Without any political slant, it seems to me that trying to push off global warming and/or the effects of carbon combustion is not a bad thing. If it is eventually battery, hydrogen burning, hydrogen fuel cell or something that has yet to be discovered and perfected....who cares.

 

Fair enough but, even without reference to cost, shouldn't the solution be a solution at least ?

Remember Ethanol ? Trillion$ of dollars and nada ! Now, owing to spinning reserve requirements, we're on the same exact path with, so called, green energy. Trillions upon trillions are being thrown at windmills which require the tandem operation of non-generating conventional plants, and we think this is cleaning the environment !?!

The chronic stupidity of "just doing something" has got to stop. We're making grand scale investment in carts before the evolution of horses or the invention of the wheel, expecting this will somehow get us from "A" to "B". It won't, and the cartmaker isn't working for free.

Money pissed away in this manner is needed elsewhere,,, somewhere,, but is not being provided. This, economists will tell, you is the "cost" of "just do something" folly. We gotta stop it bro !

 

Same here.

That sums it up for me. It would be a nice "errand runner" IF the cost was well below 10K.

 

My two cents...

They completely sucked and were impractical for all but about 1% of the population factoring in cost, range and convenience.

They don't suck as much, but most are "clown cars" and are STILL impractical for all but about 40% of the population factoring in cost, range and convenience.

IMHO, hydrogen fuel cells, something else that just has not been thought of yet, and/or something that has been thought of but is just not technologically possible today. It WON'T be battery electric!

Currently, it's bout like a soft, warm fart. Too little, too late, and underwhelming so far unless you have 80K to drop on a top of the line Tesla. You can keep your Volt/Leaf.

 

General Opinion: The ol US of A used to be the world leader in basic research....places like Bell Labs and others. All they did was to figure out cool stuff.....whether it paid off was not the prime motivation. In the 80s we lost that distinction to Japan...never got it back. The bottom line became the prime motivation....and honestly sometimes discoveries from pure research surprises in ways not visualized....just sayin.

 

You won't and I won't ride an electric bike but the younger set will. Is the point.

 

Hydrogen fuel cells are the end game here. The real question is, where does the hydrogen come from, and how does it get distributed to where the end user needs it?

So.....hydrogen is the most plentiful element in this and all other galaxies we can see. But on this planet, it is mostly bound up in the well known form of water. This can be "cracked" into hydrogen and oxygen but it takes energy to do so. Best sources to do this would be nuclear, wind and solar energy. That's kind of why we are trying to build out these resources long term.

The good news is that with all the damage we (allegedly) have done to the planet, there will be more solar and wind energy to harvest.

You can of course crack water into hydrogen and oxygen using energy input from fossil fuels, but that's kind of counter intuitive.

It's a long term project for sure. How to make/harvest enough hydrogen for everyone's needs is a big enough problem, but then how to distribute it to point of use is another as it's pretty damn explosive. See......"Hindenburg"

Probably the best solution is to use local solar/wind electricity to crack water into it's constituent parts and then pressurise it for local storage and use. But that is a major, major change to infrastructure. Expect to see it happen, but it will take 50 years to be complete.

Hydrogen fuelled, zero emission autonomous vehicles will be the future. But probably not until after we are all dead.

[EDIT: Forgot to add that at some point, we will figure out how to get to and from Jupiter fairly cost effectively. At that point, hydrogen becomes almost free]

 

There will be a small market for motorcycles, and it will be smaller city type rides, where a 100 mile range will be adequate. Highway motorcycles will be of little use as Electrics.

But cars..... that is where it will come down to pass. As to plugging in to recharge, well, most people wont need to. If they build a car that will get 300 mile range, and taking into account that most people only drive 30 to 40 miles a day, they will not need to be plugged in.... because the cars will be painted with Photo voltaic paint and will charge at 10 to 20 percent a day. And the thing is, it does not have to be sunny, it will charge on cloudy days, all it needs is light.

Why it wont work on a bike, is because there wont be enough surface area for it to work. The only time you will need to charge your car, will be when you travel. Or if your commute is 50 miles, and your batteries are only good for 200 miles... even then, you will only have to charge your car once every 10 or so days.

Also, the cars will have Smart Chargers, and if you plug it in it will only charge what it needs for the next day, based on your driving habits. You will have to put in an override if what you need is to go further the next day than what you usually do, and what you need the charge for.

This is not the future, this is now. Many companies are working on making this happens, right now. Some are already working on second and third generation paint.

 

Lots of interesting opinions on this thread, mostly incorrect ones. I hate to disappoint, but the future is already here:

"Global electric car registrations increased 55% to 3.2M in 2017, according to research firm ZSW.

Registrations in China topped 1M for the first time.

Top EV registrations by automaker: BYD ([[BYDFFF]], OTCPK:BYDDY) 99,870 units, BAIC Group (OTC:BCCMY, OTCPK:BMCLF) 96,670 units, Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) 86,770 units, BMW 67,940 units, Volkswagen (OTCPK:VLKAY) 52,520 units, Toyota
(NYSE:TM) 49,860 units.

Source: Bloomberg"

Note especially Toyota-so much for the much-vaunted H2 fuel cell powered Mirai.

I stated earlier on this thread that I (mostly) believe what I see with my own eyes, and I see around me every day-more and more BEV's, mostly Teslas and BMWs, a few Bolts here and there (I'm not counting hybrids (PHEVs-lots of those around!).

And there are AT LEAST 3 brands of motorcycles you can walk into a dealership and buy one today-Energica, KTM, and Zero. More, many more, including the MoCo will HAVE to follow.

 

Well said man.