Screw cars with a big plate of batteries in them. That shit is worse for our environment than a regular 4-cylinder gas powered car. With all the pollution, money, and energy expended making the batteries, integrating them into the car, and then the fact that batteries are basically unable to be disposed of....these 'hybrids' are so much worse for us in the long run than a regular car. Go buy yourself a Honda Civic 5-spd and get excellent fuel economy without ruining the environment.

 

Amen... Batteries Are Horrible For The Environment

 

Not saying that I have a strong feeling either way, but I'm gonna play the other side here for a moment.

Batteries are bad, huh? Okay. So, a lithium battery pack that has to be replaced every 100k miles is bad for the environment. Maybe. Until they become as commonplace as other recycled items, then they'll be recycled.

Here's the other side. A typical gas-engined car in 100,000 miles will see about 20 oil changes. That's at least 20 gallons of waste oil, most of which will be recycled (But, certainly WASN'T 30 years or more ago! Raise your hand if you know first-hand how good used engine oil is for killing weeds along a fence line in the back yard.), plus 20 oil filters that will most likely find their way to a landfill. Most people will take at least 8 years to travel 100k miles... typical car battery lasts about 2-3 years. So, there's three 12v lead-acid car batteries to dispose of.

My point here is that there's PLENTY of stuff that's bad for the environment (even without considering tailpipe emissions) resulting from driving a car with an ICE. The difference between that and a fully-electric car with "bad for the environment" batteries is that we've been dealing with all of this crap for nearly 100 years and we have systems in place to recycle it all. When electric cars settle into a set of standards and people start buying them in mass, standards for recycling their parts will soon follow.

 

But you can't kill weeds with batteries...

 

Sure you can. Just get a little bit of that battery acid on 'em.

 

Why even bother with Government Motors? And when are electric cars going to be targeted at performance seekers? aka "tuners"

 

National Electric Drag Racing Association
Tesla Motors - High performance electric vehicles. Available now.

But, seriously... electric cars need to take hold in the mainstream market to be successful. The "tuner" crowd will start playing with them when they become readily available. Control system software hacks, wiring hacks, adding extra batteries, upgrading controllers and motors... all of those things will happen eventually. Think about how it happens in the gas-engine car world. Honda makes 10 different models of cars and their parts are interchangeable for the past 3 or 4 generations... when there are at least a FEW different electric vehicles available from the same manufacturer and those cars start showing up on the used market for cheap, and salvage parts start becoming available... look out.

 

And they'll still get raped by a good old fashioned ICE powered V8.

Its possible to make an electric car real fast - they set landspeed records left and right in them....granted they're more like a nuclear reactor on wheels than a Prius, and theyre outta juice by the time they're done with the pass. Its just not gonna happen for regular cars. I mean, it might, but it would be just as stupid as the people who make their 16 second Civic a 15 second Civic and think its a racecar, until a Honda Odyssey pulls up next to them and hangs door to door with them.


And before all of you start, please...quit nutswinging on the Tesla. Its not that fast in the 1/4 and its expensive as all hell for what you get. Comperably priced cars would walk all over it. Hell, the Vette base model, which gets 29mpg cruising, would completely obliterate it at around half the price.

 

It's not gonna happen soon. It's not gonna happen quickly. It might not even be fully realized in our lifetime. But, rest assured, electric vehicles are the future.

As for drag-cars... electric or gas, a purpose built drag car is designed to go down the strip without concern for range beyond that. I just included that link to show that there ARE motorsports enthusiasts who are already playing with electric cars.

C'mon, we are men. Give us something that moves and we'll find a way to compete in it!

 

As that does nothing for truly 'going green' since electricity still has to come from somewhere, I.E. the coal plants that this part of the US depends on for their electricity (which the green-hippies have a VENDETTA against [well, more specifically, the Hydrocarbons they produce]), I disagree.

I think Hydrogen fuel cells are the future. Electric is a...holdover..at best. By the time we've got the technology to make electric cars comperable to ICE powered vehicles in their price range, I think we'll also have found real alternative fuel sources, not just some gimmick switching gasoline for a power plant's coal.