Admittedly it is a problem in lawsuitland.
Well the op was asking how near we are, not if we are there yet. 
Exactly why are they only interim solutions? Why is a vehicle that averages 250 mpg over its lifespan, has a multi-hundred mile range, and can drive for weeks on end without a recharge if it must, somehow inferior to all-electric? I’m really not getting it. At the rate of consumption we’re talking about, we could power the auto fleet with biodiesel if necessary. Fully sustainable, cheap, and can be distributed using the existing infrastructure. This sounds like a very good solution to me, and could remain the prime technology for the majority of cars for decades to come.
Think about how many idiots run out of gas today. You see them on the side of the road all the time. Now imagine how many dead electric cars will be littering the highways when it requires planning hours ahead to make sure you have enough juice for the trip you have to make.
And if you run your car out, what do you ? Hoof it to a gas station, come back with a can, and fill it up. What are you going to do with your all-electric car? Tow it home, I guess.
Not to mention the trip back…
Very good point.
Electric car sales plunge in England. Yes, the economy has hurt car sales across the board, but it looks like there’s other factors involved.
Sure, billions of people have access to high quality mass transit, they still don’t have a market for electric cars. Look at this article, it talks about European car makers planning to expand interest in electric cars.
If Europe, (the land of toy sized cars, sky high gas prices, and top notch mass transit), isn’t buying into electric cars yet, how can the US (the home of land-yachts, 2hr road commutes, and driving to the next store in the strip mall) manage to make it work?
We are going to be way behind Europe and Japan in the use of electric cars, every aspect of transportation in the US makes us less suited than them to embrace the electric car. Ask why THEY are still years away from having a big market for them.
Tuckerfan, you’d be interested to know that there are all of 1,100 electric cars in the UK, and this big drop in sales was mostly due to g-wiz sales dropping from 374 in 2007 to ~200 this year.
Why not use the traler-mounted battery pack to augment the on-board batteries? Suppose you have a Volt-like car 9range about 40 miles)-you hook up the trailer (100 mile range) for a longer trip. The trailer is about 3’ x 4’-and you drop it off at your local charging station.
problem solved
Sorry, Ralph, you’re a good guy and all, but the trailer idea sucks. It really does.
I am Jack’s utter lack of surprise. 
The claims of pro-electric car people that “95% of Americans can use them” have always irritated me, since the overwhelming number of people I know, put more miles on their car in a day than what every electric car (save the Tesla) has offered. Or they drive at speeds higher (35+ MPH) than what the electric vehicles are capable of doing. Every place I’ve ever worked, has had a majority of people who drive in excess of 40 miles one way.
We’ve been over this. First of all, the Volt can go farther than 40 miles. Next, many people don’t have anywhere to keep a trailer, or would have trouble finding a place to park with one. Not to mention, they’d be prime targets for theft.
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Once again, it is nice to cite your own driving needs and the commute needs of people you know, but those experiences are hardly typical. You are smart enough to know that anecdotes do not data make. Nevertheless, the ability to travel however far you want to at a moments notice will be functionality that few give up without getting a lot in return.
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The point of the thread is not if the generation of EVs that have been on the road to date (the NEVs mostly) are ready for prime time - no one would argue they are - but what place EVs of any sort may have in the near and moderate term future. For that discussion the EVs referenced previously with planned mass production dates within the next several years are the relevant vehicles to discuss. (Add in the Mitubishi iMiEV to that list.)
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We seem to have a broad consensus here that PHEVs and EREVs will have little problem gaining broad usage pending only getting to the right price point. Price point here is a net affair, factoring in the difference in sum operating expenses and any tax incentives that may become extant. The grid can easily handle a huge number of these charging off peak even without any infrastructure improvements. It is interesting to consider the recent dramatic drop in gas prices in this regard. No, few expect these low prices to last for very long, calculations based on reasonably high gas prices, near $4/gallon, are reasonable. But more so the drop illustrates how a modest drop in demand has a significant impact on oil prices. Low oil prices decreases the power of Russia and the Arab countries which to my POV is a good thing. It also keeps the costs reasonable for those uses that no realistic substitute exists at this time or on the near term horizon (like jet fuel). Also a good thing. Electricity generation is a domestic industry. Increased demand driving increased need for infrastructure improvements and for newer cleaner plants … be they nuclear, cleaner (okay, less dirty then) coal, wind farms, solar, geothermal, co-firing biomass, wave power, central or distributed generation, whatever … keeps money generating jobs here. Significant adoption of PHEVs and EREVs, along with some oil substitutes, can keep demand staked off enough to keep gas prices down for those who cannot afford to buy newer cars and provide local jobs growth at the same time. It is in our best interest as a country to help make these a cost effective purchase. Fuel cells are not on the horizon in any reasonable time frame anyway and ethanol and other potential biofuels will be at best part of the solution. (Should be done as well at the same time however.) PHEVs/EREVs are a major part of the way forward.
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We also seem to have a moderate consensus that pure BEVs will be a niche product in the US until and unless the range problem is addressed in a significant way. A Project Better Place model seems unlikely to any of us to be a great fit across the continental US even it succeeds in particular markets and behemoth batteries are a long way from cost competiveness. How big that niche will be depends on many factors and here we have some divergent thoughts. How many people’s needs can be met by a commuter car with 75 to 150 mile range? Mine would be and then some. 4 seats so I can pick the kids. And then net cost. Net ownership cost (including tax incentives) would have to be less than a similar ICE. The other big niche is fleet use for high mileage urban routes in which case the fast charge option is cost effective if it can be timed with shift changes or break stops - the cost of the very large battery is offset by the fuel and maintenance savings within a year or so. These include delivery trucks, taxis, shuttle buses, garbage trucks, etc. Problem there is the up front cost and borrowing seems to be in short supply for the next few years. So that niche seems unlikely to be exploited any time soon.
Does that seem a fair summary?
http://www.technologyreview.com/biztech/18086/ I do not know if this will be an answer. I am sure that many breakthroughs will come as long as we continue to build cars in America.
I think the idea is that, as fuel costs rise, electicity costs drop (or at least rise slower than fuel), and electrical storage technology improves, we’ll eventually see a point where drivers are never using the ICE on their hybrids. At that point, people will start asking why they’re lugging the weight of an engine and fuel tank that they never use, and take them out.
DSeid:
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Given that the statistics for “typical commute” are the ones bandied about by folks who think that the movie Who Killed the Electric Car? is accurate, that for most of my life I’ve not known very many people who only took short trips with their cars on their way to work, and that urban sprawl (and the long commutes which this entails) are huge issues in America, I find them to be suspect. Combine this, with as has been pointed out, that in places like Europe where there are large incentives for people to be driving electric vehicles, and yet folks there aren’t, it seems to me that the oft-cited statistic is flawed. Granted, I haven’t bothered to dig through all the material (and its original sources) to see what the case actually is, but so what? I (and a great many other people, I might add) didn’t need to dig through tons of economics texts, etc. to know that things like “interest only” mortgages were a Really Bad Idea[sup]TM[/sup].
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Yet to ignore the facts as they are now, is to make some of the same mistakes that have been done in the past. As has been pointed out, people have been saying practical electric cars are “just around the corner” for a considerable time now, and the cars have yet to appear. I can remember reading a piece by one of Edison’s friends, written in the early part of the 20th Century talking about how one day soon all cars would be electric. That puts the “just around the corner” bit as being older than the claims that fusion was “just around the corner.” Certainly, there have been advances in battery technology in the 100 or so years since that piece was written, but the demands placed on automobiles have also increased since then. Avid car collector Jay Leno (who’s working with BMW and others on their alternative energy cars, BTW) points out that his 100 electric car isn’t all that different than the ones being offered now.
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I agree, for the most part. However, unless the PHEVs adopt something like Dean Kamen’s stirling engine design (or other fuel agnostic engine), we’re going to find ourselves in the same situation we were in, as regards to the high fuel costs of last year, very quickly. Energy price manipulation is a fact, we’ve seen it in oil, gas, and electricity prices. I put as much faith in the promises of cheap solar (to the point where the average person could afford to install enough panels on their house to supply most of their needs) as I do an electric car which will have performance identical to that of a conventional car: If it happens, I’ll be happy, but I’m not holding my breath. There are simply too many technologies out there, which could help ease our current problems, that are just sitting on a shelf, not being used. I’m not talking about mythological things like 100 MPG carbs, but about more mundane things like Bucky Fuller’s Dymaxion Car, which proved the value of extreme aerodynamics, and wasn’t really embraced until Aptera built their car, or Toyota’s idle cutoff switch, that was first developed in the 1960s, but didn’t show up on a production car until they built the Prius. That’s just a small sampling of the things that I know are out there, and have been allowed to lie untouched for, quite literally, decades. I’m sure that there’s probably a number of other things out there that I don’t even know about.
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BEVs don’t even seem to be much of a niche product now, even in areas where you’d expect them to be widely adopted. And while I agree with your assesment of things which will need to happen before we can hope to see wider adoption of BEVs, you leave out a few issues, which, IMHO, could turn out to be more important. First of all, there’s the environmental costs of the mining and recycling of the materials related to the electronics and batteries. Only some of these are being addressed currently, and nobody knows what some of the unintended environmental costs of the adoption of large number of electric vehicles will be. There is also the fact that the largest sources of lithium are in Bolivia, which is another place we’re not exactly on good terms with. We might be trading the Russian and Mid-East nutters for some South American ones. Nor should we think that once the petrodollars cease flowing into the Mid-East in a significant quantity, that our problems with that part of the world will be over. Remember, Afghanistan didn’t become a threat to the US until after we stopped pouring money into that part of the world.
My first reaction to this was, “It would be cool if that worked!” As others have pointed out, there are difficulities with this approach.
Another that popped into my head is that swapping battery packs would be… what’s the word? I’m thinking about people with limited incomes who buy their gas $5 to $10 at a time (maybe it’s more these days, but still not a full tank’s worth). A battery pack is not easily divided like a tank of gas. Even if the car were affordable, this might cause problems for lower income people or those with budget problems. I’m hardly an economist, though, so this might be only a minor issue compared to the others.
As to the always around the corner factor … I’m not talking about vague concept cars, but cars that have production schedules announced. The technology for these cars is here. Building the capacity for mass production is a different issue than waiting for the technology.
As to your desire for a “fuel agnostic engine” - it would be best if any liquid fuel that comes out is backwards compatible to some degree - but sure an engine that could work on any fuel source would be nice. Whether the Stirling does that or not, I’ll reserve my assessment for now.
Lithium availability. Happy to see that you include recycling upfront, even if to worry about the its possible future environmental cost. Many who fret about future lithium supplies forget that recycling these batteries is not a difficult process - it merely awaits a large source of used batteries. As to the where it is … right now the big producer is SQM in Chile. Their take is
Bolivia does have large untapped reserves. As does China. And Argentina is another major producer.
Rivulus FWIW the Better Place model is to have it paid on a monthly subscription basis like your cell phone bill. You pay less for the car than if you owned the battery but you pay more for the monthly service, the amount based on your expected usage and of course more if you go over your plan.
The Volt people claim that a 40 mile range vehicle will suffice for 75 % of the people in America.
You also have to solve the (admittedly minor, compared to everything else) problem that these newfangled cars will run a lot quieter, which would present a danger to sight-impaired people.
Apartment complexes are only part of the problem. In many urban areas, particularly where there are row homes, you only occasionally get to park in front of your own house. If you’re parked a quarter of a block away then you’re not going to be able to plug into your house. Municipalities would have to install and maintain thousands of curbside charging stations that accept debit and credit cards.
If, like many people where I live, you have a parking space at the bottom of your yard then you’ll have to pay to have a charging station with some kind of lock installed next to the space.
So sight-impaired people are also deaf? Who knew?
How about passing a law that only noisy cars are allowed on the streets? Should be no problem for my hoop-de jalopy.
So we’ve got three pages of FUD from Tuckerfan here. Might I ask for your take on what ought to replace electric cars? You’ve found the most negative situations possible for electric vehicles. If you’re so sure they’ll fail, then what should we do?
It’s really bizarre to see such a “can’t-do” attitude from you about this kind of thing. If there’s ever been anything that defined America in the best of times has been it’s can-do attitude about solving our problems through technology. I think people might be a little bit more willing to not be such pansies about the initial problems than you imagine.
If we decide to go electric in a big way, for all the right reasons, then maybe people will be a little more understanding? Yeah they may bitch when one of the millions of super-cautious problems may arise, but maybe that’s better than having to kowtow to a bunch of dictators in the Middle East? I’d rather have a faulty yet privately owned transportation infrastructure, rather than one we have to borrow from the Chinese to pay the Arabs to function. When oil was at it’s peak we were spending around a trillion dollars a year on it.
As far as electric cars being too quiet? That’s really neither here nor there. A car going at 40 MPH while idling is just as quiet as any electric car would be. The tire noise is louder. Gasoline engines are made pretty quiet these days too.