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 Grey Templar wrote:

Herzlos wrote:

 Necros wrote:
I don't really think they would be able to replace gas cars unless they can get charging times down to 5-10 minutes

That's because you're viewing it as a direct gas replacement instead of a paradigm shift.

You will NEVER get widespread adoption of electric cars unless they are a direct gas replacement. Society as a whole cannot change how we use vehicles to accommodate for the shortcomings of electric vehicles overnight, its just too drastic of a change.

True, but except for a certain subset of people, I think the actual change to driving habits is minimal. The "problem" most people have with EVs is often simply not an issue, it's just something people see as "worse" than what they currently have so they home in on it as a problem. We analysed what types of trips we'd make in our car before we bought it and the maximum distance we'd likely travel in it would be 200 miles or so, to see family. Anything longer than that we'd likely fly or take a train. 99% of our journeys are less than 20 miles. Since buying the car we've asked friends to keep track of their driving habits too and the results have been pretty much the same. Some do longer trips more frequently, but even these are more like 40-50 miles one way and those types of journeys invariably involve a longer stop-off at the end of them. I'm aware this varies country-to-country, but I suspect it varies less than people think.

So I'm not sure how true it is that it would be a drastic change, especially as range creeps up towards 250-300 miles.

 Grey Templar wrote:

Herzlos wrote:

 Necros wrote:
I don't really think they would be able to replace gas cars unless they can get charging times down to 5-10 minutes

That's because you're viewing it as a direct gas replacement instead of a paradigm shift.

You will NEVER get widespread adoption of electric cars unless they are a direct gas replacement. Society as a whole cannot change how we use vehicles to accommodate for the shortcomings of electric vehicles overnight, its just too drastic of a change.

I disagree, change is largely inevitable and for most people an electric car is actually more convenient once you get through all the FUD. We're all already familiar with having to charge things like phones, laptops, watches, etc. overnight so a car isn't wildly different. Cars and how they are used have changed drastically over the 100 years we've had them, this is just the next step in the evolution where many people would never need to visit a gas station again. The only real change is in long haul travel where the options are to stop every few hours to recharge (and eat), rent a vehicle with a longer range or use some other form of transport. For most people in the UK, they'd only need to do journeys over an EV range a few times a year.

There are a few use cases where EV's aren't great, like the police one mentioned above and I'm not sure how it could be solved beyond them using hybrids as you couldn't really stop mid pursuit to recharge.
That said, there are a lot of EV/Hybrid taxis around already. It seems mad but somewhere like London they might not cover that many miles over a shift and the fast charging is good enough.

 Overread wrote:

Crispy78 wrote:
Mmm. Battery in the Tesla Model 3 weighs 480kg. It's not something you could just pop the equivalent of into your back seat to double your range...

See if I were into electric car business, I'd be considering making a portion or all of the battery in the car a standard fit and design. The idea being that since you are renting the battery anyway you could roll up to any garage and swap batteries. So instead of having to charge your car you simply swap over the battery for their stock battery and keep going.

Most manufacturers seem to have considered it but I'm not sure the customer would actually be happy with the idea as it only works if you rent the batteries and what happens if you swap in a bad battery? The range has increased drastically already so we've largely passed the point where a battery swap would be beneficial in terms of time because the fast chargers aren't going to be much worse, assuming a battery swap would take something like 5 minutes to do rather than seconds.

 Overread wrote:
I've heard some police dislike electric cars because of the dangers of electrocution and burning/exploding batteries. Rendering the car a high hazard if they are involved in a crash or other incident. Granted its not as if petrol cars are safe in a crash; but I think it helps highlight how police and emergency services are likely not yet well trained and equipped to deal with electric cars.

There's some risk that a burning battery can be hard to extinguish, or a leaking battery could be pretty nasty, but they seem to be safer than combustion.
One of the few cases of a Tesla catching fire in use turned out to be because the battery was hit by a bullet coming from the passenger compartment - https://electrek.co/2018/12/16/tesla-fire-bullet-battery/

This past weekend was the Le Mans 24h race, and in the wee hours of the night, they had some "interesting" discussions.

The long and short of it, per these guys who have been interviewing some of the engineers behind the future cars (ie, Peugeot's hydrogen future/show car for the FIA) for years now are saying that the Tesla and other "standard" EVs that we see currently on the road today are merely stop-gaps to the "true" future of the automotive world.

The problem of current EVs, is that they simply move the pollution from point of use (as an ICE car does) to point of creation (power plants creating the electricity for the chargers). Apparently what the hydrogen celled EVs would do is have a tank/cell with hydrogen which through electro wizardry powers some self-charging thing making pit stops for "fuel" ever further apart. And, depending future designs one could imagine it would be a simple thing like swapping propane tanks at your local hardware store (ie, pay at the register, drop the old tank in a cage, pick up a new/full one, and off ya go).

 Ensis Ferrae wrote:
This past weekend was the Le Mans 24h race, and in the wee hours of the night, they had some "interesting" discussions.

The long and short of it, per these guys who have been interviewing some of the engineers behind the future cars (ie, Peugeot's hydrogen future/show car for the FIA) for years now are saying that the Tesla and other "standard" EVs that we see currently on the road today are merely stop-gaps to the "true" future of the automotive world.

The problem of current EVs, is that they simply move the pollution from point of use (as an ICE car does) to point of creation (power plants creating the electricity for the chargers). Apparently what the hydrogen celled EVs would do is have a tank/cell with hydrogen which through electro wizardry powers some self-charging thing making pit stops for "fuel" ever further apart. And, depending future designs one could imagine it would be a simple thing like swapping propane tanks at your local hardware store (ie, pay at the register, drop the old tank in a cage, pick up a new/full one, and off ya go).

Makes sense to me I guess.

There was some article I read somewhere a few weeks ago about the 'battery revolution' and the huge strides made in battery and cell technology in the past few years. I suppose it's not a coincidence the Governor of California picked now to set a 2035 goal for electric vehicles. The way it's being talked about seems like we've had a vague idea of what the future would look like and it's simply been the waiting game as the technology is devised and worked out. Coincides with the rapid expansion of green/renewable energy production too. I suppose if we can't make any sort of meaningful goal for reducing our environmental footprints, we could just do what we've always done as a species and tech our way out of the problem XD

EDIT: Didn't Airbus just come out with a concept for a hydrogen cell passenger aircraft too? Hydrogen is getting to be real popular in elemental the schoolyard XD

 Ensis Ferrae wrote:

The problem of current EVs, is that they simply move the pollution from point of use (as an ICE car does) to point of creation (power plants creating the electricity for the chargers).

It's not just a case of moving the pollution; combustion engines are at most about 70% efficient whilst burning the same gas in a power plant may be as much as 99% efficient so you're much better off even with transmission losses. There's also something to be said for moving pollution away from streets into facilities that can filter them better - we get better air quality where the people are.

It's even more important for plant, JCB have an electric digger now which can run indoors without needing extractor fans and to change drivers every hour because it's not filling the room with exhaust emissions. It has an additional bonus that it's almost silent so you don't need a banksman to let you know if you've hit something you shouldn't - you can hear it.

And that's just assuming that we're burning the same fuel in a different location. EV's can be powered by anything that produces electricity - solar, wave, wind, hydro, biomass, nuclear, gas, oil, coal, hamster, and so on.

Apparently what the hydrogen celled EVs would do is have a tank/cell with hydrogen which through electro wizardry powers some self-charging thing making pit stops for "fuel" ever further apart. And, depending future designs one could imagine it would be a simple thing like swapping propane tanks at your local hardware store (ie, pay at the register, drop the old tank in a cage, pick up a new/full one, and off ya go).

Currently (in the UK at least) any van carrying compressed gas needs special warning stickers on the back and have lower speed limits on some roads, because of the additional danger of crashing with compressed gas. I can't see hydrogen being a common thing because of the danger involved in crash and failure.

However, I can see hydrogen being used for specialist applications - that stuff where pure battery isn't viable.

 Ensis Ferrae wrote:
This past weekend was the Le Mans 24h race, and in the wee hours of the night, they had some "interesting" discussions.

The long and short of it, per these guys who have been interviewing some of the engineers behind the future cars (ie, Peugeot's hydrogen future/show car for the FIA) for years now are saying that the Tesla and other "standard" EVs that we see currently on the road today are merely stop-gaps to the "true" future of the automotive world.

The problem of current EVs, is that they simply move the pollution from point of use (as an ICE car does) to point of creation (power plants creating the electricity for the chargers). Apparently what the hydrogen celled EVs would do is have a tank/cell with hydrogen which through electro wizardry powers some self-charging thing making pit stops for "fuel" ever further apart. And, depending future designs one could imagine it would be a simple thing like swapping propane tanks at your local hardware store (ie, pay at the register, drop the old tank in a cage, pick up a new/full one, and off ya go).

Hydrogen has been the EV-beater for years now and it never seems to get anywhere. The problem seems to be it has even worse infrastructure problems than electric since at least with an EV you can charge at home, or set up a charger pretty much anywhere with the minimum of effort just by connecting it up to the national electrical grid. There's also the issue of getting all that hydrogen - it may technically be very abundant but getting it in the form required to power a car isn't that straight forward. I think if they can overcome these problems hydrogen would replace EVs as the way forward but they may have fallen too far behind, especially as batteries creep up towards the 350-400 mile range and charging times come down. BTW, hydrogen powered cars fill up from a pump, exactly like regular petrol/diesel cars.

As for the pollution aspect, as well as the points mentioned above about shifting where the pollution occurs, it's also the case that we're running out of fossil fuels and all electricity in the future will need to be generated by clean(er) processes anyway. I live in Scotland and we already produce a very high percentage of our electricity from renewable sources and the UK as a whole has had quite a few days in the past year where no fossil fuel was burned to generate our electricity. My current supplier only provides green energy, so it is currently possible to be completely "green" from the power station to the home.

I remember from high school science that hydrogen takes about twice* the energy to produce (via splitting water at least) than you get from burning it. So whilst you can get that energy to do the split for free via renewables, it seems more sensible to just leave the energy as electric.

As you said, you'd then need all the petroleum infrastructure but under might higher pressure.


edit: *google says it's about 70-80% efficient with best techniques at the moment.

The current industrial scale method for producing hydrogen uses natural gas as the feedstock for the process, which is neither green nor sustainable. It's possible to use methane from any natural source but the problem there is the volume of gas required on an industrial scale if the entire automotive industry switches to it. Also, the process emits carbon dioxide as a waste product, which isn't great for the environment either. Electrolysis works too and is fairly efficient.

I suspect many of these issues are not insurmountable but if EVs become good enough for almost all normal driving I can't see where the impetus to develop the hydrogen infrastructure, from production to transport to delivery to consumers, is going to come from.

Slipspace wrote:
The current industrial scale method for producing hydrogen uses natural gas as the feedstock for the process, which is neither green nor sustainable. It's possible to use methane from any natural source but the problem there is the volume of gas required on an industrial scale if the entire automotive industry switches to it. Also, the process emits carbon dioxide as a waste product, which isn't great for the environment either. Electrolysis works too and is fairly efficient.

I suspect many of these issues are not insurmountable but if EVs become good enough for almost all normal driving I can't see where the impetus to develop the hydrogen infrastructure, from production to transport to delivery to consumers, is going to come from.

Well that's disappointing. You'd the think the most abundant element in the universe would be easier to get your hands on.

Slipspace wrote:
The current industrial scale method for producing hydrogen uses natural gas as the feedstock for the process, which is neither green nor sustainable. It's possible to use methane from any natural source but the problem there is the volume of gas required on an industrial scale if the entire automotive industry switches to it. Also, the process emits carbon dioxide as a waste product, which isn't great for the environment either. Electrolysis works too and is fairly efficient.

I suspect many of these issues are not insurmountable but if EVs become good enough for almost all normal driving I can't see where the impetus to develop the hydrogen infrastructure, from production to transport to delivery to consumers, is going to come from.

Hydrogen may not be developed for car usage, but it could be a viable fuel for airplanes. Going for fully electric planes seems difficult at the moment, while using hydrogen instead of jet fuel isn't such a huge change.

And security isn't a problem since planes are already flying deathtraps anyway

 LordofHats wrote:
Well that's disappointing. You'd the think the most abundant element in the universe would be easier to get your hands on.

It's not hard to get. If you want, you can start producing hydrogen yourself with a battery, a couple wires and a few glass containers. Industrial methods can reach pretty good efficiency. The problem that really hampers H2 is storing and transporting it.

Ok some general replies here.

As to EVs just moving the pollution, i have to say not quite true. First off the bigger an electrical generation system gets the more efficient it gets, so a huge electrical plant burns fuel more efficiently than a car engine and produced less pollution per amount of power released, so recharging EVs from a huge plant would lessen pollution thru greater efficiency.

Also small, localized recharges could run off solar or wind. Plus if the rest of the west followed the french nuclear model we'd have efficient, safe and cost effective nuclear power all over the place...

As to hydrogen, I know the issues with getting the stuff in a free state, but I wonder of we couldn't set up big hydrogen plants in large open desert areas where there's just lots of unused open space and sunlight. Set up massive solar arrays to power the plant and during daylight it makes hydrogen thru solar powered electrolysis. The liberated oxygen is a useful gas and could be sold to people who have special uses for it .

A rail line could bring in takers of water and take away cargo cars filled with stored hydrogen and oxygen.

I'd like to at least have this concept look into by people without a pro petroleum bias.

 Matt Swain wrote:
As to EVs just moving the pollution, i have to say not quite true. First off the bigger an electrical generation system gets the more efficient it gets, so a huge electrical plant burns fuel more efficiently than a car engine and produced less pollution per amount of power released, so recharging EVs from a huge plant would lessen pollution thru greater efficiency.

I've always assumed that most 'green' tech is better than current fossil fuel tech, even if it doesn't 100% solve all problems.

The danger I guess is in people becoming complacent, assuming 'problem solved' and then deciding that's good enough. Projects like the one you describe take lots of investment and involve lots of risk. That doesn't make them bad, but people are a bunch of lazy fethers XD It's easier to take the easy way out and assume it's all better now than to deal with an ongoing problem as an ongoing problem.

I actually am really excited about the prospect of electric cars. Electric engines have crazy amount of torque compared to combustion engines.

Well, with Tesla building its new 4 million something sq ft assembly plant a few miles down the road and 5,000 some-odd jobs and the premise they can establish economies of scale to reduce the price tag and better battery tech, makes me happy - especially for the increase in the neighborhood values!

 Matt Swain wrote:

As to hydrogen, I know the issues with getting the stuff in a free state, but I wonder of we couldn't set up big hydrogen plants in large open desert areas where there's just lots of unused open space and sunlight. Set up massive solar arrays to power the plant and during daylight it makes hydrogen thru solar powered electrolysis. The liberated oxygen is a useful gas and could be sold to people who have special uses for it .

A rail line could bring in takers of water and take away cargo cars filled with stored hydrogen and oxygen.

I think that's what would happen if hydrogen fuel had a suitable uptake (for things like aircraft), albeit they'd probably pipe the water in and gasses out. It's just less efficient and less safe to do that for car fuel than to just pipe the generated electricity away. I understand that solar farms like that already exist.

Slipspace wrote:

Hydrogen has been the EV-beater for years now and it never seems to get anywhere.

My comment above was merely trying to relay what a commentary crew during a motor race were saying. . .

https://www.racecar-engineering.com/articles/wec-hydrogen-2024/


Now, I wouldn't necessarily say that this is the "EV-beater" . . . but I think that for EVs to truly take off, they do need to be able to run endurance racing events like Le Mans, as that race in particular has been basically the #1 showcase for new/future automotive tech for decades, and this project, IMO, shows promise of being able to deliver an "EV" that can run a 24h event. But with the way things are going, do we really need something that "beats" an EV? If companies buy into the infrastructure to convert petrol stations into hydrogen/plug-in EV stations, wouldn't this negate many of the problems that have been discussed? I would have to think that at some point even the petroleum companies and big oil recognize the fact that they are, as oil companies, on the way out. A rethink could see them become "energy companies" instead, thus pushing their own massive infrastructures into the direction of hydrogen, or plug in electrics.

I dunno, I just don't see Hydrogen taking off, even if it is the best way to go, like the infrastructure you need to make that an option for the general public seems pretty massive. whereas EVs you can just charge from home and it's easier to set up gas stations and highway rest stops with charging stations, since they already have power lines connected it's probably a lot easier to set up than building hydrogen gas pumps and all.

Tesla just announced they have some fancy new batteries that are smaller and better. one article said it could get the Model 3 down to around $25,000 .. I'll believe that when I see it.

EVs are definitely eventually going to be the standard. However that won't happen until they can be fully charged from empty in only a couple minutes and also have a range of a few hundred miles. They'll also have to not cost an arm and a leg, the home charging equipment will need to not cost an arm and a leg, and the home charging equipment will need to be easily installed in any location. It'll need to be practical for not only someone who has a house with a garage, but also someone who has to park on the street or in a communal parking garage. Sure, eventually it might be standard for landlords to have EV charging stations in all the parking spots of their apartments, but that would require a massive majority of renters to have EVs first because otherwise they couldn't afford to do that.

While that will probably happen eventually, its definitely not going to happen for at least a few decades. You need to overcome the technical limitation and then wait for the technology to become more widely used before it can become dominant.

I can't post the pic here but if you do a google search for "Bloom county electric car" you'll see a picture illustrating one definite virtue of a solar charged electric car: The sweet satisfaction of 'refilling" your car at no cost and not giving a cent to foreign countries or big business.

 Grey Templar wrote:
EVs are definitely eventually going to be the standard. However that won't happen until they can be fully charged from empty in only a couple minutes and also have a range of a few hundred miles. They'll also have to not cost an arm and a leg, the home charging equipment will need to not cost an arm and a leg, and the home charging equipment will need to be easily installed in any location. It'll need to be practical for not only someone who has a house with a garage, but also someone who has to park on the street or in a communal parking garage. Sure, eventually it might be standard for landlords to have EV charging stations in all the parking spots of their apartments, but that would require a massive majority of renters to have EVs first because otherwise they couldn't afford to do that.

While that will probably happen eventually, its definitely not going to happen for at least a few decades. You need to overcome the technical limitation and then wait for the technology to become more widely used before it can become dominant.

Chargers already exist that can charge a 300-mile range battery to full in around 20 minutes (they're currently experimental as no cars are commercially available that can use the connector, though Audi have one about to release, IIRC). The physics and chemistry of how batteries work do put a lower limit on how fast you can charge them but I think the increase in range will simultaneously reduce the requirement to recharge from <10% to 100% in almost all cases.

I think we might eventually see home chargers and on-street chargers become the norm. Around me all of the new housing developments are building houses with integrated solar panels, which wasn't standard until about a year ago and I can see chargers being similar if EVs become popular enough. The problem will then be retrofitting them to other houses and on streets to cater for people who don't have off-street parking, which is still the majority in the UK. A second issue is that many houses with off-street parking may not have their electricity supply routed to a convenient point in the house to allow a charger to be fitted. We were lucky that our supply comes into a cupboard that adjoins the garage so the charger could easily be fitted just by drilling through the wall and running a cable a few metres. In my parents house, for example, their supply comes into the middle of the house so you'd be looking at lifting floorboards and running a much longer cable.

It's also worth noting that if chargers become standard in every parking space in out-of-town shopping centres, for example, they wouldn't need to be the big fast-charging stations we have now. A small 7kW charger takes up very little space and can be connected to the regular supply with no issues. It's slower than the big charging units you see right now but that's not a problem if they're everywhere and you literally plug in whenever you stop somewhere.

 Matt Swain wrote:
Ok some general replies here.

As to EVs just moving the pollution, i have to say not quite true. First off the bigger an electrical generation system gets the more efficient it gets, so a huge electrical plant burns fuel more efficiently than a car engine and produced less pollution per amount of power released, so recharging EVs from a huge plant would lessen pollution thru greater efficiency.

That means that your car can only be as green as the grid you're hooking it up.

There was a big study not too long ago which compared well to wheels emissions of EVs vs conventional cars and hybrid and in most countries something in the 50-ish mpg range was enough to cover the gap (in places like Norway or France it obviously was much more, in the hundreds or thousands).

Yes, grids are also getting greener, but putting big heavy batteries on vehicles come with some compromises, and PHEVs with small pure EV range work for most commutes while being much more useful for the occasional long distance trip.

 Spartan 117 wrote:
I actually am really excited about the prospect of electric cars. Electric engines have crazy amount of torque compared to combustion engines.

The MG ZS EV I got is 0-60 in 8.2 seconds.
The petrol versions are 10.6 and 12 seconds (manual and automatic).
It really likes stopping at the lights

The thing about powering an EV is, as pointed out, easier to do off-grid.
Some of the at-home car chargers with with solar (or other trpes you might have) power, and can be set to charge off that first. The rest (if any) solar power can be pumped back into the grid, and power the rest of your house.
If the grid goes down, and when the pumps dry up, EVs will be the only things still running.
Our roof is on sideways, so solar is not a good option for us. And, being in a housing estate, wild is a bit rude, too.

Our charger run through a wall from the under-stairs loo, through a kitchen cabinet, and out to the drive. The earth spike was a bit fiddly, but they managed to stick one in, as our type of outside charger has to have one of its own.

I'm in favor of EVs and honestly no longer even look at the opposition's points anymore.

In modern society reason is dead. We live in a post truth, post facts and post reason world. Facts, truth and reason don't matter anymore. All that matters is "If that group is for something them I'm against it!" The 'reasons' are made up later and often quite ludicrous.

Look at wind power. 'TURBINES ARE UGLY! THEY CAUSE CANCER! THEY LOWER PROPERTY VALUES! THEY GIVE YOU EPILEPSY! THEY KILL BIRDS!" (The last is really funny considering it's raised by people who generally oppose any form of protection for wildlife from pollution or development of wild lands.)

No matter what change anyone wants to make or how good it would be, it will be opposed automatically by those who are mind-locked to the status quo.

Hell is the impossibility of reason, and we are in hell now. You can't reason with large segments of the population anymore. The best you can do is pick the position you believe is best and stick wit it.

I believe we have a problem with petroleum engines now, we need to change it, and EVs are at least an attempt to move in a good direction and I refuse to even bother trying to engage with the other side or consider their mostly made up 'reasons' to oppose EVs or any other change from the status quo.

Does that seem unreasonable? Maybe it is, but again, hell is the impossibility of reason and we're in hell now. Sometimes when you find you're going thru hell the only thing to do is keep going.

So believes bitter, tired and cynical me.

There is the saying:
-If not you, who?
-If not now, when?

Some common answers are:
-Those who can afford it,
-When battery technology improves.
There are things that need doing, and people have reason not to. If you don't have any reason not to, be the change you want to see happen.

I've given up hoping the majority will change.
So, I did.

Yeah, we went into our EV adventure fully acknowledging we could have got a much "better" ICE car for the money we spent and also had the extra convenience of being able to do longer trips, though with the inconvenience of not being able to "fill up" at home.

At least our EV's spec was pretty good - we got pretty much all the gadgets you could ask for in a modern car included in the cost. I think as EV prices come down more and more people will start thinking about them as viable options. I know at least two of our friends are now likely switching when they next get a new car.

Has anyone mentioned motorbikes here?

I think much more of a challenge due to the battery technology weighing so much. Couple of hundred KG can be managed in the weight of a 1.4 ton car, not so easy if the motorbike only weights less than 200kg to start with.

So perhaps some kind of hydrogen fuel cell technology will be a better route there?

Although I did think the Harley Livewire is the most modern and stylish looking machine that company has ever made (appreciate that there are a fair few Americans here who might not want to shoot me )

I have to admit not mentioning bikes seems like an oversight here.

Bikes are a minority vehicle market but still they are used by a lot of people.

I'd imagine a lot of bikers are the "Rebel who doesn't need a cause" and "Little billy bad types who would never accept an alternative to their big, loud, smoke belching hogs no matter how valid they were so we can just pretty much not try to factor them in.

In some ways bikes are great for EV use as they are often short ranged transports and the small batteries could recharge quickly. To make an EV bike with range and speed equivalent to a current version could be problematic and again, a lot of the people using bikes today like big loud roaring smoke belching and annoying beasts that make them look and sound soooo bad. The virtues of EVs will be irrelevant to them. The people who use scooters around college towns are perfect targets for EVBs, and colleges are most likely receptive to adding in the tech to support them. Large colleges and college towns seem like perfect choices to start EV programs.

I'd imagine a bike's battery would be small enough to make just swapping batteries at a service station viable.

You know one issue we're not taking on here, until now, is the power source for EVs. An EV is only as green as the grid it'g plugged into. Charging them off coal fired generator electricity is at best a minor improvement from running cars off gasoline. The more green and cost efficient a grids is the better EVs get.

So, do we want to expand this topic to green energy sources or spin off a new topic about new, green energy?

IF you want to go there, electric vehicles lend themselves economically only to long commute routes that people predicatably can pour high mile commuting into. Plug in hybrids are both cheaper, less resource intensive (many of the metals for battery production are a potential chokepoint were we to attempt to make a billion electric cars in the next decade) and far more economically effective for most commuters. (The 29 mile plug and play hybrid comes in about 7000 ish cheaper than a very cheap electric car, but suffers no loss of flexibility or long range use and no charge fussiness in a petroleum infastructure world. Even a crappy EV like a leaf with its "tiny" 150 or so mile range batteries adds thousands to the price.

Result, EV's suck. If you increase by 10 grand the cost of every car and make them less useful while making them less convenient, people won't usually pick the stupid option over the ones they can get either very cheaply (ICE) or pretty cheaply (plug in hybrids). (I would argue a 4000 to 8000 per car subsidy on things like the plug in prius hybrid would be a far better idea than any subsidy on EV ever could be.)

However, electric vehicles do have a place. The most obvious use is on long haul trucks (or buses) with a predictable route and the ability to make an all electric truck's batteries tailored to that route's length, rather than one size fits none like current EV batteries for consumer cars.
If the truck moves 200 miles each way, with a stop to recharge (or swap bats) and to reload/unload at each end, that's ideal for the truckers, who have a logical build in stage for recharging at their arrival or depatarture points, even if swapo batteries is too complex for the market to secure and manage. Especially if you end up putting 1000 miles a day on the rig, the big, inefficient truck will cut the carbon footprint of something like .. hmm ... average commuter drives only 40 miles in a vehicle that gets probably 10 times the miles per gallon (long haul trucks are typically 5 to 7 mpg, a well built commuter vehicle like a prius plus hybrid, is rated at about 58 ... that one big electric truck will save more gas roughly 250 commuters converting to prius hybrids or electric vehicles. And I am damn sure if you offer someone with a big rig 250 times 36000 dollars to buy an electric rig? They would probably do so for the free truck and early retirement account. The average commuters would (all 250 of them) have to drive their worthlessly overpriced and inefffective "green" electrical vehicles, day in, day out, even if you were to give each of them a free one through some whacky subsidy program, to match the change ONE big haul rig (admittedly 1000 miles a day approaches a theoretical maximum and requires several driver changes, but still, you get the point. at 500 miles of driving, its only 125 or so commutes worth of optimal improvements... Stick subsidies on trucks that are used by their owners as purely economic assets in commercial life, and nobody will be surprised how quickly businesses will tend to the bottom line by using them, as long as those subsidies + the power grid electrical supply actually make sense to use. That means coal at present, but also a necessary nuclear renaissance, lest we brownout more states than just electrically unstable california in summer. Ultra high use spikes of the electric grid at certain times of day could still make such trucks economically unviable -- so even then, not every trucker would want one, need one, or benefit from one.

I will say a good plug in hybrid built along the lines of the old suzuki samurai (a wrangler ripoff tiny little jeep cousin) or even a jeep wrangler (any of them) with the ability to stick a power generator, a power pack, or just plain a plug in the back to load its "light hybrid plug in battery" would be ideal from my perspective. I would buy one, potentially, although I would be very careful not to wreck my budget over something that is itself a vehicle. Probably spec it out to a 40 mile range before the gas kicks in, or the diesel, or whatever electric generator you want to go with, and let a wide aftermarket grow by standardizing the plug and control circuits for the self charger subsystems. I would not care if the things came with little coal fired steam plants driving dynamos in the back, or a wood chipper and slow cooker style of methanol fume generator. (Actually, I sort of like the idea of being able to go out to a small woodpile and throw that days' fuel into the hopper behind my jeep. I suspect however this is not the most practical thing ever, especially in deep winter areas. But I digress. Point is, if its got a giant plug that can take a battery OR a hybrid charging system, consumers can opt for the convenience and flexibility their own situation requires, rather than being subject to the artificed allocation of a central planning committee that thought "meh, 169 miles is enough for anybody, make the battery that size."

The problem with a hybrid is that you're carrying at all times one engine and its fuel that you're not using. That's quite a lot of extra volume and dead weight that'll hurt the overall efficiency of the car. Although if we're talking about a Jeep I guess fuel efficiency is already out the window...

Improvements in battery technology will certainly be the big factor for going full electric in the future. Using sodium instead of lithium seems to be promising and if it becomes viable would lower costs quite a bit.

Look closely at the total electrical consumption of a prius plus hybrid in electrical mode and compare it to any of the major electric only cars currently out there. You haul so much battery to make a stupid EV car, you lose its added efficiency back again, and end up with something only marginally more efficenient -- and USUALLY less efficient, in electric mode.
Example. Prius plug in hybrid in electric mode has a "MPGe" rating of 133 miles per "electric gallon" .. a leaf car (pure EV, and one with a crappy total range) has only a "MPGe" of about 122 (for the 149 mile range package) which drops then to 114 MPGe for the 226 mile "extendobattery" package.
Literally, they get less miles per electron than a good plug in hybrid -- and while current plugins tend to be aroudn 25 to 29 mile full electric range, it wouldn't be hard to up that to maybe 33 to 36.electric only, which would be enough for maybe 90 percent of daily users to more or less never need to go off electric, with only a nightly charge to boost the thing.

I was not facetious in my post -- electric cars suck compared to hybrids, costing more, doing less, and accomplishing less, simply because the people who get them are forced by range considerations to put huge batteries (that they usually need only once in a long while) in the cars. Tesla may be the worst of the lot in a lot of ways, building the equivalent of sports cars lowers their efficiency as well -- they are buying and putting in place an asset (the battery) and then RARELY using it for the full range. Every drive, however, they are both paying a huge premium and a huge energy cost to haul it around. The lighter weight of a hybrid motor and fuel supply wins on efficiency and price, AND convenience.

The one exception currently is one of the cheapest tesla .. the 39000 dollar one, it compares favorably in electric mode to a prius hibrid plugin. 144 mpg in electric only mode, vs prius's 133. .. however, it also costs around 38,000 dollars. As soon as you move into the rarified atmosphere of cars that are over 100 mpg equivalent, small changes in fuel efficiency aren't particularly impressive. at 15000 miles per year, (which is what the average us car drives) a change between 144 and 133 mpgE will only change the apparent fuel used by EIGHT gallons per year. That's so trivial that it's stupid. It won't pay off for spending an extra 10,000 dollars for roughly .. doing the math ... FIVE HUNDRED YEARS OF CONSTANT USE.
The reason being, all the metals in that battery that can drive that electric vehicle, we need them for our long haul trucks (see prior post) to save as much fuel as several hundred individual cars. That's why they are so expensive, the batteries, as everything else, the hybrid prius has effectively the same architecture (with active economies of scale, that's about as cheap as it gets.)

Incidentally, the EPA estimate on charging a tesla 144 mpgE car is 8.5 hours. The efficiency of its battery is higher in the higher charge ranges, too, so its not a great idea to run them half down just because you don't have time to charge fully while (I dunno) on the road. So maybe your drive to pittsburg requires multiple long stops to keep it functioning at that level, and basically, the hybrid user just says "meh, I only visit grandma once a year, what's 10 gallons gas for the whole trip? NOTHING.". So again, its not going to beat the prius which will top its own battery off while driving. Even if magic recharging stations were created that could truly fully charge a battery in 20 minutes (for a fee that is on average in a tesla about 14 bucks, according to the net sources I saw, but as high as 34 bucks, depending only on time of day and power price fluctuations in the unstable california marketplace) .. EVEN then, 20 minutes of time for an average american is worth approximately 1/3 of the 25 dollar per hour average wage we get paid at work. So that 14 dollar fill up .. while you tap your fingers bored in the side of the road .. really costs a minimum of 20, and a maximum of 42 (ish). If you are a rich enough person that your time is worth extra high amounts (doctors, for example, charge seveal hundred dollars an hour for their time, ergo, that is what the time of a doctor is worth. This is why you can get paid maids to clean their house, whose time is worth maybe minumum wage only, and the doctor in question may consider it a GREAT deal cheaper than their own time. I digress.) Driving the teslas on the open road (I suspect that charge number is for the more expensive model) ends up a cost to the consumer as high as a simple honda ICE engine car. No kidding.
Point is, being not stuck for 20 minutes a trip is worth actual money to the consumer, if they are smart enough to notice it.

I am not arguing against the existence of electric commuter vehicles and personal vehicles. As a free market fellow, I trust people to eventually figure out for their own selves that these are a poor choice for the country, ecology, and personal finance, but I wasn't facetious about ANYTHING I put in here.