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Politics : Politics of Energy -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Hawkmoon who wrote (10851)	7/8/2009 7:36:26 AM
From: Road Walker	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 86356

Well.. get us one that will last for 10 years, retaining at least 80% of its original charge capacity and then we can talk. Making it easily recyclable will be a bigger bonus. Just food for thought: Let's say you are buying a car one year from now, and there is a selection of ICE cars that get 20 something miles per gallon, hybrids that get 50ish miles per gallon, and plug in hybrids that get 100 miles per gallon. You plan to keep this vehicle for 8-10 years. The cost of the vehicles, respectively, are $22K, $28K and $35K. One of the things you are doing when you make this decision is betting on the price of gasoline in say 2 years, 5 years, 8 years. (Does anyone think gasoline won't be more expensive in 8 years?) The question is... how much more expensive? Say you buy the ICE car and in 4 years the price of a gallon of gasoline is $6? In 6 years it is $8? In 8 years it is $10. What's the value of your ICE car at those gasoline prices? What was the wisdom of your original decision? All numbers off the top of my head and just thinking out loud.

To: Hawkmoon who wrote (10851)	7/8/2009 10:33:40 AM
From: RetiredNow	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 86356

They already have that. Technological progress will make fools of all of you, unless you start to acknowledge that technology doesn't stand still. Assumptions you make today may seem reasonable, but are highly likely to look foolish in retrospect 5 years from now. I remember during the infancy of the Internet, the doomsayers consistently said that we didn't need more bandwidth and yet bandwidth demand continues to be insatiable a decade later and tech companies continue to figure out how to get more bandwidth to their customers. Battery life span, range, energy density are all science/engineering problems that are eminently solvable. Count on it. Time Tested: New EV Battery Displays Remarkable Lifespan gas2.org The lithium-ion battery has displayed remarkable longevity, surviving 180, 000 miles with no significant deterioration. With the average family vehicle traveling less than 15,000 miles per year, this test holds great significance. This dramatic increase in the life expectancy of an EV battery pulls the cost equation more convincingly on the EV’s side. The battery, a Johnson Control-Saft lithium-ion battery subpack, was tested in a commercial delivery van in a laboratory setting at SCE’s Electric Vehicle Testing Center in Pomona, CA. The battery subpack is one sixth of the actual battery size used in a plug-in hybrid electric vehicle. With such remarkable test results, and testing still in progress on the subpack, the U.S. Department of Energy has asked SCE to test the battery’s viability for passenger car performance. The Department of Energy supplied a full sized battery for further testing.