It would be nice, but if you got one now...you'd only ever be able to recharge your battery at home because 99% of petrol stations wouldn't have the point for it, it's frustrating enough when I go to petrol stations n they don't have LPG.
That'd be part of the appeal; not having to refuel. The required range to do that with a pure battery EV is probably available now for the way in which some people use their car. Too bad if you want to do long trips...
Not to mention that cars are just usually more expensive here than they are in the US. Hell, our own Commodore, when it was being sold as the G8 was cheaper in the US than it was here. And that was after it had been put on a boat and sent halfway across the world.
Yep, similar to 'conventional' vehicles in that respect. There are fixed costs such as parts inventory, service and sales training, advertising and compliance testing that can be amortised more easily in markets selling greater volume.
BEV's are more expensive than conventional vehicles though. Some of that is in development cost, some of that is in low volume production costs, some of that is in conservative design because the manufacturers haven't yet fully explored how far to push real world durability nor how to build them cheaper.
Some of the extra cost is in the battery but the 'fuel' - electricity - is cheaper to offset that.
i suppose you get your electricity for free then? this isnt a mobile phone we are talking about, its GIANT batterys, they will draw some serious power. and for those people who think its better for the environment. this is currently where it comes from, so using more will mean more of these:
until we go green, i.e. nuclear.
You can get variable numbers depending on the time of day of charge and the type of electrity generation so charging a BEV vs filling up a petrol of diesel equivalent can be better or worse if the aim is to reduce CO2.
The big advantage is that electricity for vehicles, from a variety of sources, is easier to produce cleanly and (has the potential at least) to be produced in the required quantity. More so than sustainable liquid or gas replacements for oil based fuels.
BEV's may also be a part of an energy storage system, to buffer what may be more intermittent supply of renewable electricity so it's questionable to say that nuclear is the only green solution.
I wouldn't buy an electric car, the range is completely insufficient for my driving needs. However, I will be the first person in line to buy a Hydrogen powered car, if I could buy the Honda Clarity, I would in a heartbeat.
Hydrogen Fuel Cell vehicles
are electric vehicles. In fact the more recent ones are Battery-Hydrogen Fuel Cell hybrid electric vehicles. It's very difficult to build a fuel cell that can provide the wide variation in power output and rapid variation in power output that a vehicle requires, so they use a chemical cell battery as an energy storage buffer, much like a Chevy Volt or Fisker Karma style ICE-battery hybrid vehicle.
I'll bet you, like nearly everyone else, wouldn't buy a HFCEV until you had some certainty as to where you could refuel it and there's the rub. Until there's a hydrogen fuel system in place virtually no one is going to buy the vehicles and until there's a hydrogen vehicle fleet, no one is going to build the fuel system. Plug in HFCEV might help bridge the gap but it's still unlikely to happen.
Yep, a Hydrogen car produces 2 by-products. Hydrogen and Oxygen which as we all know forms H2O - nothing but water.
Hydrogen generation also requires either electricity generation, far more than BEV's require due to energy conversion and storage losses, or maybe thermal cracking in a nuclear reactor and vast quantities of water. Maybe in coastal locations...
Hydrogen as a vehicle fuel substitute isn't going to happen (anytime soon?).
It's better for the environment for me to keep driving my VT and VE for the rest of my life that it is to build a Prius or similar giant slab of batteries. Lets not forget the batteries will only last 5-7 years tops, then you need to spend many thousands to get new batteries.
Maybe. It depends on what happens to the batteries after they're no longer usable in a vehicle.
The total 'fuel' cost of electricity plus battery replacement can still compare favourably with the cost of fossil fuels and it's only going to get better as oil/gas/coal get more expensive and batteries get less expensive. Hybrid BEV's are easier on batteries than pure electric too.
You've got hybrids, which are like the Prius.
Petrol-Electrics, like the Hammer-i Eagle Thrust which use petrol or diesel to run a generator which in turn charges the batteries.
Full electric, like a Gee-Wiz or a Nissan Leaf, totally dependent on a plug.
There's a whole range of variation in ICE-battery hybrids. From very mild, like alternator charge optimisation (on decel and light load only), through ICE downsizing, Honda IMA style to Toyota style parallel hybrid and Volt style series hybrid.
My money is on some variation of the latter; plug in BEV for most trips with the facility of range extension using an ICE on the few occasions it is needed. If it is needed; pure BEV's may be sufficient for many people. Electricity generation will be everything already shown to work except anything fossil fueled. Any liquid fuel requirement will be derived from algal and agricultural residue. That system will both work and be possible to get to, via evolutionary steps rather than any radical step changes.
