Slashdot Mirror
8 US States Pushing For 3.3 Million Electric Cars
An anonymous reader writes "A coalition of eight U.S. states, including New York and California, have announced a plan to get 3.3 million zero-emission electric vehicles onto their roads by 2025. 'The states, which represent more than a quarter of the national car market, said they would seek to develop charging stations that all took the same form of payment, simplify rules for installing chargers and set building codes and other regulations to require the stations at workplaces, multifamily residences and at other places.' An editorial in Quartz says that while the initiative itself is fine, the states should really take cues from Tesla if they want to plan out an infrastructure that will convince people to switch. ' For longer distances, [Tesla drivers] can stop at "Supercharger" stations strategically placed along highways that let them add 150 miles of range in as little as 20 minutes. Currently, [government] money is being spent on installing much-slower chargers at stores, shopping malls and other urban locations in the hope that drivers will use them. Tesla says it will blanket the US with its Superchargers for a fraction of the cost, because it studies the driving patterms of its customers and installs charging stations only where they tend to travel. This isn't hard; most other electric cars also record their drivers' habits. If privacy concerns could be addressed and automakers would be willing to share that data with government transportation planners, the rollout of public charging stations could be more targeted and cash-efficient.'"
Yes, they are still sub-optimal for long road trips. However, as long as you can get a full day of normal driving in on a single charge, and recharge overnight in your own garage the picture looks much better, especially as a primary car where the second car where the other is gasoline powered. Weight it largely irrelevant to most people - once you can't pick it up it's just one more factor in the efficiency and performance characteristics. And cost, well that is what it is for now, the early adopters always pay a premium.
As someone said "There's nothing wrong with electric cars that batteries with twice the capacity at half the cost wouldn't fix", and there's plenty of promising new battery technologies on the horizon, we just need one of them to make it out of the lab.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
The problem with this comparison is that it assumes no energy is consumed in producing and transporting diesel fuel or gasoline.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
IF you have your car in a garage and charge it overnight, then you may rarely ever need to charge it away from home -- only for road trips, really. Depending on your driving habits, you may go months without visiting a charging station.
Even then, if you have a Model S and stop at a Supercharger station, you'll have the option of paying for a battery swap, which can get you back on the road in about two minutes.
Finally... Remember that even 3 million cars is only about 1% of the cars in the USA. Today's electric car technology can't meet everyone's needs, but I don't think it's much of a stretch to imagine it meeting the needs of 1% of the population. Things can grow from there as the technology continues to improve.