On Fri, Aug 14, 2009 at 12:21:12PM +0100, Recliner wrote:

It also means that even if someone's typical journeys are within this
range, they will be deterred from buying if they need to do the
occasional longer trip for which public transport isn't a reasonable
option.

Of course. If you need a normal car for those few longer journeys, then
it makes sense to also use it for the shorter journeys, rather than
tieing up twice as much capital (or, more likely, paying back twice as
big a debt!) to have two cars.

So, the electric car will cost more to use, have a very impractical
range, be tedious to re-charge compared to the occasional trip to a
filling station for a quick fill-up, ...

The one thing that would make me start to take electric cars seriously
for general-purpose use is standardised battery packs. Then it will
start to make sense for service stations to offer a "fill-up" where they
simply swap your battery pack for a charged one, then recharge the old
one and swap that for someone elses and so on.

Yes, that would require lots of infrastructure, which would take time to
roll out (just look at how slowly LPG is spreading), but at least it
would make such a roll out possible.

Can't see it happening though. Not for a very long time at least.

--
David Cantrell | Minister for Arbitrary Justice

Longum iter est per praecepta, breve et efficax per exempla.