Insight: Electric cars head toward another dead end

[No Elephants]

Insight: Electric cars head toward another dead end

(Reuters) - Are electric cars running out of juice again?

Recent moves by Japan's two largest automakers suggest that the electric car, after more than 100 years of development and several brief revivals, still is not ready for prime time - and may never be.

In the meantime, the attention of automotive executives in Asia, Europe and North America is beginning to swing toward an unusual but promising new alternate power source: hydrogen.

The reality is that consumers continue to show little interest in electric vehicles, or EVs, which dominated U.S. streets in the first decade of the 20th century before being displaced by gasoline-powered cars.

Despite the promise of "green" transportation - and despite billions of dollars in investment, most recently by Nissan Motor Co - EVs continue to be plagued by many of the problems that eventually scuttled electrics in the 1910s and more recently in the 1990s. Those include high cost, short driving range and lack of charging stations.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/02/04/us-autos-electric-hydrogen-idUSBRE91304Z20130204


Big government could do many things to make electric cars more palatable, thereby helping wean us from dependency on oil, which is a health issue, a national security issue and an economic issue. But we hate big government, don't we, boys and girls?

We approve of government only when it regulates what we may say, see and hear and who occupies our beds. And when it requires transvaginal ultrasounds as a condition of exercising a Constitutional right. Nothing the least bit big about that, is there, boys and girls?

Susie and Sam, please stop coughing this minute. You're disturbing the rest of the class.

[Enthusiast]

1. On the other hand

it seems that hybrids are fairly popular. In fact, they might be the only way for the industry to meet more stringent mpg requirements in the future.

I like your sarcasm about the right wing media narrative on pollution and fossil fuel.

[No Elephants]

2. Solar homes is another thing big government could have exercised its

authority over, maybe by lower cost loans for people seeking to build or retrofit with solar.

But, if go green, which shiekhs would pay for the Presidential inaugurations and Presidential libraries?