I wanted to say this, too...
But you beat me to it, sir...
Posts by jimbobmcgee
4 publicly visible posts • joined 27 Aug 2008
Star Control
Electric cars: too pricey until 2030 (or later)
Wednesday 7th September 2011 10:07 GMT 
How do you plug in your car if you haven't got a garage?
Some questions from a noob...
How do you charge one of these without a garage conversion. Are they easy enough to remove so you can charge it up from a plug socket in your house? If not, they should be, otherwise where's the plan to put plug sockets in every car parking space (or at 10m intervals on every road without double yellow lines)?
And how long do these things need to charge? I wouldn't fancy trying to make a trip up the M1 in an electric vehicle. A 240km range is all well and good (no, actually it's shit compared to a 300mi range), but you're not going to get people to use them if they can't pull in, fill up and keep going without having to wait hours at Leicester Forest East.
How about standardising the batteries (if they aren't), making them easy to remove (if they aren't) and having service stations sell fully charged ones over the counter? You could have trade-in schemes, where you take out your spent batteries for a significant discount on another pre-charged one. The service station would then charge up your old one and sell it on to someone else.
Although, where is all the electricity coming from, if it isn't from burning large amounts of fossil fuels in a power station? Is there much of a net difference in emissions when factoring the 6.5m less fuel-burning cars against the increase in generated electricity to charge the batteries?
Biting the hand that feeds IT
