On May 25, 2008, at 3:33 AM, Byron Jeff wrote:
> I'm kind of surprised that with the surge in fuel costs that a  
> thread on
> electric vehicles (EV) had not got jump started here.
>
[This part of the discussion moved to [OT]]

The EV idea seems fundamentally flawed to me.  At best, it doesn't  
scale to being used by large numbers of people just because the  
electric grid isn't set up to handle that additional load.  Worse,  
you may be making less efficient use of energy (lugging all that  
extra weigh around) that is only cheaper (if it IS cheaper) due to  
artificial and perhaps temporary pricing structures for electricity  
(being able to plug in your electric at work and charge it for free  
is well within [doesn't scale, artificial, and temporary], for example.

IMO, EVs were originally aimed at the pollution problem, where you  
could get significant improvements by replacing IC engines in dense  
(car-wise) urban environments.  They weren't, and aren't, very good  
at addressing an energy crisis.  (This of course assumes that we have  
an energy crisis rather than just a gasoline pricing problem.)

BillW

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