Actually, even California passed one of those damn anti-gay marriage ammendments not long ago. I find it extremely disappointing how far we still have to go on that front, we can't blame that on the south, although I still believe there's very little argument against allowing gay marriage that's not religiously based.
But you're right, the south is really where it all starts. If they'd been allowed to secede, I wonder if they'd still be allowing slavery or if it would be like South Africa now. I doubt that on their own they'd have made many reforms.
I just ordered a DirecTivo from Orbitsat a week ago and it just arrived Friday. This was a series 1 model. Supposely they should have the series 2 in by now too. I don't know what retail stores carry them but you can get them if you look around.
I have used trackpads on several PC laptops and I can see why most PC users are so down on them. But I've also used trackpads on several Powerbooks, and they're a lot better. I wouldn't judge a trackpad by a PC laptop, really give the Mac one a chance.
Personally I've never liked those eraser mice and I hope Apple never puts one on my TiBook keyboard. I use a 3 button trackball most of the time with my TiBook, but when I'm on the road and I'm using the trackpad, it does a pretty good job.
It's 42k for purchase (not cheap, but no pure electrics are). But there are incentives available to lower the price. CA has a 3k a year for 3 yrs program for purchasing electrics, which brings it down 9k. Additionally there is a federal tax credit I hear for 4k which only applies to purchases. Personally I did a 4 yr lease because I figure by that time there should hopefully be more clean fuel options in the market, and if not I can pay the residual and keep the car.
You've missed one of the best options currently on the market for electric car shoppers in California- Toyota has made the RAV4 EV available to the general public for lease or purchase (previously it was only available to fleets). I got one a few months ago and it's been great. Gets 80-100 miles range, max speed 78mph, has a backseat unlike the EV1. I miss my EV1, but the RAV4 EV is a pretty good car and I think it's the only compelling pure electric currently on the market for the general public. The one annoying part is that the RAV4 EV uses a small paddle charger, and there aren't as many of those as the large paddle ones that the EV1 uses. I've never needed public charging myself, but I don't know if that's an issue for you. I suggest checking with Toyota of Palo Alto about the car- they are one of the best RAV4 EV dealers in the area and know their stuff better than most.
On a semi-related note, in response to all those Slashdot readers who keep spouting the same crap everytime an electric car comes into discussion- yes electrics are cleaner even if you do have fuels like coal as the source (which is not a significant part of the power mix in CA) because it is much easier to clean fuel at one place than in every vehicle, and if you want to calculate environmental effects of the production of fuel, don't forget all the effects of making gas . Additionally, if you have the option of selecting your power source like we did (we chose Commonwealth Energy) you can in fact get your power from clean sources.
Actually, the Visor Prism (color) is down to $300 now and for $50 you can buy a Springboard module which reads CF cards. Never had anything on a Palm I needed it to be faster for. Personally I have the Prism and a VisorPhone, and I've been very happy with them.
On the Mac, you can use iCab which has site by site Javascript filters, and also lets you turn off just specific features of Javascript, such as open windows, writing in status bar, etc. on a site by site basis.
My current approach is to disable the open windows and status line features and just leave the others enabled, and on the rare occasion I come across a site which uses pop up windows for legit purposes, I enable it just for that one site. It's very useful- I wish all browsers let you do it.
Mac Opera (maybe the other versions too) have an option to only open a new window via clicking on a link. It didn't seem to work as expected for me though.
Actually, regarding Halflife- the game was practically done being ported for the Mac when it was cancelled. Something to do with them not wanting to ship it with Mac-PC network support (even though the code was mostly done) so they wouldn't have to keep the versions in sync. It was really quite stupid I think- it was one of the most anticipated games on the Mac and would have sold quite well, and the work was practically done.
Pretty much the same thing happened with the Dreamcast port of Half-Life. Versions had gone out to reviewers and everything, and then they cancelled it. Kinda sad really.
Those complaining about the lack of tables miss the point. Tables really aren't very useful on a lot of small devices. People who use them for layout find their pretty design turns into crap on a little 150 pixel wide screen (and sometimes on a TV screen too). People who use them for tabular data still find that all that nice tabular data won't fit in the width of these small devices.
Leaving out tables emphasizes that you really can't count on a wide screen to fit all your lovely design and content into, and since the purpose of this standard is to have a simplified HTML for devices that don't fit well with the full HTML standard, it makes a lot of sense.
I just got my VisorPhone today and went browsing a bit using PalmScape. Pages generally were fairly readable except for the parts using navigation and tables and such that were expecting to fit on a wider screen, those fell into a total mess because they just don't fit on a small device. Sites designing with those devices in mind need to avoid reliance on things like tables- they just don't fit the medium well.
Is the 2.0 release not out yet? We have a TiVo at home too (my husband uses it) and I just looked and I still only see the search for shows that are already in the channel guide. I can't find a way to enter a keyword and tell it to record anything with that in the name like I can on the Replay.
There is another big feature Replay has that TiVo doesn't. On a Replay you can setup a keyword search to record shows based on title, description, actor (and director I think). If I remember correctly, the TiVo will let you do searches, but only to pick shows out that you can mark to record. It won't setup a regular search that records stuff it finds that matches. Personally I love this feature- it's very useful for finding stuff that is on rarely and erratically, and for categories of stuff (like I have it set to record gymnastics meets whenever it finds them).
No it wasn't. The first web browser was invented by Tim Berners Lee (as well as the first wysiwyg editor which was integrated). It ran on NeXT.
Mosaic as far as I know was the first cross-platform graphical browser (release on Mac, Windows and Unix) but it certainly wasn't the first web browser by any means.
Re:Blindness.org: Incompatible for Disabled Use.
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Using tables for formatting pages rarely causes them to be unreadable via speech readers. The speech reader just ignores the tables and reads the content in the order that it is in the HTML. There's no reason that the use of tables on that page should cause readability issues.
The main problem with tables is when they're used to group content in a manner where the context is important and for tabular data. Speech readers will generally just read the info as listed in the HTML and if the order comes out wrong it will be confusing. This is not the case on this article because the order comes out just fine if you ignore the table.
Re:Blindness.org: Incompatible for Disabled Use.
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Actually, the article itself should be completely readable by a blind user. The text comes out perfectly fine in Lynx, so a basic speech browser should have no problems reading the article to a blind user. The top navigation uses an image map, which could pose some potential difficulties, but if you go to the front page of their site there is a link to a text only version, which should also be readable by speech browsers.
Not sure where you got the idea that the article wasn't readable by blind users.
Agreed. I've used iCab as my main browser for several releases now. I only use Netscape occasionally (mainly for shopping sites which don't work in it or banking).
One of the best features you neglected to mention is the Javascript filtering by site. I've found this a life saver- I can leave opening windows via Javascript on for sites which have a legitimate use for it, while disabling annoying popup Javascript windows on sites like Geocities. iCab gives you the power to disable what annoys you- I can't think of any other browser which does as good a job at that.
Regarding the cost, I'm amazed how much people bitch about $30 for a browser. For god sakes- most people use their browser more than any other program on their computer except maybe their email client. $30 for a good quality browser isn't a lot. People are so cheap these days they're unwilling to pay for good software just because they can get other software for free. I can understand it for things you don't use that much, but for something you use heavily, like a web browser, paying a little to not be subject to the whims of a huge corporation seems quite reasonable to me. Most of the nice features in iCab like filters you'd never see in a mass market free browser- it's not in the big company's best interests to provide it to you. Only in these independent products will you see features for the user, not just the company.
In most of the areas where electric cars are available, you can choose which company provides your power, and green power sources are an option and don't cost any more.
As an owner of a pure electric car (GM EV1), let me answer those questions:
: 1. what if it breaks
What if any car breaks? I don't quite get why this is a problem. In fact, with my car, all maintenance is included in the lease, so at least if it breaks I won't be paying to fix it.
: 2. Do I have to plug it in.
How about "can I plug it in?". Quite frankly, I find it a hell of a lot more convenient to spend 30 seconds plugging my car in when I get home than 15 minutes at the gas station once or twice a week, inhaling fumes and having to interrupt my drive home because I'm running low. With 120 miles range, I can go just about anywhere in the SF Bay Area (where I live) and back without a recharge. The only place range is really a problem is on long trips like to LA, and if we weren't a two car household (my husband has a normal car) we could just rent a car for those really rare times we take really long trips.
Personally, I'd like to see more hybrids, but not the hybrids out there now- they're barely an improvement at all. You can get those low emissions out of ICE cars too if you build em right. I want to see the hybrids that you can plug in! Give it 25-60 miles of electric range and use gas to back it up when that runs low. That way the vast majority of people's daily commutes could be handled without even using gas, and you'd always have a gas backup if you had to make a long trip.
In the meantime, I'm perfectly happy with my EV1. Hybrids are good because they're cheaper to buy and they're getting people used to the idea of alternative fuel, but they still aren't taking full advantage of what can be done emissionswise. And I still would much rather be able to plug my car in at home, than to be dependent on the gas infrastructure alone. Pure EVs aren't for everyone, but the current generation ones are suitable for a lot more people than you'd think.
Television and Print news are too slow
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Main reason I get most of my news online now is that other media is too slow. By the time the newspaper hits, all the news is either a day old or happened after they went to print. By the time magazines hit things are a week, month or worse old. I read a few magazines for interesting articles, but those aren't about news, they're about content, and they're not generally time critical.
In terms of television news it's the worst. Not only do you have to wait for the news to air (except when the network decides something is so important they need to interrupt regular programming you were probably more interested in to talk about it for hours with no useful information) but when it does air, they tease you with stories but take forever to actually show them. The few times I have actually been interested enough in an advertised story to watch the news, I've had to sit through 20 minutes of crap to get to it, and that's if they didn't decide they didn't have time and just skip it entirely. When you read news online, you can go directly to the stories that interest you- you don't have to sit through blather and commercials just to find the story.
So even if there weren't issues with the quality of the news in other media (which there are), the timeliness and convenience just isn't there in any form other than online.
The GM EV1 is still technically available for lease, but GM keeps claiming there's not enough demand to make more even though they have a waiting list of orders they can't fill and a lot more people who'd get on the waiting list if they thought they might get one soon. They're trying to defeat the California mandate which is forcing them to make the cars, so they're trying to make them look non-feasible.
The car is lease only. 100 mile range Lead Acid version runs $400/mo., 120 mile range NiMH version is $500/mo. Lease is 3 years. That includes all maintainence, roadside assistance, charger lease, etc (so it is a little cheaper than it looks at first glance). Also, electricity is about 1/3 the cost gas would be so you save money there too (not to mention time spent fueling up at the gas station).
The technology is still too new for the cars to be cheap- the batteries are expensive and until they're made in much greater volumes they'll stay that way. But they're in a price range that many people pay for their cars now.
There are recharging stations in CA, AZ and GA. Most Costcos and Frys and Saturn dealers have them, and some other places too. But with 100-120 miles range, it's very rare that the average person will need to use a charging station often- I haven't needed one in the 6 months I've had my EV1- I just plug it in at home.
As nice as it is to see hybrids on the market- the ones that are out now aren't even near half-electric. More like tenth-electric. The electricity the current hybrids use is very minimal. What would be really nice are hybrids that are electric enough for daily driving, and gas as a backup for long trips. Nobody's building those yet.
Those cars aren't limited to 50MPH. In fact, I would be surprised if the hybrids had any artificial limits at all- it probably can go at least 100MPH (although tires on most cars aren't rated above 90, and people don't seem to care). My EV1 is electronically limited to 80Mph, which as far as I can see is more than reasonable for daily driving. (a modified version went as fast as 182Mph). It also goes from 0-60 in less than 8 seconds- more than suitable.
Probably the person driving that car was either distracted or they were just one of those slow drivers that are out there (and if you saw someone in a Honda Accord driving 50 on the freeway, you wouldn't blame it on the fuel).
The Prius gets about 50MPG, but at least it can seat more than 2 people. The Insight supposedly gets 60-70 but I hear it's generally less depending on how you drive.
The electric motor runs on an NiMH battery, not a fuel cell (fuel cells aren't ready for the market yet really). As much as I like to see mileage increased by these cars, I think the better hybrid would be one which is electric with enough range for 30-50 miles of driving, then can switch to gas when the electric is out. This would allow the majority of driving to be done with zero emissions (since most people don't drive more than 30-50 miles daily) and you could plug the car in at night to recharge it, but it would still be suitable for long trips and you wouldn't be dependent on a charging infrastructure. The hybrids are a step in the right direction, but the current hybrids aren't really all that much of an improvement. We can do better.
Toyota/Honda did not invent the concept of regenerative breaking. I believe the first car which used regenerative breaking is the EV1 (Toyota/Honda just use regen breaking as the _only_ way to charge the battery). If I'm wrong about who was first please correct me, but I know EV1 predates the hybrids.
Currently, electric cars can be very easily powered from 100% renewable energy. Most areas in which you can buy an electric car allow you to choose your energy provider and there are several which provide very clean power. Additionally, power in general in California, where electric cars are offered is fairly clean to begin with compared to most areas.
I understand the concerns about whether we can provide enough clean power if everyone went electric, but certainly the current status is that electric cars are much cleaner than gas cars, even with the pollution of power plants factored in.
I wonder if the car market might eventually get to the stage where there won't be one dominant power source (the same way that when the computer market graduated from floppies to other removables, the market splintered and there are several major players now in that market such as Zip and LS-120 and Orb). Personally I love my EV1. I think there should always be a place for zero emissions vehicles in the market, but I doubt electric will ever become the one and only mode of powering a vehicle- perhaps just one of many popular methods as technology improves over the years.
Well where I live in California, you can pick where the electric company gets your power, and I get mine from Commonwealth Energy. They produce green power- last I checked it was 90% biomass and 10% geothermal. This means that I can power my EV1 totally with green power (which is actually slightly cheaper than the default through the power company) and help the environment on both ends, in addition to the convenience of just plugging the car in every night. My electricity is about 1/3 cheaper than the gas I used to buy and signficantly more convenient.
The range of the NiMH EV1s is about 100-120 miles on a full charge, depending on driving conditions. This is significantly more than most people need for a single day's driving. The issue is really those occasional times when you do drive a long way, if you aren't a 2 car family. If you don't do it often, then renting a car those couple times, or stopping along the way for a charge isn't that big a deal. But for people who do it often it doesn't really work out too well. So the current EV isn't for everyone, but it has gotten to the point where it's definitely a good second car, and for some people it may be a good single car.
For those who complain about recharge time, it's definitely an issue if you drive long distances in a single day, but don't forget that it only takes a couple seconds to plug it in when you get home, so you're essentially having your car fueled every night while you're sleeping.
I would definitely like to see faster charge methods available (or if charging got very cheap to setup, you could essentially have charging available everywhere you go, which would work just as well, charge while you shop). But EV's are definitely getting to be useful. I've had my NiMH EV1 for 2 months now and I've enjoyed every minute I've had it, and I haven't doubted my choice for a minute. I don't think I'd ever want to go back to driving a gas car again, and I'm really hoping in a few years when my lease is up that there will be plentiful choices out there. Battery and alternate storage technology needs to improve so that an alternate fuel vehicle can be a choice for everyone, but it's already a lot better than most people realize.
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Actually, even California passed one of those damn anti-gay marriage ammendments not long ago. I find it extremely disappointing how far we still have to go on that front, we can't blame that on the south, although I still believe there's very little argument against allowing gay marriage that's not religiously based.
But you're right, the south is really where it all starts. If they'd been allowed to secede, I wonder if they'd still be allowing slavery or if it would be like South Africa now. I doubt that on their own they'd have made many reforms.
I just ordered a DirecTivo from Orbitsat a week ago and it just arrived Friday. This was a series 1 model. Supposely they should have the series 2 in by now too. I don't know what retail stores carry them but you can get them if you look around.
I have used trackpads on several PC laptops and I can see why most PC users are so down on them. But I've also used trackpads on several Powerbooks, and they're a lot better. I wouldn't judge a trackpad by a PC laptop, really give the Mac one a chance.
Personally I've never liked those eraser mice and I hope Apple never puts one on my TiBook keyboard. I use a 3 button trackball most of the time with my TiBook, but when I'm on the road and I'm using the trackpad, it does a pretty good job.
It's 42k for purchase (not cheap, but no pure electrics are). But there are incentives available to lower the price. CA has a 3k a year for 3 yrs program for purchasing electrics, which brings it down 9k. Additionally there is a federal tax credit I hear for 4k which only applies to purchases. Personally I did a 4 yr lease because I figure by that time there should hopefully be more clean fuel options in the market, and if not I can pay the residual and keep the car.
You've missed one of the best options currently on the market for electric car shoppers in California- Toyota has made the RAV4 EV available to the general public for lease or purchase (previously it was only available to fleets). I got one a few months ago and it's been great. Gets 80-100 miles range, max speed 78mph, has a backseat unlike the EV1. I miss my EV1, but the RAV4 EV is a pretty good car and I think it's the only compelling pure electric currently on the market for the general public. The one annoying part is that the RAV4 EV uses a small paddle charger, and there aren't as many of those as the large paddle ones that the EV1 uses. I've never needed public charging myself, but I don't know if that's an issue for you. I suggest checking with Toyota of Palo Alto about the car- they are one of the best RAV4 EV dealers in the area and know their stuff better than most.
On a semi-related note, in response to all those Slashdot readers who keep spouting the same crap everytime an electric car comes into discussion- yes electrics are cleaner even if you do have fuels like coal as the source (which is not a significant part of the power mix in CA) because it is much easier to clean fuel at one place than in every vehicle, and if you want to calculate environmental effects of the production of fuel, don't forget all the effects of making gas . Additionally, if you have the option of selecting your power source like we did (we chose Commonwealth Energy) you can in fact get your power from clean sources.
Actually, the Visor Prism (color) is down to $300 now and for $50 you can buy a Springboard module which reads CF cards. Never had anything on a Palm I needed it to be faster for. Personally I have the Prism and a VisorPhone, and I've been very happy with them.
On the Mac, you can use iCab which has site by site Javascript filters, and also lets you turn off just specific features of Javascript, such as open windows, writing in status bar, etc. on a site by site basis.
My current approach is to disable the open windows and status line features and just leave the others enabled, and on the rare occasion I come across a site which uses pop up windows for legit purposes, I enable it just for that one site. It's very useful- I wish all browsers let you do it.
Mac Opera (maybe the other versions too) have an option to only open a new window via clicking on a link. It didn't seem to work as expected for me though.
Actually, regarding Halflife- the game was practically done being ported for the Mac when it was cancelled. Something to do with them not wanting to ship it with Mac-PC network support (even though the code was mostly done) so they wouldn't have to keep the versions in sync. It was really quite stupid I think- it was one of the most anticipated games on the Mac and would have sold quite well, and the work was practically done.
Pretty much the same thing happened with the Dreamcast port of Half-Life. Versions had gone out to reviewers and everything, and then they cancelled it. Kinda sad really.
Those complaining about the lack of tables miss the point. Tables really aren't very useful on a lot of small devices. People who use them for layout find their pretty design turns into crap on a little 150 pixel wide screen (and sometimes on a TV screen too). People who use them for tabular data still find that all that nice tabular data won't fit in the width of these small devices.
Leaving out tables emphasizes that you really can't count on a wide screen to fit all your lovely design and content into, and since the purpose of this standard is to have a simplified HTML for devices that don't fit well with the full HTML standard, it makes a lot of sense.
I just got my VisorPhone today and went browsing a bit using PalmScape. Pages generally were fairly readable except for the parts using navigation and tables and such that were expecting to fit on a wider screen, those fell into a total mess because they just don't fit on a small device. Sites designing with those devices in mind need to avoid reliance on things like tables- they just don't fit the medium well.
Is the 2.0 release not out yet? We have a TiVo at home too (my husband uses it) and I just looked and I still only see the search for shows that are already in the channel guide. I can't find a way to enter a keyword and tell it to record anything with that in the name like I can on the Replay.
There is another big feature Replay has that TiVo doesn't. On a Replay you can setup a keyword search to record shows based on title, description, actor (and director I think). If I remember correctly, the TiVo will let you do searches, but only to pick shows out that you can mark to record. It won't setup a regular search that records stuff it finds that matches. Personally I love this feature- it's very useful for finding stuff that is on rarely and erratically, and for categories of stuff (like I have it set to record gymnastics meets whenever it finds them).
No it wasn't. The first web browser was invented by Tim Berners Lee (as well as the first wysiwyg editor which was integrated). It ran on NeXT.
Mosaic as far as I know was the first cross-platform graphical browser (release on Mac, Windows and Unix) but it certainly wasn't the first web browser by any means.
Using tables for formatting pages rarely causes them to be unreadable via speech readers. The speech reader just ignores the tables and reads the content in the order that it is in the HTML. There's no reason that the use of tables on that page should cause readability issues.
The main problem with tables is when they're used to group content in a manner where the context is important and for tabular data. Speech readers will generally just read the info as listed in the HTML and if the order comes out wrong it will be confusing. This is not the case on this article because the order comes out just fine if you ignore the table.
Actually, the article itself should be completely readable by a blind user. The text comes out perfectly fine in Lynx, so a basic speech browser should have no problems reading the article to a blind user. The top navigation uses an image map, which could pose some potential difficulties, but if you go to the front page of their site there is a link to a text only version, which should also be readable by speech browsers.
Not sure where you got the idea that the article wasn't readable by blind users.
Agreed. I've used iCab as my main browser for several releases now. I only use Netscape occasionally (mainly for shopping sites which don't work in it or banking).
One of the best features you neglected to mention is the Javascript filtering by site. I've found this a life saver- I can leave opening windows via Javascript on for sites which have a legitimate use for it, while disabling annoying popup Javascript windows on sites like Geocities. iCab gives you the power to disable what annoys you- I can't think of any other browser which does as good a job at that.
Regarding the cost, I'm amazed how much people bitch about $30 for a browser. For god sakes- most people use their browser more than any other program on their computer except maybe their email client. $30 for a good quality browser isn't a lot. People are so cheap these days they're unwilling to pay for good software just because they can get other software for free. I can understand it for things you don't use that much, but for something you use heavily, like a web browser, paying a little to not be subject to the whims of a huge corporation seems quite reasonable to me. Most of the nice features in iCab like filters you'd never see in a mass market free browser- it's not in the big company's best interests to provide it to you. Only in these independent products will you see features for the user, not just the company.
In most of the areas where electric cars are available, you can choose which company provides your power, and green power sources are an option and don't cost any more.
As an owner of a pure electric car (GM EV1), let me answer those questions:
: 1. what if it breaks
What if any car breaks? I don't quite get why this is a problem. In fact, with my car, all maintenance is included in the lease, so at least if it breaks I won't be paying to fix it.
: 2. Do I have to plug it in.
How about "can I plug it in?". Quite frankly, I find it a hell of a lot more convenient to spend 30 seconds plugging my car in when I get home than 15 minutes at the gas station once or twice a week, inhaling fumes and having to interrupt my drive home because I'm running low. With 120 miles range, I can go just about anywhere in the SF Bay Area (where I live) and back without a recharge. The only place range is really a problem is on long trips like to LA, and if we weren't a two car household (my husband has a normal car) we could just rent a car for those really rare times we take really long trips.
Personally, I'd like to see more hybrids, but not the hybrids out there now- they're barely an improvement at all. You can get those low emissions out of ICE cars too if you build em right. I want to see the hybrids that you can plug in! Give it 25-60 miles of electric range and use gas to back it up when that runs low. That way the vast majority of people's daily commutes could be handled without even using gas, and you'd always have a gas backup if you had to make a long trip.
In the meantime, I'm perfectly happy with my EV1. Hybrids are good because they're cheaper to buy and they're getting people used to the idea of alternative fuel, but they still aren't taking full advantage of what can be done emissionswise. And I still would much rather be able to plug my car in at home, than to be dependent on the gas infrastructure alone. Pure EVs aren't for everyone, but the current generation ones are suitable for a lot more people than you'd think.
Main reason I get most of my news online now is that other media is too slow. By the time the newspaper hits, all the news is either a day old or happened after they went to print. By the time magazines hit things are a week, month or worse old. I read a few magazines for interesting articles, but those aren't about news, they're about content, and they're not generally time critical.
In terms of television news it's the worst. Not only do you have to wait for the news to air (except when the network decides something is so important they need to interrupt regular programming you were probably more interested in to talk about it for hours with no useful information) but when it does air, they tease you with stories but take forever to actually show them. The few times I have actually been interested enough in an advertised story to watch the news, I've had to sit through 20 minutes of crap to get to it, and that's if they didn't decide they didn't have time and just skip it entirely. When you read news online, you can go directly to the stories that interest you- you don't have to sit through blather and commercials just to find the story.
So even if there weren't issues with the quality of the news in other media (which there are), the timeliness and convenience just isn't there in any form other than online.
The GM EV1 is still technically available for lease, but GM keeps claiming there's not enough demand to make more even though they have a waiting list of orders they can't fill and a lot more people who'd get on the waiting list if they thought they might get one soon. They're trying to defeat the California mandate which is forcing them to make the cars, so they're trying to make them look non-feasible.
The car is lease only. 100 mile range Lead Acid version runs $400/mo., 120 mile range NiMH version is $500/mo. Lease is 3 years. That includes all maintainence, roadside assistance, charger lease, etc (so it is a little cheaper than it looks at first glance). Also, electricity is about 1/3 the cost gas would be so you save money there too (not to mention time spent fueling up at the gas station).
The technology is still too new for the cars to be cheap- the batteries are expensive and until they're made in much greater volumes they'll stay that way. But they're in a price range that many people pay for their cars now.
There are recharging stations in CA, AZ and GA. Most Costcos and Frys and Saturn dealers have them, and some other places too. But with 100-120 miles range, it's very rare that the average person will need to use a charging station often- I haven't needed one in the 6 months I've had my EV1- I just plug it in at home.
As nice as it is to see hybrids on the market- the ones that are out now aren't even near half-electric. More like tenth-electric. The electricity the current hybrids use is very minimal. What would be really nice are hybrids that are electric enough for daily driving, and gas as a backup for long trips. Nobody's building those yet.
Those cars aren't limited to 50MPH. In fact, I would be surprised if the hybrids had any artificial limits at all- it probably can go at least 100MPH (although tires on most cars aren't rated above 90, and people don't seem to care). My EV1 is electronically limited to 80Mph, which as far as I can see is more than reasonable for daily driving. (a modified version went as fast as 182Mph). It also goes from 0-60 in less than 8 seconds- more than suitable.
Probably the person driving that car was either distracted or they were just one of those slow drivers that are out there (and if you saw someone in a Honda Accord driving 50 on the freeway, you wouldn't blame it on the fuel).
The Prius gets about 50MPG, but at least it can seat more than 2 people. The Insight supposedly gets 60-70 but I hear it's generally less depending on how you drive.
The electric motor runs on an NiMH battery, not a fuel cell (fuel cells aren't ready for the market yet really). As much as I like to see mileage increased by these cars, I think the better hybrid would be one which is electric with enough range for 30-50 miles of driving, then can switch to gas when the electric is out. This would allow the majority of driving to be done with zero emissions (since most people don't drive more than 30-50 miles daily) and you could plug the car in at night to recharge it, but it would still be suitable for long trips and you wouldn't be dependent on a charging infrastructure. The hybrids are a step in the right direction, but the current hybrids aren't really all that much of an improvement. We can do better.
Toyota/Honda did not invent the concept of regenerative breaking. I believe the first car which used regenerative breaking is the EV1 (Toyota/Honda just use regen breaking as the _only_ way to charge the battery). If I'm wrong about who was first please correct me, but I know EV1 predates the hybrids.
Currently, electric cars can be very easily powered from 100% renewable energy. Most areas in which you can buy an electric car allow you to choose your energy provider and there are several which provide very clean power. Additionally, power in general in California, where electric cars are offered is fairly clean to begin with compared to most areas.
I understand the concerns about whether we can provide enough clean power if everyone went electric, but certainly the current status is that electric cars are much cleaner than gas cars, even with the pollution of power plants factored in.
I wonder if the car market might eventually get to the stage where there won't be one dominant power source (the same way that when the computer market graduated from floppies to other removables, the market splintered and there are several major players now in that market such as Zip and LS-120 and Orb). Personally I love my EV1. I think there should always be a place for zero emissions vehicles in the market, but I doubt electric will ever become the one and only mode of powering a vehicle- perhaps just one of many popular methods as technology improves over the years.
Well where I live in California, you can pick where the electric company gets your power, and I get mine from Commonwealth Energy. They produce green power- last I checked it was 90% biomass and 10% geothermal. This means that I can power my EV1 totally with green power (which is actually slightly cheaper than the default through the power company) and help the environment on both ends, in addition to the convenience of just plugging the car in every night. My electricity is about 1/3 cheaper than the gas I used to buy and signficantly more convenient.
The range of the NiMH EV1s is about 100-120 miles on a full charge, depending on driving conditions. This is significantly more than most people need for a single day's driving. The issue is really those occasional times when you do drive a long way, if you aren't a 2 car family. If you don't do it often, then renting a car those couple times, or stopping along the way for a charge isn't that big a deal. But for people who do it often it doesn't really work out too well. So the current EV isn't for everyone, but it has gotten to the point where it's definitely a good second car, and for some people it may be a good single car.
For those who complain about recharge time, it's definitely an issue if you drive long distances in a single day, but don't forget that it only takes a couple seconds to plug it in when you get home, so you're essentially having your car fueled every night while you're sleeping.
I would definitely like to see faster charge methods available (or if charging got very cheap to setup, you could essentially have charging available everywhere you go, which would work just as well, charge while you shop). But EV's are definitely getting to be useful. I've had my NiMH EV1 for 2 months now and I've enjoyed every minute I've had it, and I haven't doubted my choice for a minute. I don't think I'd ever want to go back to driving a gas car again, and I'm really hoping in a few years when my lease is up that there will be plentiful choices out there.
Battery and alternate storage technology needs to improve so that an alternate fuel vehicle can be a choice for everyone, but it's already a lot better than most people realize.