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Strategies & Market Trends : The Epic American Credit and Bond Bubble Laboratory -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Peter V who wrote (95529)	7/10/2008 7:33:45 PM
From: ScatterShot	Respond to of 110194

OT: Peter, thanks to you and benwood for your considered reply. I agree w/ both of you that there are substantial problems. The question of battery life & reliability would have to be worked out in the competitive marketplace with winners winning and losers losing according to the quality of the product they produced. It's not much different that the marketplace we have today in conventional car batteries. Bear in mind that you never see your original battery after the first charge or any replacement you buy after it's first charge. Batteries are rotated just like a welder rotates his oxygen and acetelyne bottles after he has paid the initial deposit. The tricky part would be how to amortize the cost of the original OEM battery in a fair manner. Maybe an "actuarial" life that would be guaranteed for all new batteries so that when a certain number of charges had occurred, the battery would be "dead" and you have to pony up for a "new" one. Or, another idea would be that the "filling station" owner would have to pony up the cost of good batteries, raising the barriers of entry to that business. And some kind of reliable amp-hour indicator would be required to make sure you were not getting a "half" tank. The station owner would be responsible for keeping good batteries according to some kind of standard. As far as the mechanical aspects of having some pimple faced teenager having to plunk a fresh battery in your new Lexus golf cart without bending the tailpipe, I think much more significant mechanical problems have been solved by many thousands of sharp engineers. That's why they make the big bucks. (LOL) I do think the financial engineering would be as challenging as the mechanical engineering but neither would be deal breakers. The main key is to get enough range per charge to be similar to what we are accustomed to getting from gasoline and not have to pull over for a swap every hundred miles. Sorry for the OT distraction to a fine thread. Tell me to buzz off if it gets tiresome.