Jones Beene quoted the article:
They do not even include the necessity of added
road taxes to your electric bill, nor the short
lifetime of the battery packs not to mention
that little overheating problem that continues
to cost PC makers and Sony billions of dollars.
This is infuriating nonsense. This sort of thing
reveals that the authors are in the propaganda business. To refute them:
The Prius battery pack lifetimes are long, not
short. They last 200,000 miles, which is longer
than most automobiles, and they can be recycled.
The fact that batteries in some PCs have burned
has little or nothing to do with plug-in
vehicles. In any case, batteries are ubiquitous
and they are bound to fail to some extent and
cause some fires. The authors should consider how
many automobile gasoline fires there are per
year. . . . Ah, here is a source of info:
http://www.usfa.dhs.gov/downloads/pdf/tfrs/v2i4.pdf
"From 1996 to 1998 there were an estimated annual
average of 377,000 highway vehicle (automobiles,
vans, trucks) fires." This causes approximately
515 deaths, 3,000 injuries and $1.1 billion in property losses.
You could call that another "little overheating problem."
- Jed
