In the future, everything is gamified. Actually, you know who really needs to gamify things? Banks.
Have you used mint.com? You can set budgets for things and track your spending from month to month.
Chevy Volt: Is This Our Future?
11–20 of 92 posts
Re: Chevy Volt: Is This Our Future?
#12I've said before and I'll say again: Electric cars will not gain widespread acceptance until you can travel the equivalent of a tank of gas on one charge. Tesla motors is close, but you need at least 300 and closer to 400 miles per charge.
Re: Chevy Volt: Is This Our Future?
#13Re: Chevy Volt: Is This Our Future?
#14Coal-Burning cars (er.. electric) are the future!
Speak for yourself. My cars will be hydroelectric.
Re: Chevy Volt: Is This Our Future?
#15I've said before and I'll say again: Electric cars will not gain widespread acceptance until you can travel the equivalent of a tank of gas on one charge. Tesla motors is close, but you need at least 300 and closer to 400 miles per charge.
400 miles? You kidding? I have never driven anything that can go 400 miles per tank- I typically refill at 200-250, and some of my bikes I'd refill at 80.
Re: Chevy Volt: Is This Our Future?
#16Coal-Burning cars (er.. electric) are the future!
I've never understood this argument. I mean, yes, I get that all you're doing is moving the energy production somewhere else; but isn't that a GOOD thing? My response to the "you're just moving" argument is that you're doing more than moving it, you're CENTRALIZING it. It's much easier to replace one coal plant with a nuclear plant or a wind farm (or 10) than it is to replace the thousands of cars that plant powers.…
There's two sides to the argument. On the one hand, centralizing is big. It allows huge gains in efficiency- steam plants fueled by coal are 99% efficient, and by the time the power reaches the wheels of your car you're still probably around 60-80% (Otto cycle is 25% at absolute best, not counting drivetrain losses) It allows flexibility in source- nuclear, coal, wind, solar- and the source can be 'hot-swapped'.
At the same time, it is important to remember the energy has to come from somewhere, and this is something politicians, media, and industry has made a habit of carefully ignoring, so it does seem like a good idea to remind less inquisitive folks electric cars are not powered by free, unlimited energy. (Crazy as it may sound, folks believed that was the case for anything driven by 'renewable energy' a handful of years ago. That's what they were taught; renewable = free/unlimited)
Re: Chevy Volt: Is This Our Future?
#17I'm actually most concerned about the lifetime of the batteries. From what I've read, the batteries top out at 8 years, and presumably degrade before that. As the $20k Chevy Cruze is the same chassis as the Volt, I guess the batteries come out at ~$15k. That's a huge amount of money to renew use of your $40k car after 8 years (unless you see that $15k as some sort of investment in the environment). The Volt design co…
I think the better place EV business model will help alleviate that problem, since you are technically renting the battery and it will get replaced semi-regularly.
http://betterplace.com/the-solution-switch-stations
This will also allow the batteries to improve over time, without having to perform massive upgrades to your existing car.
Re: Chevy Volt: Is This Our Future?
#18[deleted]
Re: Chevy Volt: Is This Our Future?
#19I want to love electric cars, but I see two big issues: (1) if they go mass market, all that electricity will still have to be generated somewhere. Coal? Nuclear? (2) The batteries need rare-earth minerals, which are brought to market through environmentally-degrading open pit mining. Furthermore, at this point, most rare-earths are available almost exclusively from China.
Re: Chevy Volt: Is This Our Future?
#20I've said before and I'll say again: Electric cars will not gain widespread acceptance until you can travel the equivalent of a tank of gas on one charge. Tesla motors is close, but you need at least 300 and closer to 400 miles per charge.
400 miles? You kidding? I have never driven anything that can go 400 miles per tank- I typically refill at 200-250, and some of my bikes I'd refill at 80.
When I'm on the highway, I tank my car up and it'll be roughly 200 miles at halfway and 300 at 1/4. Granted, I've never driven my car to vapors on the highway but it seems logical that a tank of gas will get me around 400 miles. It's a 14 gallon tank so that translates to around 30mpg highway. I don't think it's unrealistic to ask for an equivalent efficiency in an electric car.