Sunday, February 24, 2013

Electric cars slowly become a reality


Often praised for innovative engineering, but also maligned for over promising and and under delivering, Tesla Motors Inc. has realized two-thirds of their original vision with the release of the Model S. A flurry of reviews, including this one in the Los Angeles Times, put the car up on a pedestal with the likes of the Audi A7 or Mercedes-Benz CLS. But, reviewers also note the issue that continues to dampen enthusiasm for electric vehicles: range anxiety. 

Until we reach a consensus in the U.S. over the need for charging stations, we'll continue to lag behind nations that are aggressively deploying charging stations. The European Union is embarking on a plan to deploy 8 million charging stations by 2020

Part of the problem is that a large contingent of our society is in total denial about the reality that resource depletion is inevitable and that peak oil is just around the corner. A post from the Peak Oil  news site summed up the prevailing attitude neatly: 
Who cares about how many wells must be drilled almost constantly to maintain some semblance of increasing production? Costs per well? Who cares? Keeping oil prices high to justify all that extra drilling and investment? We’ll figure something out soon enough….Rapid depletion of new wells in the tight oil formations of the Bakken and elsewhere? Can’t be bothered to worry about that! We’ll just drill more! 
Electric vehicles could be part of our future (rather than the 1/10 of 1 percent of auto sales in the U.S., as is now the case) if we have the foresight and will to create the infrastructure that will allow them to flourish.