Interesting question

As somebody who rides a motorcycle, I can't get over the dead weight that people drive around.

The average car in the US is 3500 pounds where as they're only using about 600 pounds of that weight at any given time.

Why the need to fuel all that dead weight(hauling around unused metal), times the number of drivers in America?

Why not optimize the weight of vehicles and therefore how much fuel (electric or gas) is needed to  propell those vehicles?

I mean, in reality this thread was more to find out what kind of idiots would buy an old luxury car for the price of a new normal car, but this got unexpectedly interesting.

@Dr Herbie:

Unbalanced how?

Electric batteries have certain risks. The risk of overheating while charging and decharging is one. Two is that lithium-ion batteries are highly flammable. Nothing you do is going to change these two facts. You can reduce the risk of overheating and catching fire, but you can never get rid of them.

My main concern with batteries as a source of the fire is not my primairy concern. What happens if the battery catches fire due to a fire started elsewhere?

What happens if these cars hit the second hand market?

I'm not so convinced of the need to move to electric and certainly not convinced that it's a safer alternative.

@Maddus Mattus: Unbalanced in pointing out dangers of battery without acknowledging equivalent dangers in petrol.

Electric cars have certain risks and petrol cars also have certain risks -- in fact as I already posted, in the links previously, the American NHTSA has determined that the fire risks are similar between the two. See? Balanced.

What happens if the battery catches fire due to a fire started elsewhere?  Much the same as a petrol car when it catches fire due to a fire started elsewhere -- it will go up in flames and potentially spread the fire.  See?  Balanced.

What happens when these cars hit the second-hand market?  Much the same as a petrol car hitting the second-hand market -- if you don't get it checked out properly, then you risk accidents due to faults.  See? Balanced.

My view is that for me an electric car almost makes sense, but not until the range goes up and the price goes down. You appear to have decided that you don't like electric cars on principle and will find any argument to support that view. 

Herbie

@Dr Herbie: the article from bloomberg clearly stated that the risk of catching fire was the same, it said nothing about the safety. What happens when they do catch fire? So stating that you run the same risk in both vehicles is a faulty conclusion, based upon the article.

I have concerns about the electric car as a solution, but I think people should be free to choose. Petrol, especially diesel, is IMO much safer because we have 100 years more experience with it. Infrastructure is allready in place, etc etc. Why on earth should we move to battery powered vehicles? Petrol is still the best option and don't even think about playing the pollution card, because with electric the pollution is still there, just not from your exhaust.

@Maddus Mattus: By not mentioning anything comparative you are being bias against electric cars to support your a priori decision that you don't like them.  Yes, there may be an argument about the speed of the fire spreading or the heat of the fire, but you didn't start of with that, you started off saying that battery overheating was common without mentioning the likelihood of a petrol car fire, implying that electric cars are more likely to catch fire which is demonstrably false.

As for the pollution card -- we can easily play that one;  electric cars decouple the production of the energy from its use. Not all electricity is produced by fossil fuels and (at least in the UK) you can use a 'green' provider that uses more of the renewable sources for production, or you can (as several UK electric car drivers have) install enough solar cells to generate the required power to recharge your car. Electric cars have a larger carbon footprint in production but, due to their use of electricity and their fewer moving parts (requiring fewer replacements), their overall lifetime footprint is lower that petrol cars. As the technology of electric cars matures, I would expect the carbon footprint to drop (or at least stay the same) but not to increase.

However, my main reason for wanting an electric car would be the lower TCO over the full lifetime of the car.  Saving money always makes sense.

Herbie

The proprietor of WUWT (worlds best known global warming skeptic web site), Anthony Watts car (yeah its electric) :

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/02/23/electric-cars-its-all-about-the-battery/

Well climate change isn't the only reason to be concerned about either fuel consumption or emissions. Particularly if you live in an urban area.

Well I for one think this exploding battery thing might be on to something. The UK used to be filled with electric milkfloats, you'd see one pretty much every morning. Where are they now? Exploded in hideous fires, I'll bet you. The governments probably covering it up to sell electric cars, that's why you never heard of one exploding. Think about it....

@Dr Herbie: I suggest you read my comments again, I'm not against electric cars, I just don't think batteries are the way to go. They have real risk. And I did not state that electric batteries in vehicles tend to overheat, I said it's a common problem of batteries, especially lithium-ion. And current batteries only support a limited range, imagine the size of the things that could run 500+ miles?

Green energy doesnt nearly supply enough (never will, there is only so much wind and sun to go around) electricity to be able to sustain a electric car fleet. So we will have to build more nuclear, coal and gas powered powerplants. Invest heavily in new infrastructure to transport the power. And it's this transport of electricity that is the achilles heel of the electric car. It comes at a such a big loss, that any gain in efficiency in the car are lost. And imagine the rise in electricity prices!

And if you want to drag environment into it, you should take a look at the production sites of these batteries. It's not pretty.

@GoddersUK: I do acknowledge that urban areas do benefit, because the pollution is now elsewhere, but less overall? no, I'm not conviced.

Nobody answered my question.

Did Bill Gates ever build his monorail to his magic kingdom or not?

I don't live near Seattle so I don't know. I can say for a fact that the MS campus in Mountain View has no such monorail, sadly.

@Maddus Mattus: You comment about overheating batteries was clearly in the context of a conversation about electric cars.

Given that the average commute in the UK (which has one of the longest average commutes in Europe) is 8.2 miles (11.3 miles looking at rural areas only), most of us don't regularly need a vehicle with a 500+ mile range; on the rare occasions that people want to travel 500+ miles they could hire a diesel car and still spend less per year than they do owning a diesel car.

Not enough green electricity for an electric fleet?  You could argue that is the case at the moment, but you could also point out that the people running the electric grid would very much like people to use electric cars because charging them overnight would help solve one of their main efficiency problems (skip to 5:10 for the bit about night-time demand i you don't want to watch the whole 11 minutes). More electric cars being charged overnight would lead to a reduction in the cost of electricity for everyone. That's what the people running the grid say, and they are the ones who would know.

Yes, mining sites for the battery metals are not pretty, but then neither are some of the ones for coal mining.  It is up to the countries allowing open-cast mining  to clean up after themselves, and it is the responsibility of the companies producing the electric vehicles to ensure that as much of it is recyclable as possible.

Herbie

@Dr Herbie: too bad the majority will charge during the day time, when people have had their commute. You don't want to run the risk of a dlat battery now do you? That's an eight hour wait instead of a 15 minute walk.

And as the range increases and the charge time decreases, the power demand will increase by the product of the two. And people who don't own cars and people who have little money will be the victims of this latest fad.

Electric cars and green energy are projects for the elite to show off that they care for the planet more then for their fellow man.

@Maddus Mattus: And your source for this information is ... ?

If you have an electric car with a range of 100 miles and a commute of 11 miles, you're not going to recharge it once you get to work.  If you're charging on your own supply, you're going to want to charge it on the cheapest tariff possible -- I would invest £10 in a plug timer to start the charging after 11pm.

2 minutes ago, Maddus Mattus wrote

Electric cars and green energy are projects for the elite to show off that they care for the planet more then for their fellow man.

Which is such a stunningly hypocritical contradiction that I shall leave is as it stands.

Herbie

EDIT: contradiction, not tautology I think.

4 hours ago, Maddus Mattus wrote

@GoddersUK: I do acknowledge that urban areas do benefit, because the pollution is now elsewhere, but less overall? no, I'm not conviced.

Well that's the great myth about electricity being more environmentally friendly... you just shift the pollution elsewhere.

Still, the greatest good for the greatest number, and all that

3 hours ago, Maddus Mattus wrote

And as the range increases and the charge time decreases, the power demand will increase by the product of the two. And people who don't own cars and people who have little money will be the victims of this latest fad.

Just to be clear on this: You're suggesting that if electric cars were available that were capable of lasting for long distances, as well as having short charge times, people would spend a lot more time charging them. Presumably because they'd all suddenly discover a need to drive a lot further, right? I mean, further even than they typically drive now, despite petrol cars having exactly those characteristics? And this genuinely makes sense to you?

1 hour ago, GoddersUK wrote

*snip*

Well that's the great myth about electricity being more environmentally friendly... you just shift the pollution elsewhere.

Nothing is perfect, however there are methods of generating electricity that are cleaner and more efficient than petrol engines. It's also considerably easier to deal with the problems of waste products in a single power plant than it is when they're being generated from every single vehicle on the road.

"Of course the electricity  comes mostly from carbon sources, although in the end we were asked to  believe that combustion-kinetic  energy-electricity-transmission-charging-discharging-kinetic energy is a  more efficient process than combustion-kinetic energy. Perhaps."

http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2012/6/13/electric-vehicles-crony-capitalism.html

@Proton2: Perhaps?  More like definitely, if you do a bit of simple mathematics. 

http://energy.typepad.com/the-energy-blog/2010/04/greenhouse-gas-emissions-electric-vs-gasoline-cars.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/green-living-blog/2011/jan/17/electric-car-emissions

Herbie

Concerning more carbon-friendly ways of generating electricity, Japan has yesterday begun the restart of the first nuclear reactor since the March 2011 earthquake. After the Fukushima disaster, all nuclear reactors in the country had been shut down for safety inspection. The Kansai Power Company restarted this reactor in anticipation of higher demand in the summer. The restart was met by large protests. Several others are scheduled for restart in the coming weeks.

Nuclear power was previously used to generate about 30% of all electricity in Japan. Polls show 70% of Japanese citizens want Japan to completely get rid nuclear power in the long term. I wonder how many of those 70% have given any thought as to what to replace it with.

I am not against nuclear power. I believe it can be done safely. Building nuclear power plants on the coastline of a tsunami-prone country and having no contingency plan for a complete failure of all backup power is not good practice, however.