Tuesday 29 October 2013

Electric cars

If you buy an electric car you can guarantee all these things:

1) You do not know exactly when you are going to run out of power.
2) When the needle is low you cannot fill the car. You need a charging point.
3) You are not guaranteed to get to the charging point, and if you don't you can't carry the fuel to the car like you can normally.
4) It is impossible to permanently avoid running out of power as in winter you may need heating and wipers which unlike petrol cars use the same power you need for propulsion. This reduces the range and you can't always allow for sudden poor weather when you set out somewhere.
5) The batteries don't last more than a few years, and cost around the current secondhand value of the car to replace when they run out, wiping out all the fuel savings to that point.
6) It is virtually impossible to exchange batteries instead of charging them. One company tried and found it needed every company to make interchangeable ones, which they won't do. It would cost millions to provide the stock for one exchange and would need as many as we currently have filling stations.
7) What do you do when charging away from home, for the 4-12 hours required? There are a growing numbers of points appearing on our roads but where do they expect people to go while they are waiting, especially at night and in the cold and wet?

2 comments:

  1. Those of us old enough to remember electric milk floats in London know that there are some uses for EVs. These were around 50 years ago.

    If EVs were genuinely going to work, they have had plenty of time to prove it.
    Same goes for wind energy.

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