Of course, they’ll have to be pushed there since they can’t travel very far under their own power
(Reuters) Recent moves by Japan’s two largest automakers suggest that the electric car, after more than 100 years of development and several brief revivals, still is not ready for prime time – and may never be.
In the meantime, the attention of automotive executives in Asia, Europe and North America is beginning to swing toward an unusual but promising new alternate power source: hydrogen.
The reality is that consumers continue to show little interest in electric vehicles, or EVs, which dominated U.S. streets in the first decade of the 20th century before being displaced by gasoline-powered cars.
Despite the promise of “green” transportation – and despite billions of dollars in investment, most recently by Nissan Motor Co – EVs continue to be plagued by many of the problems that eventually scuttled electrics in the 1910s and more recently in the 1990s. Those include high cost, short driving range and lack of charging stations.
Even most climate astrologers weren’t interested in purchasing these vehicles, including the Chevy Firestarter, er, Volt. What’s the point of spending quite a bit of money for a vehicle that won’t go very far per charge, and tends to be tiny? Sure, Warmists would be saving the planet from boiling, but they’ve never had much interest in practicing what they preach. Why spend $45k on a Volt when one can purchase a load Civic for quite a bit less, and actually be able to drive somewhere? And people aren’t particularly enthused by EVs which could catch on fire in their garages. Nor getting stranded because there are no charging stations. Driving an EV requires the driver to become the most anal of travelers, planning each and every trip down to the second, even if that trip is simply to work, the grocery store, or the movies.
Eventually, perhaps EVs will be viable (of course, where’s the power for them coming from?). In the meantime, hybrids are the best alternative. Of course, most are still low powered, and cannot perform many functions that gas only vehicles with big engines are needed for.
If they could figure how to produce diamonds and oxygen from tailpipe, of an electric vehicle, then you would see it happen.
Bummer Teach Real BUMMER
The Volt is not an electric car. The range of a Volt is 379 miles, with the first 37 miles 100% electric and getting the equivalent of 100+MPG. The Volt is a plug in hybrid, not an electric car, the Nissan Leaf is all electric. Teach you are soooo emotional involved with hating “green” that you embarrass yourself. Honda also makes a hybrid Civic. And Teach no American pays 45K for a Volt. If you bought a Volt it would take you to work gas free, after charging you could then drive home, again gas free. Duke Power would also give you or your business some nice incentives. Oh yeah one other thing, chicks like that whole “green” thing. Might help.
And hydrogen whether as a fuel cell or in combustion is 2 decades away.
Well john, for someone who believes in “green,” you should know better than to throw stones and yet live under a glass bridge.
First, the chances of driving to work, recharging the Volt and then driving home are rather slim. There simply aren’t enough power charging stations to make that anything other than a pipe dream. Also in that the charging systems are not standardized for all makes and models, that compounds the problem.
You are correct that no American is paying $45K for a Volt. In most cases they are paying more when taxes and charging stations are added in. I suspect that you are referring to tax credits, but who do you think pays for those tax credits, john? Leprechauns and unicorns?
Finally, not only is hydrogen as a fuel cell here, the technology was stolen by the government from a private company and given to Ford and GM. You can read more about that disaster here.
So yeah, Teach made a small error in lumping the Volt with EV’s but compared to your mistakes and ignorance, he is still way ahead of the game in this post and in life.
Weds. morning links…
Is Dr. Oz a quack? After 30 years, a GM food breakthrough finally here Do violent criminals have a brain abnormality? The South Has Risen Again THE MISSISSIPPI MEANDER – Cartophilia: a ghostly map takes Samantha Weinberg to the river, and shows…
and pray johnny, where is the electricity to charge that EV going to come from? Over here (and in most places) that’d be coal and oil fired powerstations.
Company doesn’t have charging stations for EVs, and they’re not going to buy one for every employee, they’d need 500 just for the location I work at, 12000 worldwide.
At home I don’t have a garage, would have to run a high voltage cable from an upstairs window across a sidewalk, across a street. Not only would it be stolen every night, if it weren’t I’d rightfully be fined heavily for creating a major safety hazard. And the city isn’t going to install them at every parking spot and pay for the charging out of taxmoney either.
IOW our cities simply aren’t geared towards EVs, and can never be. The only solution would be to fit cars with small nuclear reactors, which would only need replacement of their cores every few years, performed during routine maintenance.
I doubt the “environmentalists” would like that idea very much.
No one has answered the question how far a battery powered vehicle will go on a 20 degree day with the heater on, or a 90 degree day with air on. (If it has neither, It would be impractical.
The colder it gets the less power output from a
battery. Electric cars are nothing more than glorified GOLF CARTS in my opinion.