Quote:
Originally Posted by wodin
Everything factors out to a matter of energy density, not only of the vehicle itself, but also the underlying energy delivery infrastructure.
It's possible, but expensive, to adjust the infrastructure to compensate for lower energy densities of the vehicles. The bottom line is that petroleum products (gasoline/diesel/jet fuel) currently enjoy the highest energy density of any technology, not only on the vehicle end but also the infrastructure side. Until that changes, I'm afraid we will not see any significant advances in alternative technologies.
As is being seen in the popularity of hybrid vehicles, the best we can hope for is to increase the efficiency of the vehicles.
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They could give them better batteries and pluggability features. At least GM promises that with the Chevy Volt but 50,000 cars a year, 15,000 the first year? They're dragging their feet.
Now that they've reimbursed their debt to the government, they're liable to pull the plug on the Volt. They've done that before...
I'm a big fan of the MDI Air car and have been since 99. The big problem is that they're not a big enough company to produce them. And their manufacturing program of selling turnkey factories to other countries makes no sense in America. They had a site up in the State two years ago but they took it out. I'm not sure why but I suspect homologation was not possible.