Jeff writes: > It's not vaporized batteries we need to worry about, it is the power grid > and generating stations. The combined output of all of our automotive > engines may be more than the combined output of all our generating > facilities.
It is much more than all of our generating facilities, but this is irrelevant. Automobile engines are only used for an hour or less per day, and most of the time they run at a small fraction of maximum output capacity (around ~10%). If you floored a 250 HP car and kept it floored, you would hit race-track speed in less than a minute. You would be going 150 to 200 MPH. Even on the highway you seldom need more than 40 HP. Furthermore, electric cars use two or three times less energy than ICE only (non-hybrid) automobiles. I know what I am talking about here. I am one of the few people who as actually floored the accelerator on the open highway, and left the pedal on the metal for 10 minutes or more. My 40 HP Geo Metro will hit 65 MHP on a level stretch! Even more going downhill. > We can't replace the nations automotive power by tapping our > electric supply. We simply don't have enough. We have more than enough, especially at night. Of course this would use up more fuel, or wind, as the case may be. But generating capacity would not be a problem. I do not think the power distribution network would need to be expanded much, either, except possibly along large highways. Electric vehicles are probably much more practical than people realize. Even the experts are wrong. They keep asking the public "would you be willing to drive an electric car with only a 100 mile range." Most people say no, so the auto companies have never offered one. Most people have no idea what would satify their needs, or how they might organize their lives around a new technology. A 100 mile range might be a problem for a few people, but once you learned to live with it, most people would hardly notice. They do not realize that an electric car sitting in traffic not moving uses no power (except for air conditioning.) Suppose in 1985 you were to ask people in charge of churches or the PTA: "would you be willing to purchase a computer for $1,500 knowing it fail at any moment erase all of your correspondence and your PTA financial records in an instant?" They would all say no. They would say that's a ridiculous amount of money -- we only collect $3,000 in dues per year. Y! et within a few years all churches, clubs, PTAs and other organizations had computers. People came to understand the benefits. Most people learned how deal with computers, and how to back up the data. (Although the Atlanta office of Planned Parenthood -- I think it was -- recently lost all of its records when a single computer crashed.) If electric vehicles become available at a reasonable price, people would soon learn how to use them and how to live with the limitations of the present lead-acid battery technology. - Jed
