Here is an old photo of a Victorian charging station (around 1890) near the centre of Dundee.




And here is the same scene today.

It will be interesting in the next 20-40 years to find out which technology wins out, millions of tonnes of horse manure or millions of tonnes of radioactive waste.

I prefer using the solar panel on the roof recharge method....a lot less waste to deal with....plus the power company sends me a check for the power I generate back into the grid.

I'm surprised natural gas hasn't come into this discussion. Places that have a natural gas infrastructure already have a second "grid" to supply a lot of additional energy.

The challenge is for somebody to stop fooling around with gasoline/diesel/battery variants and design cars around NG, which need to accommodate a large tank to be practical. Emissions drop by 3/4 per mile, and cost per mile goes way down. Why we don't have this already is a mystery to me, but maybe this next price spike will wake people up.

My ideal world has a small NG co-gen unit beside my house, which supplies heat, hot water, and light to my dwelling; and supplies NG and/or electricity to my vehicle. Efficient, clean, and cost-effective.

My $0.02

Ford sells a lot of natural gas vehicles, the new Transit Connect, for example, is offered with a natural gas conversion from the factory.

The issue with natural gas though, is that you can't just run a pipe from your home line to your vehicle. The natural gas needs to be compressed to a high pressure to work with a typical tank and vehicle.

The pumps required to do this are quite expensive (and quite large). They also require a lot of maintenance to keep them safe. Therefore, the only people that tend to use natural gas conversions are fleets; especially fleets where their driving is contained to a relatively small area. Colleges, for example, are big on natural gas vehicles.

It's good technology that we're able to effectively employ right now. However, like gasoline, natural gas is a finite resource that requires a lot of work to obtain. Switching from gasoline to natural gas wouldn't really help us all that much in the long run.

Good points, Paul. I think a NG focus would require a shift in thinking that hasn't happened yet.

But there's a lot of NG around. More than we know what to do with. The problem is transportation. There are massive proven reserves in the Arctic that haven't been tapped because it's not worth the cost of shipping (pipelines aren't cheap). The private sector doesn't see a good chance of a return on that multi-billion dollar investment. In Alberta, we are (IMO) using NG (which is worth very little) to fuel the oilsands business (which creates a value-added product for export). Kind of a convoluted path, I suppose, but that's the market.

But on the home front, if memory serves, I could have a natural gas filling station installed for about $3500. A vehicle conversion would only be practical for a pickup truck, but if I was a contractor hauling a trailer for a known distance it would pay off pretty quickly. And IIRC you can switch to gasoline if you need extra range.

BTW, wasn't it T. Boone Pickens of Texas that was pushing NG for long-haul transport?

Here is a very good article on the how/why of gasoline prices.

-Blast

Electric cars do not require nuclear power. Nuclear power, if you track the complete life-cycle costs, isn't very efficient. There is also a small problem with a small supply of commercially viable uranium. Double the number of nuclear plants and uranium becomes the next oil, something to fight over and speculate in.

The existing coal, oil and natural gas power plants will work quite well. There is going to be increasing pressure, both domestic and internationally, to shift away from carbon-rich energy sources. This is going to gradually force a shift from fossil fuels to any combination of wind, hydro, solar, nuclear, etcetera. But all this is independent of the shift to elelctric cars. A shift that might take fifty years or more. The gasoline infrastructure, a matrix of fuel suppliers, outlets, car manufacturers, and mechanics, part houses, highways, and all the rest. This matrix took decades to get a foot in the door and the basic structure is roughly one hundred years old.

Electric cars get a leg up because much of the infrastructure, roads, repair shops, hotels can be used. The energy allocation and distribution systems will change but much of this can ride on existing systems. The poor load diversity of our present system, requiring the system to be designed around the maximum load, is, in this case, something of a virtue.

Electric vehicles are gradually going to be phased in. It is going to take decades and the initial offerings will be marginal. As with gasoline fueled vehicles they will improve with time.

Even todays best EVs with state of the art technology including battery, composite and energy management electronic control and electrical motor design technology can barely exceed the performance of a Model T Ford. A Model T-Ford has greater range than the Nissan Leaf, doesn't take 22hrs to refuel (to get 65-70 miles capability) and yet the Model T-Ford still has a typical fuel consumption rivaling contemporary vehicles sold today (@20 mpg). Basically the Nissan Leaf EV is as good as it gets and will be as good as it gets for the next 50 years. You can't simply get around the fundamental laws of energy physics with more elegant refined design or materials selection simply because todays EV manufacturers are already approaching these limits especially when a production vehicle is required which is available at an acceptable cost. Even with the Nissan Leaf battery there is disbelief by many observers at the quoted cost for the Lithium Titanate battery, with many questioning whether a loss leader has been implemented so that Nissan is at the forefront of commercial EV sales.

BTW there have been 100mpg internal combustion capable vehicles designed such as the experiment British Leyland ECV3 car way back in the 1980s.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQuzHU3JVWU



No they don't, to replace the energy requirements provided by the liquid fuels to power todays vehicles in the USA would require another 2 or 3 duplicate electrical power supply grid generation systems currently installed in the USA. The idea that everyone plugging in their EV overnight will take up the current grid electricity generation slack in generation capacity is incorrect.

Edison and Ford were probably having the same debate 100 years ago.

Aptera might be an improvement (if they ever get it into production).

If you have the cash, Tesla Motors has something interesting. Their Roadster gets up to 295 pounds of torque, 288 horsepower and can drive 245 miles per charge.

Jeanette Isabelle