Harvard study predicts electric car penetration when gas hits $4.5-$5.5/gall
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Re: Harvard study predicts electric car penetration when gas hits $4.5-$5.5/gall
#2Cool. Where does the electricity come from?
Re: Harvard study predicts electric car penetration when gas hits $4.5-$5.5/gall
#3Oh really? The current gasoline price in Germany is around 1.588 Euro per liter which is 6.01 Euro per gallon (stupid imperial unit) or glorious 8,57 Dollar.
Still no electric cars.
Re: Harvard study predicts electric car penetration when gas hits $4.5-$5.5/gall
#4Oh really? The current gasoline price in Germany is around 1.588 Euro per liter which is 6.01 Euro per gallon (stupid imperial unit) or glorious 8,57 Dollar. Still no electric cars.
Different culture. Different daily life transportation realities.
Re: Harvard study predicts electric car penetration when gas hits $4.5-$5.5/gall
#5Cool. Where does the electricity come from?
Worst case Coal which costs far less than Oil. The really good news is the US has a lot of Coal and Coal has a drasticly lower carbon footprint because of reduced extration, refining, and transportation costs per BTU.
Re: Harvard study predicts electric car penetration when gas hits $4.5-$5.5/gall
#6I don't understand why electricity must be generated at charging stations.
"Electric charing stations must have charging equipment, generate their own electricity and have the capacity to distribute a lot of electricity."
IMHO, the lack of a reasonable solution to the gas-station (err ... fill station?) problem is the key problem here. I was at the NYC auto show and saw the charging solutions for the Volt. They all sucked. As I recall, the fastest charging solution they had required custom electrical wiring and could charge the car in around 20-30 mins.
I've also encountered the idea of swapping batteries at the fill station. This idea has a lot of problems too but probably gives the best end user experience.
Re: Harvard study predicts electric car penetration when gas hits $4.5-$5.5/gall
#7Oh really? The current gasoline price in Germany is around 1.588 Euro per liter which is 6.01 Euro per gallon (stupid imperial unit) or glorious 8,57 Dollar. Still no electric cars.
Different culture. Different daily life transportation realities.
This is claimed very often. I did some very basic research here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2766844 (in a related discussion). In short, I don't see a substantial reason to believe that Americans drive all that more than Europeans do, and certainly not enough to say that the US switch to electric would happen significantly below the current gas price in Europe.
(there may be other factors - Americans' general tendency to go to technological solutions earlier than others, other interests that will drive development/adoption of non-petrol powered cars, ...)
Re: Harvard study predicts electric car penetration when gas hits $4.5-$5.5/gall
#8I don't understand why electricity must be generated at charging stations. "Electric charing stations must have charging equipment, generate their own electricity and have the capacity to distribute a lot of electricity." IMHO, the lack of a reasonable solution to the gas-station (err ... fill station?) problem is the key problem here. I was at the NYC auto show and saw the charging solutions for the Volt. They all s…
To address your first issue: I'm guessing it must be cheaper (in the long term) to generate your own electricity as a charging station that buy it off of a provider.
Re: Harvard study predicts electric car penetration when gas hits $4.5-$5.5/gall
#9There is precedent, sorta, in aviation: 100LL hit $4.50 a couple years back and is now between $5-$8.
Cessna started developing an electric 172 in 2010: http://green.autoblog.com/2010/08/11/cessna-developing-elect...
I say "sorta" because it's not an industry-wide movement.
Re: Harvard study predicts electric car penetration when gas hits $4.5-$5.5/gall
#10Cool. Where does the electricity come from?
The worst case may be coal, but the most likely case (for America) is that the additional electricity needs are met by Natural Gas. More specifically, natural gas derived from the oil shale deposits.
Here's a link with some interesting info on this: http://blogs.forbes.com/jeffmcmahon/2011/06/30/cheap-natural...
While this isn't the ideal solution for the environment (frankly, I then that solar towers with molten salt storage reservoirs are the best all around energy solution right now), natural gas is altogether far less damaging to the environment than coal.
Take a look at this study: http://media.kentucky.com/smedia/2009/10/19/10/HiddenCosts.s...
In a nutshell, coal is vastly more damaging to the environment than any other form of generating electricity.