There is a semantics problem here - or maybe it is an "assumption" problem - with the idea that "Electricity is cheaper than gasoline per vehicle mile". First we know that the price of both is artificial. The cost to find, pump, refine and blend gasoline (historically) is still only pennies per gallon, yet the cost is $3 and rising. The cost of electricity does not bear any of the related road use costs.
Having pondered an EEStor poster for several days (computer desktop), this fact dawned on me, finally: *It ain't necessarily so*. Electricity is not necessarily cheaper than gasoline per vehicle mile. It is all artificial costing - and nobody really has compared the situation apples-to-apples. Certainly not when the exorbitant cost of lithium batteries is included, and even if EEStor can cut that cost in half, it is still too high. The extra cost of batteries must be amortized, in order to get to apples-to-apples, and that's not all. It must be realized IN ADVANCE that these batteries have a short life and will need to be replaced in a few years. No one yet knows "how few is a few". The average lithium cell for laptops is said to be good for only three years of intermittent use, and that has been my experience with them. Has that battery lifetime magically changed with the Nissan? Doubt it. Who will pay the cost of a $10,000 battery replacement after (x) years? Even if it is 5 years, that is unacceptable. If it is ten years then ok, we can possibly accept that, but there is no way to know except to look at similar batteries. That would be in the laptop - where if there was a better way - they would put them in computers first - since the computer user can pay top dollar, compared to the automobile. Plus, there is the added cost to "electricity", which must be included in a comparison - to cover road improvements, and for taxes lost, by switching from the taxed fuel to the electricity. Government will not let this tax base be lost, and it is a mistake to ignore that problem when comparing the two situations. When those two items are properly accounted for, then there could easily be a net loss to the consumer of switching to electricity. It is short-sighted to ignore this. Jones
