Agassi: free electric car, anyone?

Better Place CEO Shai Agassi has outlined his ideas for the electric car future, and the good news is that we all get free cars. Well, up to a point. Agassi was elaborating on his 'leccy car as mobile phone' concept, according to which the consumer would purchase a contract for power and in return get a heavily subsidised car …

[Steven Jones]

banning ...

"If legislative force is required to reduced the world's car-fuel consumption, simply banning engines above 1.6 litres from domestic vehicles would be a big start"

It's a seriously bad idea for governments to start dictating technology like that.

It makes slightly more sense to legislate on outcomes (like the EU target of new passenger cars hitting 130gm CO2 per km by 2012). What makes even more sense is to provide financial "incentives" to meet environmental targets. That way you can get the market to work for you.

[Martin Lyne]

So..

I'll be charged out the arse for using a rival/friend's charging station, charged if I pick up a friend, charged if I want to listen to music while I drive, charged more if I drive over a border.

Cheap car: cool. Mobile industry as base: Not.

Rather buy my own and a super-efficient solar panel or something. Middle finger to the Energy Resellers and their price-hike/oh-no-record-profits-during-a-recession-qul-suprisé! profiteering.

And a hand-crank of course, being Englandish.

[Anonymous Coward]

Peace time?

With Texan accent: What peace time are you blabbering about? We are in a hot war against terror. There ain't any stinkin` peace time you pinko commie b`st`rd.

On a more serious note we still have 2 more months of Bush to endure and if he whacks Iran the same way he whacked Syria last week the "peace" time is not guaranteed at all. Neither is the inauguration of the new president elect for that matter.

Considering the numbers which the petrol prices will touch if we whack Iran the "post-1945" Detroit may be coming our way sooner than we can imagine.

[Anonymous Coward]

over 1.6?

I'd rather be able to

a). Accelerate out of trouble and

b). Overtake lorries safely

thanks.

Over, say, 2.4 or so is a bit more sensible?

But, count me in for the free leccy car! As long as it's not on 3 :P

[Matt]

old cars....

surely the way forward is to liit the number of new cars... whats the carbon cost of producing a brand new car?

I drive a 12 yearold car and its fine... automatic headlights, glass roof, dual a/c, reversing cameras, blah, blah, blah... each year it only needs minimal maintainace, so isnt that greener than me scrapping that each year to buy a new electrick car, full of poisionus, explosive, nasty chemicals?

[Webster Phreaky]

So when was GD Electricity made FREE for 'Lectrrc cars???

I didn't f$#king think so.

And WHERE will this recharge electricity come from?? Out the politicians asses?? For Free??

The Electric Car, the second biggest SCAM since Global Warming.

[Dave Millom]

Overnight

Hey Mr Phreaky,

it happens the power companies have a surplus of electricity available overnight, which -- surprise -- happens to be when most people *aren't* driving around. The baseload stations can't ramp up production for the day and shut down overnight, so at night they have a fair amount of overcapacity. In the UK, you can buy that night-time electricity at less than a third of the daytime price, and overnight charging actually makes the entire system (power station + distribution grid) more efficient by averaging out the load somewhat.