I don’t have the answers but as you can see, I do have questions about how environmentally sound these options are. We can find better answers, we just have to look a little deeper.

The aluminum-air cell is approximately 75 times more energy dense than conventional lithium ion cells and delivers significantly greater power in portable electronic applications. Aluminum-Power’s current focus is on this end of the market. Additionally, because of the simplicity of the fuel cell’s design, its dimensions can be customized to fit small and large technology.

As mentioned here by many, the electric car, even at best, doesn’t solve all the pollution, dependence on foreign oil, etc., etc., etc. problems. Furthermore there is more wrong with the car dominated culture than just those sorts of things. Ideally we should if not totally getting rid of private car use, cut it way, way, way back. Ideally I would really prefer using trains for long distance travel and human power for short distance travel. At the same time as having an energy use problem we have a terrible obesity problem. If we at least tried to use private cars as little as possible we could make progress to solving both of these problems, and create a better general quality of life as well. The problem is, for most it is impractical to totally do without private cars, so without radical measures that we are probably unprepared to use, there will be cars on the road.

The problem with petrol cars, though, is there’s no such thing as a small number of them on the road, because they breed themselves. Who wants to walk or bike next to an exhaust pipe? The great thing I see about the electric car is that it is capable of breaking the car use chain. Even *if* the pollution problem were merely transferred to the power station, that tranference *would* be a good thing, because people can walk and bike next to an electric car. In other words, the biggest advantage I see to an electric car is that it is pedestrian compatible. Where I live there is a post office about a half mile away, but there’s no way to get to it without using a major highway. I walk there, when I go there, but it’s not pleasant, and it takes a good amount of dicipline not to be tempted to drive the short distance. Now that I have an electric car, at least if I do succumb to that temptation, I will not be contributing to the problem, because if all those cars out there were electric, I and probably many others would be far more likely to make the trip on foot. Similarly, I would have to take that same road, the A49, to get to the center of town if I wanted to go by bike. It’s only 3 miles, so a bike trip that many could be encouraged to make if all those cars on it were electric. And the more bikes feel comfortable on the road, the less cars will be on the road, and the less cars are the road the more bikes will be on the road, etc., etc..

As to the problem about limited range. They are really a blessing in disguise, because we shouldn’t really be using private cars for long distance travel anyway. We should be using trains. My electric car is nowhere near as good as a Toyota RAV4 EV. It has a maximum speed of 42 mph and a maximum range of 40 miles. But with the right infrastructure (inexspensive rental cars like it available at all train stations, and charging facilities in every major parking lot) I’d get rid of my petrol car in an instant.

Where do you read this crap that coal-powered electricity emits more greenhouse gas than gasoline powered cars? You make these claims without doing any research, so where the heck did you hear it? Centralized-coal-plants produce less greenhouse than gas-powered cars, and it will only get cleaner as we change the grid:
http://www.ilea.org/lcas/taharaetal2001.html
http://www.teslamotors.com/display_data/21stCentElectricCar.pdf

Where do you read the crap that the electrical grid can’t support millions of cars charging at night without building new energy plants? Once again no legitimate sources of research, just bold claims. From what I’ve read, according to MIT Technology Review, over 180 million electric cars can be charged per night (over half the pop of the US) with no infrastructure change:
blog.wired.com/cars/2006/12/how_phevs_will_.html

Where do you hear that the cost of manufacturing and making batteries and recycling them (used in millions of computers everywhere) is so damaging to the environment? What about the cost of extracting oil, completely destroying habitats, transferring that oil by the barrels from remote regions of the earth under regimes that support terrorism, only to make more greenhouse gas when the oil is refined, and then again transported to gas stations, which you have to drive to (making more greenhouse gas)… is that better than buying a battery every 5-10 years and plugging it in from home, using local power?

Anyone who says local generated power isn’t better to use in transportation is either a PR rep for Exxon/Mobil or really good friends with “the terrorists”.

I hope in the next five years this FUD gets exposed for what it is, but considering Exxon/Mobil and others have an army of PR managers attacking EVs, I think it will just get worse. The future is very uncertain.

First of all consider the costs of mining and generally obtaining the exotic chemicals and stuff the batteries are made of, then transporting it etc etc. They don’t just plop into the battery maker’s hands.

Then add the cost of actually creating the batteries themselves – again by no means emission-free.

Next consider the emission costs of recycling said batteries.

Add the costs and landfill problems of disposing of the remaining toxic sludge.

Now consider these costs over the average life-time of the car. A good petrol engine car will go for around 150,000 miles or so, much more sometimes – how often would you need to recycle the batteries for that?

Once you’ve figured THOSE elements in then you can start comparing the pollution and energy costs.

Done on a large scale we’re going to have tankers full of toxic stuff to create batteries. Heaven help us if that runs aground.

I often see the figure thrown around of petrol engines only being “20% efficent” but that’s highly misleading.

It’s actually a lot more efficent to refine the fossil fuel and put it straight into the vehicle than it may at first sound!

I should also point out that cars DO have batteries – and improvements in batteries would help MPG as the engine wouldn’t need to keep charging the thing so much?

I have no objection to electric cars per se – they don’t have the same kind of power curve issues and can accelerate rapidly, don’t sit there throbbing in traffic etc. Give me one as speedy and easy to drive as my petrol car that I can “top up” once a week like I do my current car, at the same price (car and fuel) and I’d be happy to switch.

Likewise I have nothing against a good conspiracy theory but don’t really see one here. If Toyota coulda, they woulda – if they weren’t interested in exploring electric engines they wouldn’t have produced the thing in the first place. Evidently experience has shown it is not a feasible vehicle at this time.

Might be great for the owner but you have to consider everything else that goes into it.

Put it this way – ever seen an electrically-powered gas tanker? Well there’s a reason for that…