reduced by electric

5. I don't know about the US, but in the UK, practically all petrol stations are owned by major oil companies who would be very capable of repurposing existing stations to electric, especially if they can sell off a significant amount of their current land holdings which will no longer be required.

Of course, I am making a number of assumptions here which could be incorrect. Only time will tell.

Battery swaps is a strawman argument because massed battery swaps would have more serious logistic problems than just about any other solution, and it is used as a tactic to distract people from more viable options. The most serious problem with battery swaps is how much more valuable a less used battery is than a heavily used one. Because batteries vary so much in value a serious diagnostic test would need to be performed on any batteries that are going to be swapped, and at that point the diagnostic is going to take so long that the car owner may as well just charge his car.

It would also make more sense to attach a small rental trailer that contains an electric generator to an electric car if you're going to move cross country with it. As an added bonus it would have a bit more cargo room for a move.

On #3) The $30,000 price tag on the Leaf's battery was completely pulled out of somebody's butt. The leaf costs about 32k in Japan, which should spread some serious doubt about a 30k price tag on the battery.

On #4) The higher costs of running gasoline stations over electric is no big deal to the oil companies because they just pass the added costs onto the consumer. All of those problems you listed are the store owner's problems, not the oil companies. Also note I'm not sure how things work in the UK but in the USA owners of gas stations make crap money on fuel, perhaps 10 cents or so a gallon of net profit after the oil company, credit card companies, and banks (for debit cards) take their share of the pie. They actually make more money on booze, cigarettes, drinks, and junk food than they do fuel.

On #5 In the US most gas stations are owned by small business owners that only get a small piece of the pie. Neither US nor UK oil companies have any desire to retool their plants to sell the electric companies energy when they make a gakload of money drilling and refining oil. Oil companies are in the business of doing 1 thing: Selling oil. Anything that reduces oil sales is bad for their bottom line, and the only logical thing for them to do is fight against anything that would reduce oil sales.

Kilkrazy wrote:Since we disagree about a number of basic assumptions I will only respond to your final point.

I am assuming that electric cars will be designed so that the battery pack can be extracted and replaced fairly quickly. Ideally it should be done as simply as driving your car over the pit, waiting a couple of minutes, then driving off. Modern engineering can come up with something to make that possible.

I don't think we disagree, more that we agree that there's no idea how to measure this type of thing.

I think that the start-up cost of this type of station would be more expensive, mainly because oil is cheap and current battery technology is less efficient (on a charge per mile basis). Early gas stations were probably pretty expensive too.

I also think that the operation cost of such a station would be about the same. You don't have to pay for tanker trucks, but you also have to have someone to change out batteries, and have a lot more power delivered to your gas station.

Sure, doesn't have to be any more time consuming than getting gas. The problem is the 1 gallon tank (equivalent) that the economy electrics like the leaf have.

As batteries get better the economy cars could get a better range and solve that problem, but then you have to keep the current issue that the batteries (even the economy batteries) cost more than a used car.

The leaf actually averages slightly over 70 miles on a charge with a worse case scenario being about 47 miles with most of the loss being from the AC.

If people can charge their car at work the limited range should be absolutely no problem for the vast majority of drivers. The vast majority of all driving is on very small trips.

The real problem with pure electric vehicles is it's hard for them to compete against an extended range electric vehicle (EREV). As previously stated the vast majority of driving is on very small trips. With EREV small trips are made entirely on the battery without the gasoline engine kicking in, once the battery is nearly drained a gas power electric generator starts making the juice. If 90% of an owners driving is on very small trips, 10% are long trips with the engine on, and the car gets 50 MPG with the engine on then the car only needs 1 gallon of gas to go 500 miles as 450 of those miles were small trips powered by electric.

I didn't even know they were selling them yet.

biccat wrote:

Kilkrazy wrote:Since we disagree about a number of basic assumptions I will only respond to your final point.

I am assuming that electric cars will be designed so that the battery pack can be extracted and replaced fairly quickly. Ideally it should be done as simply as driving your car over the pit, waiting a couple of minutes, then driving off. Modern engineering can come up with something to make that possible.

I don't think we disagree, more that we agree that there's no idea how to measure this type of thing.

I think that the start-up cost of this type of station would be more expensive, mainly because oil is cheap and current battery technology is less efficient (on a charge per mile basis). Early gas stations were probably pretty expensive too.

I also think that the operation cost of such a station would be about the same. You don't have to pay for tanker trucks, but you also have to have someone to change out batteries, and have a lot more power delivered to your gas station.

I think that oil is likely to become more expensive in the future, while battery technology will improve.

I think these sorts of factors can be measured. That is what management accounting is for. Unfortunately, we don't have the figures needed to build a convincing case either way.

schadenfreude wrote:The vast majority of all driving around here is on very small trips.

Fixed that for you.

I have to drive my daughter to her bus stop each morning and pick her up each afternoon at 14 miles each way for almost 60 miles a day just for that. Her school is another 30 miles away but the bus handles taht. Work is over 40 miles each way. The closest Walmart is over 20 miles away. When my wife is not deployed she has to drive from Ft Bragg to Ft Stewart and then back each weekend to come 'home'. (over 500 miles for the weekend on that vehicle).

When my wife was stationed at Ft McPherson (Atlanta) she lived about 45 miles from the office and drove 'home' to Ft Gordon on weekends to be with the family.

When we were in El Paso it was a 50 mile drive from the house to Macgregor range (where I passed 1 gas station) where I worked and a 20+ mile drive from the house to Biggs army airfield where my wife worked.

America has many rural areas where distances are even further.

Kilkrazy wrote:I think that oil is likely to become more expensive in the future, while battery technology will improve.

Certainly. Oil is not an unlimited resource, and will eventually run out. How far in the future is the question. There's also the issue that as oil gets more expensive, certain methods of obtaining oil (shale) become more economically feasable, thereby increasing the supply.

Technology will increase, and when oil becomes more expensive than an electric vehicle, the electric will win out. Whether the government intervenes (including tax breaks), we're eventually going to move away from gasoline-based transport.

Kilkrazy wrote:I think these sorts of factors can be measured. That is what management accounting is for. Unfortunately, we don't have the figures needed to build a convincing case either way.

Agreed. But like you said, oil is going to get more expensive while batteries will get cheaper. It doesn't make economic sense now, but once it does (hopefully without government assistance) you'll see "electric filling stations" popping up everywhere.

Unless solar cars or something else comes along first.

CptJake wrote:

schadenfreude wrote:The vast majority of all driving around here is on very small trips.

Fixed that for you.

I have to drive my daughter to her bus stop each morning and pick her up each afternoon at 14 miles each way for almost 60 miles a day just for that. Her school is another 30 miles away but the bus handles taht. Work is over 40 miles each way. The closest Walmart is over 20 miles away. When my wife is not deployed she has to drive from Ft Bragg to Ft Stewart and then back each weekend to come 'home'. (over 500 miles for the weekend on that vehicle).

When my wife was stationed at Ft McPherson (Atlanta) she lived about 45 miles from the office and drove 'home' to Ft Gordon on weekends to be with the family.

When we were in El Paso it was a 50 mile drive from the house to Macgregor range (where I passed 1 gas station) where I worked and a 20+ mile drive from the house to Biggs army airfield where my wife worked.

America has many rural areas where distances are even further.

That's the problem with America. My brother and his wife both have cars because there is no public transport in the town where they live (Eugene, Oregon) and it is large enough that they could not walk to work. They could do it all with electric cars, though.

Perhaps the rest of the world will change to electric cars and leave the oil for rural Americans.

CptJake wrote:

schadenfreude wrote:The vast majority of all driving around here is on very small trips.

Fixed that for you.

I have to drive my daughter to her bus stop each morning and pick her up each afternoon at 14 miles each way for almost 60 miles a day just for that. Her school is another 30 miles away but the bus handles taht. Work is over 40 miles each way. The closest Walmart is over 20 miles away. When my wife is not deployed she has to drive from Ft Bragg to Ft Stewart and then back each weekend to come 'home'. (over 500 miles for the weekend on that vehicle).

When my wife was stationed at Ft McPherson (Atlanta) she lived about 45 miles from the office and drove 'home' to Ft Gordon on weekends to be with the family.

When we were in El Paso it was a 50 mile drive from the house to Macgregor range (where I passed 1 gas station) where I worked and a 20+ mile drive from the house to Biggs army airfield where my wife worked.

America has many rural areas where distances are even further.

The vast majority of driving is on very small trips, I fixed it back for you because I was correct the first time. City slickers outnumber country bumpkins. You're in the minority, so for every person like you there are far more people like me. I drive less than 10 miles to work and almost all of my driving tends to be very short trips. If people like me vastly outnumber people like you then the vast majority of people drive on very small trips, and thus the vast majority of driving is on very small trips.

80 mile round trips to work are still good for an EREV. I had about the same drive between 2006 and 2007 when I lived in BFE so I know what you are talking about. The next generation plug in Prius has 15 miles worth of juice in it's battery, so if you can plug it in at work that knocks an 80 mile commute down to a 50 miles commute on gas +30 miles on electric. The current Prius gets 50mpg which means you could get down to1 gallon of gas per day for your commute. The technology can work for you.

schadenfreude wrote:

CptJake wrote:

schadenfreude wrote:The vast majority of all driving around here is on very small trips.

Fixed that for you.

I have to drive my daughter to her bus stop each morning and pick her up each afternoon at 14 miles each way for almost 60 miles a day just for that. Her school is another 30 miles away but the bus handles taht. Work is over 40 miles each way. The closest Walmart is over 20 miles away. When my wife is not deployed she has to drive from Ft Bragg to Ft Stewart and then back each weekend to come 'home'. (over 500 miles for the weekend on that vehicle).

When my wife was stationed at Ft McPherson (Atlanta) she lived about 45 miles from the office and drove 'home' to Ft Gordon on weekends to be with the family.

When we were in El Paso it was a 50 mile drive from the house to Macgregor range (where I passed 1 gas station) where I worked and a 20+ mile drive from the house to Biggs army airfield where my wife worked.

America has many rural areas where distances are even further.

The vast majority of driving is on very small trips, I fixed it back for you because I was correct the first time. City slickers outnumber country bumpkins. You're in the minority, so for every person like you there are far more people like me. I drive less than 10 miles to work and almost all of my driving tends to be very short trips. If people like me vastly outnumber people like you then the vast majority of people drive on very small trips, and thus the vast majority of driving is on very small trips.

80 mile round trips to work are still good for an EREV. I had about the same drive between 2006 and 2007 when I lived in BFE so I know what you are talking about. The next generation plug in Prius has 15 miles worth of juice in it's battery, so if you can plug it in at work that knocks an 80 mile commute down to a 50 miles commute on gas +30 miles on electric. The current Prius gets 50mpg which means you could get down to1 gallon of gas per day for your commute. The technology can work for you.

50MPG? My bike (2011 Rocker-C) gets about 55 and is all gas. Heck, the wife's 'vette gets about 30 on the highway and 20 + city. Hightech gas engines will be getting 50 MPG or better way before the infrastructure is in place to support all electric even in cities. Many new non-hybrid cars are easily getting high 20s to mid 30s MPG city and highway today. And they are currently cheaper to run by far than a hybrid when lifecycle costs are figured in.

And my point in an earlier post about hauling still holds. Show me any electric vehicle in the next 15 years that can replace the F350 we use to haul horses and hay (and other stuff). Crossing the rockies with a full four horse trailer is gonna be a nice trick for an electric vehicle. Hell, pulling a fenceline tight across a muddy pasture would be a trick with an electric vehicle.

Next, what happens to the electric car that runs out of juice (stuck in a traffic jam on a cold day)? You can't just dump a gallon of gas in it to get to the next gas station. Yeah, eventually tech may solve that issue, but not soon.

Now, how many big urban areas have power grid issues now? Brownouts and such. Think their infrastructure is going to support going electric for their transportation?

http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/planning/census/cps2k.htm According to the 2000 census, only about 60% of Americans lived in cities with over 200K population. I'll grant you that is more than half, but there are still a LOT of folks in small towns, suburban areas outside cities, and rural communities that have commutes that are going to make going all electric a pain.

Jake

CptJake wrote:

schadenfreude wrote:

CptJake wrote:

schadenfreude wrote:The vast majority of all driving around here is on very small trips.

Fixed that for you.

I have to drive my daughter to her bus stop each morning and pick her up each afternoon at 14 miles each way for almost 60 miles a day just for that. Her school is another 30 miles away but the bus handles taht. Work is over 40 miles each way. The closest Walmart is over 20 miles away. When my wife is not deployed she has to drive from Ft Bragg to Ft Stewart and then back each weekend to come 'home'. (over 500 miles for the weekend on that vehicle).

When my wife was stationed at Ft McPherson (Atlanta) she lived about 45 miles from the office and drove 'home' to Ft Gordon on weekends to be with the family.

When we were in El Paso it was a 50 mile drive from the house to Macgregor range (where I passed 1 gas station) where I worked and a 20+ mile drive from the house to Biggs army airfield where my wife worked.

America has many rural areas where distances are even further.

The vast majority of driving is on very small trips, I fixed it back for you because I was correct the first time. City slickers outnumber country bumpkins. You're in the minority, so for every person like you there are far more people like me. I drive less than 10 miles to work and almost all of my driving tends to be very short trips. If people like me vastly outnumber people like you then the vast majority of people drive on very small trips, and thus the vast majority of driving is on very small trips.

80 mile round trips to work are still good for an EREV. I had about the same drive between 2006 and 2007 when I lived in BFE so I know what you are talking about. The next generation plug in Prius has 15 miles worth of juice in it's battery, so if you can plug it in at work that knocks an 80 mile commute down to a 50 miles commute on gas +30 miles on electric. The current Prius gets 50mpg which means you could get down to1 gallon of gas per day for your commute. The technology can work for you.

50MPG? My bike (2011 Rocker-C) gets about 55 and is all gas. Heck, the wife's 'vette gets about 30 on the highway and 20 + city. Hightech gas engines will be getting 50 MPG or better way before the infrastructure is in place to support all electric even in cities. Many new non-hybrid cars are easily getting high 20s to mid 30s MPG city and highway today. And they are currently cheaper to run by far than a hybrid when lifecycle costs are figured in.

And my point in an earlier post about hauling still holds. Show me any electric vehicle in the next 15 years that can replace the F350 we use to haul horses and hay (and other stuff). Crossing the rockies with a full four horse trailer is gonna be a nice trick for an electric vehicle. Hell, pulling a fenceline tight across a muddy pasture would be a trick with an electric vehicle.

Next, what happens to the electric car that runs out of juice (stuck in a traffic jam on a cold day)? You can't just dump a gallon of gas in it to get to the next gas station. Yeah, eventually tech may solve that issue, but not soon.

Now, how many big urban areas have power grid issues now? Brownouts and such. Think their infrastructure is going to support going electric for their transportation?

http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/planning/census/cps2k.htm According to the 2000 census, only about 60% of Americans lived in cities with over 200K population. I'll grant you that is more than half, but there are still a LOT of folks in small towns, suburban areas outside cities, and rural communities that have commutes that are going to make going all electric a pain.

Jake

Your bike gets better MPG than a prius because it's smaller. 3 wheel EREV cars that classify as bikes like the Aptera get over 100 MPG and are larger than your bike.

The suburbs is part of a city, it's not rural at all. School and a Wal Mart are always within spitting distance in the burbs. 80% of the country lives in urban or suburban areas, and only 20% is rural.

The F350 can't be replaced by electric, but the vast majority of F350 sales goes to suburbainites who use it to commute to and from work, never haul anything with it, and maintain a pristine truck bed that doesn't have a scratch. Very few F350 trucks actually work for a living, and in southern California girls in a thong bikini riding on the back of a bike down the freeway is a more common sight than F350's actually hauling something. Trucks that actually work for a living within city limits tend to be very light ones like a ford ranger or beat up old toyota, and as previously established most Americans live in cities or suburbs. For the most part people in urban/suburban areas who buy trucks like a F350 or Tundra so they can go around tailgaiting smaller vehicles at 75MPH and still see over the other car because the higher visibility makes them "A better driver" Once again sometimes people in a rural area actually put a F350 to work potentially scratching it's bed, but like I said we city slickers outnumber you 4 to 1.

What happens when EREV run out of juice in the battery? The internal combustion engine turns on and generates electricity using gasoline or diesel. Nobody is stuck out in the middle of nowhere.

As far as the power grid goes there are some simple answers that don't involve replacing our entire power grid with a fictional all green power grid that runs entirely on solar, wind, and unicorn farts.

#1) Raise the cost of electricity and let the free market settle. Curly Q light bulbs and other energy savers become more attractive once electric rates go up.

#2) Stop the freeze on new nuclear plants.

#3) Burn more Made in the USA COAL.

As far as the power grid goes there are some simple answers that don't involve replacing our entire power grid with a fictional all green power grid that runs entirely on solar, wind, and unicorn farts.

At this point many people consider nuclear to be a green alternative. So it would be solar, wind, and nuclear. Nuclear being the actual functional workhorse, something thats been better then coal in almost every respect for decades. The bans already been partially overturned. Also, as an aside, most economists would tell you that artificially raising the price of energy is one of the most destructive things you can do to a recovering economy.

CptJake wrote:50MPG? My bike (2011 Rocker-C) gets about 55 and is all gas. Heck, the wife's 'vette gets about 30 on the highway and 20 + city. Hightech gas engines will be getting 50 MPG or better way before the infrastructure is in place to support all electric even in cities. Many new non-hybrid cars are easily getting high 20s to mid 30s MPG city and highway today. And they are currently cheaper to run by far than a hybrid when lifecycle costs are figured in.

I've never heard of a Harley getting 50 mpg - even modern V-twins suffer from poor fuel consumption, and the antiquated air-cooled designs that HD use are nowhere near efficient. Something about the size of the cylinder and speed of the burn means that fuel at the edges of the cylinder don't get ignited (or ignites too late); that is why some vehicle manufacturers use twinspark designs or various injection setups to atomise the fuel better. I've also heard (from a dyno operator at a HD/chopper garage) that HD purposely put the ignition or valve timing out (can't remember which) to give it its distinctive sound, at the expensive of engine performance.

There are diesel engines already getting 75MPG (claimed, Ford Fiesta with low rolling resistance tyres); my diesel Civic is averaging nearly 52MPG (although I drive like a judge at the moment). It's only America I'm aware of that has a fascination with large inefficient engines. 'High 20s to mid 30s MPG' is abysmal (OK, depends a lot on the city).

With regards pulling horses and fencelines, it's all down to torque and gearing - I've heard of a 2-wheel drive 125cc bike that could pull several tonnes because it produced so much torque and was low-geared. It all depends on the motor and the vehicle - there's plenty of electric trains around the world.

CptJake wrote:50MPG? My bike (2011 Rocker-C) gets about 55 and is all gas.

Comparing a bike to a four door car is simultaneously silly and also possibly a big step towards significantly reducing fuel usage.

It's very wasteful for people to keep driving family cars to and from work each day, carrying just themselves. People complain about SUVs because they're obnoxious fuel wasters, and fair enough, but is a family sedan carrying just one person really that much better?

Perhaps more people need to start using bikes or small one man vehicles to commute?

Then of course there's the idea of more people using public transport to get to work.

And my point in an earlier post about hauling still holds. Show me any electric vehicle in the next 15 years that can replace the F350 we use to haul horses and hay (and other stuff).

There's no reason electric vehicles would need to replace any and all vehicles. Hell, we could still have muscle cars and the like burning up what's left of our precious petrol. What matters is that the bulk of dirving gets done with a lot less petrol, because the cost of that stuff is only going to go up and up.

Ulver wrote:
I've never heard of a Harley getting 50 mpg - even modern V-twins suffer from poor fuel consumption, and the antiquated air-cooled designs that HD use are nowhere near efficient. Something about the size of the cylinder and speed of the burn means that fuel at the edges of the cylinder don't get ignited (or ignites too late); that is why some vehicle manufacturers use twinspark designs or various injection setups to atomise the fuel better. I've also heard (from a dyno operator at a HD/chopper garage) that HD purposely put the ignition or valve timing out (can't remember which) to give it its distinctive sound, at the expensive of engine performance.

http://www.harley-davidson.com/en_US/Motorcycles/rocker-c.html#/specs

I guess you may have heard wrong.

The specs say 54 MPG highway. And by the way, that is a 96ci engine. Computer controlled fuel injection does a lot for it. Mine is tuned to the custom pipes and the Screaming Eagle Aircleaner and actually does better than spec as a result. I also submit the dyno operator you talked to is wrong. One of my buddies owns/runs a custom shop around here and I am buddies with the mechs at the Harley shop and they would strongly dispute that statement. My last bike was a custom with a 96ci S&S engine (one in my profile pic), and it was even more 'Harley' sounding than any Harley out there by the way.

Jake

tl;dr. Sorry if this was already posted but there are fundimental differences between the Leaf and Volt.

The leaf is a complete electric car, plug it in and charge it up; When it runs out of juice you're stuck.

Volt is a series hybrid (as opposed to the prius, a parallel hybrid). You charge it up and get 40 miles, zero gas. If you drive less than 20 miles one way you will never, ever use gas. If you need to drive more than 40 miles between charges the ICE (internal combustion engine) kicks in and recharges the batteries, giving you as much range as a normal car, as you can just stop at the next exit and get more gas.

So, the volt is the best of both worlds. You could in theory never put gas in it assuming you charge it regularly. Or you could drive it across country if you went on the occasional vacation.

Worms

P.S. I want to mention the Prius doesn't get plugged in, but it always uses gas (Well unless the batteries are sufficiently charged, and you're going low enough speeds... even then you may only get a mile or 3 before you start using gas).

I :heart: my prius.