The great thing about internal combustion engines is that one of the two reactants needed to create mechanical energy, namely oxygen, does not have to be stored in the vehicle - it's in the air. Battery power, on the other hand, requires that both reactants be stored. The result is the huge payload of batteries that must constantly be transported in the vehicle.
don't forget the waste heat which is a huge component of global climate change and the possibility of of a rupture, the potential for the crazies to make a dirty bomb if the radioactive material becomes readily available
"the burning of coal which is indirectly responsible for thousands of deaths annually" - that's a low ball estimate and some are not so 'indirect'. So many people run off on this tangent - the problem is not the electrification of vehicles: the problem is dirty power generation and an industry that has been allowed to compete with exemptions to many environmental laws that othe industries must meet - even the auto industry. The current configuration of the US power industry is a choice not a necessity - there is always the opportunity to make other choices; there is even the opportunity to use coal much more efficiently and cleanly but then you have Republican fanboys that go entirely the other way proclaiming that the EPA and/or the environmental regulation should be scrapped. As it stands you have smog in Yosemite and Grand Canyon. Burning fossil fuels in motor vehicles is a very inefficient means of converting latent energy into motion: there are ways to improve on this but as you can see from comments by tucsonics and many others, it's all about what's cheapest and ignoring the fact that technology always rides an experience curve with the cost of a capability declining in proportion to cummulative sales - thank heaven for early adopters who choose value over cost. Dirty power is a choice made by every American: compare the reduction in emissions and improvements in fuel economy achieved by auto manufacturers as compared to the fossil fuel power sector over the last few decades - only one has made great advances; there is no excuse.
I completely agree with you, Tusconics. Big batteries get depleted, and then you're driving around with a 1,200-pound dead battery in the back, which wastes energy. The wild card in all this is the emergence of government mandates. Automakers are going through this exercise because they fear the imminent 54.5-mpg mandate, which is supposed to take effect in 2025. I can't provie it, but I think a lot of people in the auto industry are waiting to revisit the 54.5-mpg topic in 2018, and maybe ratchet it down a bit.
I'm always leery of brute force approaches. As the batteries get bigger, more % of the cost of the vehicle, it's a brute force solution. It will die of bloat, overweight if not disinterest as the hybrid, a more sensible approach, takes over. Even the hybrid is overpriced and overweight. You have to look at the cost of ownership, not just the mpg. If you drive 10k miles per year at $3.85/gal and 25 mpg, you pay $1540. The car may cost $10k less than the hybrid equivalent. So you have six years of gas keeping your 25 mpg car. It's a huge premium to pay for the hybrids. Will electrics and hybrids depreciate less? Maybe, but you had to pay up front for an overpriced vehicle to begin with. I see electrics with battery bloat as an exercise in futility. Will history prove me right? IMHO yes.
Seriously this whole battery thing is so far off unless someone has a creditable unforeseen revelation up there auto-technical selves. Nuclear or atomic generators the size of a shoebox and an electric motor and your in business. The Power supply would be moved from vehicle to the next and may be passed on after the owner expires. After all the power supply would last several lifetimes anyway. Totally green. No pollution, no danger not anything. You couldn't make it into a bomb and it wouldn't over heat and it would be regulated. It would just work totally efficient. You could bring the PS into your home and run you home with it to some degree. I mean really this is not so farfetched as the car itself in the 1800s. Just get over it and do it.
the clean energy of electric cars mostly originates from coal fired power plants, when the coal gasoline is economically cheaper than petroleum at about 35 dollard a barrel. The oligopoly of oil and a corrupt government prevent technology from making the most economocally justified decision to use coal refined gasoline to power our cars, bypassing the burning of coal which is indirectly responsible for thousands of deaths annually each year. Electric cars powered by coal fored power plants by far the dirtest source of aoutomotive power---however out of sight is out of mind,,,,,,rest peacefuly in your electric car with the delusion of clean energy, oh yes, one last thing, ask why the EPA, overpowered by the oligopoly of petroleum based gasoline, refuses to allow coal to gasoline refineries at the coal mines mouth, (domestic energy) further reducing the point when coal gas is superior to electric cars. How stupid can you be thinking a car powered by eletricity fdrom extremely toxic sources is clean energy, just because the advertisments advertise it as clean energy---the law of advertising, states that advertising is just an offeer top do business, and an advertisor can actually lie in his adds DUH, but its legal " let the buyer beware" don't fall for the electric car gimmick. or fall for it, and watch football, basket ball, golf, hocky, etc become a talk football player, while the government stuffs slavery down your eonomic system posing as free trade, and globalization which means the slavers get most of the income, and reduces you to a real fool, or not who gives a s--t abput your children and their children, or the nation for tht matter, just keep up on whos who in the talk football world and maybe you could become president, and claim criminals as your children, 17 year olds without an allowance but, permitted burgler toold, the path to an allowace, and if anyone bothers them then make a hoody race card as a new addition to the deck of affirmative action biggotry, ha ha ha
How about the opposite type of application for that 71KWH battery? Put it in an electric dragster and use all of hthose KWHs in 5 seconds.
The interesting thying is that with the best shut-off-and-coast technology it should be easy to double the miles per gallon performance of a vehicle without getting in anybodies way. Two things are needed that we don't presently have on most cars: A sut off and select neutral switch, and a smooth engaging starter motor. Probably driving the alternator like a motor would handle the starter, but the shut off and coast controls will be a bit more of a challenge.
My current van is 2005 Caravan with a 2.4 L 4 cyl. that gets 24 MPG around town. I just got rid of a 1998 Voyager with a 3.0 V-6 that got about 24.5 MPG around town and around 29 on the highway. I seem to remember our 1984 Voyager with a 5 speed stick and 4 cylinder engine getting 30 MPG in town. I have a 3/4 ton Chevy that gets 13 MPG so it's nice to be able to fit a bundle of conduit (10 foot) in the van. I only drive the truck 500 miles per year. I'm not for bells and whistles. I never had a car with working AC until I was 60.
My wife got an Outback that gets 24 MPG in town but it cost $10,000 more than the minivan. I can't drive anything but American out of respect for the boys still on the Arizona. The Suburus don't coast well. When I see a stop sign a half mile down the road, I take my foot off the gas and coast all the way there in the minivan. She can't do that in the Outback without putting it in neutral. That's too much trouble so she keeps her foot on the gas a while longer. Pete O.
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