Quote Originally Posted by Scooter79 View Post
In 2007, Tesla sold 220 vehicles. Not bad at $100,000 a piece. Think about it like this, GM spent a billion dollars in the design of the VE commodore. Imagine what sort of progress would be made if a major manufacturer invested a billion dollars into the design of an electric car. The technology is there but manufacturers are resisting the implementation and further development because they know it would sound the death bell of their combustion engine powered cars. The only thing left to do is figure out how to get more milage from a single battery recharge. Make it a bit bigger for practical family and you're laughing.
OK, I haven't looked recently enough to see what Tesla are/were up to.

I don't know that the majors are resisting the BEV; petrol-battery electric hybrids seem to be catching on, although I suspect more for marketing than any true benefits over other technologies (see my later comment below). I think that they can be seen as the bridging technology, in the same way as biofuels from food type feedstock are.

I suspect that any reluctance to switch across wholesale (at least quickly) would be as much for practical reasons as anything else. Apart from the redundancy of existing manufacturing investment, where do they buy the batteries from (many times the quantity required for any electronic device)? Where do they get the engineering talent required? They also have to do things like train technicians to service and repair them. Those problems can be solved but take time.

This might be interesting too:

GM-VOLT : Chevy Volt Concept Site

I'm not really convinced that battery life has been properly addressed yet but I wasn't aware of the Tesla sales either. The life of a Lithium-ion battery is supposed to be a function of time and temperature and I gather that charge and discharge rates and depth also has an influence. They are still pretty expensive too (offset by the reduced cost of the energy source), although volumes of scale might help.

Quote Originally Posted by commsirac View Post
Hydrogen or battery cars can work. the problem is there is no large scale production facility in place that can provide the electricity or the hydrogen gas without producing CO2. While these vehicles may reduce local pollution where they are used, they do not achieve anything on a global scale. I really doubt that hybrids are of much value other than in tight commuter traffic, the only value being no energy consumption while idle and regenerative braking. otherwise the electric motors and batteries just add weight to the car which already has a petrol motor that has to power it along in country areas anyway.
I'm with you on this; I think that a Diesel mild hybrid (engine off in traffic and coasting) is still likely to be a better (more cost effective) solution than a parallel petrol-electric hybrid atm. It seems to me that petrol-electric hybrids are more about marketing; most people think they understand how they work (but don't really).

Actually, there is unlikely to be a single "solution" but my money for the next couple of decades would be on vehicles more specialised for their use, with a combination of BEV's for urban areas and biofueled (butanol, ethanol and ethyl and methyl ester biodiesel) series hybrids (possibly with a constant speed 2-stroke or small gas turbine)for longer journeys. Both in much lighter vehicles.



I'd love to see something like these made (although I'm not convinced that three wheels are all that great):

Trev (two-seater renewable energy vehicle)

CanadianDriver: Feature - VW 1-Litre-Car

Not good for cruising with mates or a family trip but most journeys, for most people, are with one or two people on board (look at the traffic around you, even on a weekend). Perhaps as a second car. Here commsirac's idea of including the personal injury insurance in a fuel tax would help; there would be a lower penalty (capital investment only) for owning sufficient vehicles to be able to choose the vehicle appropriate for the journey.