On Jan 6, 2009, at 12:05 AM, Ronn! Blankenship wrote: > Point being, as has been mentioned previously, > there are some parts of the US at least where a > vehicle such as described will not serve the > need, or where one with those limitations might > be enough for some trips but for which at least > weekly or monthly frex something with a much > longer potential range is needed. It's similar > to when the Segway was introduced: except in > perhaps NYC and DC where some people who live in > the city are able to do entirely without > automobiles most of us in the US at least fairly > regularly need something which goes faster than > 12 mph and further than a few miles, is > weatherproof, and can carry (often multiple) > children and cargo (like a week's groceries for > the family and/or the kid's school and sports > equipment), and can't afford $5K for an > additional vehicle with those limitations which > would make it useless for their purposes much of the time.
That's certainly true. However, those areas are sparsely populated, and it's actually fair to consider vehicles meeting the needs of those regions as rather specialized. In urbanized areas, particularly in densely populated urban areas (which, not all that coincidentally, are the areas where motor vehicle exhaust emissions contribute particularly heavily to smog and other undesirable side effects of pollution), a 100 mile commuter vehicle is a much more reasonable benchmark. (To tell the truth, I commute about 50 miles round trip on a daily basis, and a battery powered car with that much range plus margin would be quite reasonable if I could charge it at home on off-peak power.) Produce enough of those to where economies of scale kick in and more than just the first adopters are buying them, and that would be enough to get over the hump into larger scale development .. as I said, a phase change in the market. Agreed, there are some people who wouldn't buy a battery electric vehicle to save their lives. Some of those people tend to be the same ones who don't think gasoline will go right back up to $4+/gal next summer. Wouldn't it be sweet to be the one who saw this coming ahead of time and had at least a basic product line of electric cars ready for them when they start feeling the pinch at the pump again this year? “I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.” -- Mahatma Gandhi _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
