Wally wrote:ReverendDexter wrote: For short distance stop and go traffic, a fully electric car is far superior: no localized emissions, quiet, and no loss of efficiency when operating under a certain speed. Improvement of emissions for an entire fleet of electric cars is done in one location: your local power plant.That only works when you're fleet has down time to recharge. We run our Hybrid buses 16+ hours a day, and after a couple minutes to refuel they can be parked in a normal lot. If they had to be charged we would need to install 4000 outlets. We are able to make the same size bus accelerate faster and smoother with less than half the cubic inches, using less fuel and creating fewer emmisions.
Yes, but I'm talking about personal transportation, not fleet vehicles. But you do bring up the biggest weakness of electrics - the ABSURD recharge time. 8 hours? 2 hours with a Tesla if you have access to your special, at-home power port? Brings a whole new level of pain to running out of "gas".
Until we can recharge an electric car in the same amount of time it takes to tank up our Suburbans, I don't see many people being able to live with only an electric.
I do think that most people would be perfectly content with diesels, myself included. It's a real shame that they have such a bad rep with the American public, and no one, even VW, seems to really do anything to change that.
