Despite all manner of travails, Tesla Motors are delivering production models of their Roadster electric sports car. Or, more to the point, they are delivering a heavily-reingineered version of the Roadster that a) actually works as promised, and b) can be sold profitably.
Their next project? An electric family-sized car, the model S.
According to Tesla’s website, the model S will be a family-size, five-seater luxury sedan. It’ll accelerate as fast as a V8 Commodore, and has a range of about 250 kilometres with the stock battery pack, or 480 km with the long-range battery pack. And it’ll be yours to buy, at least in the United States, for 57,000 greenbacks, or just under 50,000 USD with the $7,500 tax credit available in the USA to purchasers of electric vehicles, in 2011. That’s roughly the equivalent of a 5-series BMW in the USA.
Tesla’s approach to building electric cars is very interesting. Most of the conventional manufacturers’ prototypes have been tiny econoboxes, with compromised functionality, with the goals of mak electric cars semi-affordable (if way more expensive than conventional alternatives). Tesla’s approach is radically different – start at the top of the market, build something with very few compromises compared to a petrol-fuelled vehicle, and charge whatever it takes. They’re forced into this, to a large extent, by the fact that they’re a startup needing a product to sell in the short term, rather than a massive car manufacturer who can support first-generation EV’s as a loss-making research project. But I think they might be on to something – electric vehicles are naturally going to be quiet and smooth, and at least initially have a massive technology snob factor, properties that sell well in the luxury market. And a lot more of the cost of a luxury vehicle is the interior fixtures and whatnot, which cost similar amounts whether they are fitted to an EV or a conventional vehicle, making the relative difference in costs smaller. The Model S isn’t going to be in my price range, but it’s getting closer.
The long term challenge for EVs, though, isn’t at the high end. It’s competing with Toyota Yarises and, ultimately, the Tata Nano and its successors that will clog the streets of hundreds of metropolises across the developing world.
Robert, I suspect that the history of most important technological developments is that they start at the high end. The early automobiles cost far more than a horse and cart. Hybrids are no threat at all; in the longer term,hybrids never succeed.
They are , at best, a stop gap technology.
Huggy
I agree with you there Huggy. Will be interesting to see how it places out, hopefully enough so that we can afford *some* kind of e-ish v once we have kids and they’re a little bit older.
Unfortunately our bloody building doesn’t have outlets in the garage!
Electric cars are fantastic especially since they use locally produced electricity as opposed to foreign oil.
Jeremy Clarkson in the Times loved it too:
“The Tesla works only at dinner parties. Tell someone you have one and in minutes you will be having sex. But as a device for moving you and your things around, it is about as much use as a bag of muddy spinach …..it costs £90,000. This means it is three times more than the Lotus Elise, on which it is loosely based, and 90,000 times more than it is actually worth …..filling a Tesla from a normal 13-amp plug takes about 16 hours…..do not, whatever you do, imagine that you could charge your car from a domestic wind turbine. That would take about 25 days …..while Tesla fiddles about with batteries, Honda and Ford are surging onwards with hydrogen cars, which don’t need charging, can be fuelled normally and are completely green. The biggest problem, then, with the Tesla is not that it doesn’t work. It’s that even if it did, it would be driving down the wrong road.”
Well perhaps he isn’t the world’s most objective reviewer but he does write well. And there is arguably something in the last couple of sentences, at least.
Clarkson is entertaining but completely unburdened with any actual knowledge about, well, anything.
For one, a pretty fair proportion of high-powered exotic automobiles are purchased exclusively for the purpose of impressing other people. So if the Tesla is getting its owners laid, methinks many of them will consider it excellent value.
For another, hydrogen cars are up there with another hydrogen-based piece of futurism – fusion power. Theoretically attractive, but the timelines for ever getting it to work on a commercially viable basis continue to disappear over the horizon.
He may write well but his account is a mixture of half truths and exaggerations.
1. Lithium batteries are improving all the time
2. The choke point is the current at the switch not the capacity of batteries to accept a charge
3. You would be nuts in most case using a domestic wind turbine to do it because in most cases people with Teslas aren’t going to live in a place where a domestic wind turbine would be any use. That’s not the same as saying that no domestic wind turbine anywhere would be any use. Some of them in some places would be very good.
4.Hydrogen cars are even less likely than Teslas to be a factor anytime soon. Hydrogen infrastructure will not be rolled out at scale until there are lots of hydrogen using cars and vice versa — chicken and egg. They are also leaky, impractcal, hydrogen embrittles metal etc … then there’s the problem with noble metals and fuel cells. H2 is a total red herring in transport. (Mind you it could be useful in replacing coking coal in steel manufacture)
5. Electric cars are likely to be a major factor in future urban transport but carrying round loads of Li-ion batteries seems less plausible than simply switching them the way one would if one were getting petrol (under the Better Place model).
Actually, Fran, I’m not sure about hydrogen being a suitable replacement for coking coal. It was my understanding that at least part of coking coal’s purpose was to add carbon to iron, to turn it into steel.
The Reva electric car starts at around $17,000 (UK) and as a local shopping trolley – where significant km are covered – it would get a lot of people to a lot of places far more cheaply than conventional vehicles and at far less cost to the environment.
There’s a description here.
Takes 9.66kWh to fully charge
Origin Energy charge ~14¢/kWh
= $1.35
= ~100k distance
Average fuel consumption in Australia (ABS) 13.6 litres/100 kilometres
= (@$1.20/litre) $16.32
Average distance travelled (ABS) ~15,000km/year
= 2040 litres
= (@$1.20/litre) $2,448
Reva/Origin Energy cost: $202.5
Reva purchase cost ~AU$15,000 (UK price, not incl VAT)
Batteries last 2/3 years and replacement cost is around AU$2,500
Service costs unknown, but with so few moving parts, seem likely to be a small fraction of petrol engine servicing.
Reva performance:
Max 65kph
Range ~100k
Charge time:
6hr – full
4hr – 85%
CO2 emissions
Reva: 62.6 gms/km (emissions at power station) (UK data)
Hyundai Accent (Dept Environment) 150-200 gms/km
Toyota Prius 106 gms/km
‘Green’ or solar energy can reduce emissions to zero.
In the UK, they’re encouraged by government – no congestion tax, free/cheap parking, provision of charging points. Insurance is at the lowest rate. In Oz, they’re banned: don’t meet design/safety rules.
This info is around 12 months old, so some adjustment may be needed.
The Reva is too slow in the Australian context, even as a suburban shopping trolley. It’s the same problem as 50cc motor scooters, and it’s much more difficult to let other people pass.
It’s also dangerous – yes, I know motor scooters are also dangerous, but people who buy them know that they’re taking their life in their hands, the Reva provides a false expectation of car-like safety levels.
Christ, that thing looks like a Lightburn Zeta, jape.
It makes my Mighty Sherpa (currently off the road) look positively safe.
David@7
Barry Brook at Brave New Climate
Then from wiki
Then Brook continues:
It was new to me as well, but interesting. Brook wants to put a lead cooled nuclear reactor next to a steel plant and pipe in the hydrogen.
Steel yourself – a clear role for hydrogen
Interesting.
my tastes and budget dictate something cheap and readily built from scrap, so I’m following in the footsteps of the late Kurt Johannsen http://woodgas.googlepages.com/home
Half the country ran on these in the early 1940s http://nakedmechanic.blogspot.com/2009/04/producer-gas-vehicles-on-display-at.html
I heard one, possibly apocryphal (but enjoyable nevertheless) tale about the Tesla, which was started by bigwigs at Google and PayPal for the purposes of doing something for the environment.
One of the safety problems of electric cars is they are pretty silent, cleaning up the proverbial vision-impaired little old ladies who cannot hear them coming and walk onto the road. At the same time, petrol-head drivers miss the vroom-vroom that they (dunno why) consider a necessary part of their motoring experience.
Put to one of the Tesla geeks at a car show, after a couple of seconds comes the answer: downloadable engine tones controlled by a computer looking at your accelerator and brakes. (Some might want it to sound like a ferrari, but there is no reason why your engine-tone couldn’t be based on a sample of galloping horses, with “whoa silver” emitted upon touching the brakes.)
I believe I heard a similar story Dave. It just goes to show the mentality of some car enthusiasts.
I’d prefer silent. I’d like my car to be like Kwai Chang Caine on the rice paper.
Fran – one of the issues with using H2 as the reductant is the sheer volume required, even a H2 generating reactor (and those aren’t exactly stable) would probably struggle. Then you’ve got the issues of H2 storage during plant shutdowns/etc (NASA has those tanks isolated for very good reasons).
the electric car thing is looking very interesting, lots of people doubted the Prius would make inroads into the market. Then all of a sudden they were selling thousands of the things – enough to make it well worth it.
Unfortunately until our government grabs CO2 pricing by the b@lls then economics will stay with the coking or BOC processes (though Whyalla could be a good place to experiment being where it is!).
Another issue to consider is H2 embrittlement of the steels involved – can be quite a problem for the nuclear and aeronautical industries, ad the primary steels are quite often used by those industries.
I won’t even go into the heavy-metal reactor issues – could be good, could be scary!
Back on topic
Well Steveh this use of H2 is an area that I first heard about today. I thought it interesting, if feasible.
I’m very bullish on EVs and I do like the Better Place model. It seems to me that that might work.
I also like the idea of expanding 2nd gen biofuels for use in serial plug-in hybrids.
The Friends of the Earth are supporting a coal fired power station underground,with some modifications like oxygen pumped in.I don’t know why our present coal fired power technology hasn’t found a place to burrow,and any industrial processing thereof.The mind is a maggot rather than a metal ingot.I am sure Tesla would disapprove of such language.And you could still have an advanced Solar Array technology above.On Electric cars Australians are in self-deprecating mode,and really need to revisit the basic concept more thoroughly and be ready to toss in the notion,that wherever possible there must beat least dual functionality.Otherwise it is plainly a heavy idea ,and a light weight application.I saw a Wankel Motor applied to a Light Plane in a Video YouTube.Small and was powerful enough to do the job.Wankel to electric conversion,within a car!?Cheap remoldable aluminium, if accident and replacement needs to occur.Wankel Electric sounds sort of……
2nd-gen biofuels have issues. For one, extracting them is tougher than is sometimes made out. Read Robert Rapier’s blog if you’re interested in a skeptical take on biofuels.
Two, I’m somewhat dubious about the amount of “waste” biomass is really available. Stubble on paddocks may seem like waste, but if you start removing it watch the soil blow away…
Three, a lot of these super-plants that grow like triffids in rotten soil sound like potential super-weeds.
In any case, the simplest and most efficient way to take advantage of biomass might simply be to burn it and make electricity with it…
Hi Fran – Sorry if I came over a bit negative – H2 does have a lot of potential, just that some materials science still needs some work done. Perhaps the same amount of work that CSIRO Div. Minerals/Resources has done over the last 20 years for the mining industry for example
EV vehicles would be ideal for couriers, service reps, sales reps and all my colleagues who have to make lots of short (unpredictable) trips back and forth across cities.
Robert – Christchurch city council has some human waste reactor tanks that provide power. If city waste-dumps were better designed we’d probably have quite a nice source of methane (better to burn it than let it absorb all that IR energy anyway)
I wonder if there is enough data around with hybrids and low speed accidents yet? Its not just vision impaired people who would have problems but inattentive adults, children as well as wildlife. At least hybrids make a reasonable amount of noise at higher speeds. Reversing in car park areas and out of driveways would also be pretty dangerous if cars were almost completely silent.
I still think electrolyte exchange as a kind of electric refuelling holds the most promise, better than the swap and go model even. See the diagram of Figure 6 in this link
here
In the short term we should be focussing on plug in hybrid technology. Plug in hybrid is already on sale in many countries, they don’t require new infrastructure and they can drive long distances if required.
I ran some calcs for my “typical urban working week” and found that retrofitting a conentional car with plug in hybrid would reduce fuel consumption by over 80% for a battery range of only 35km. (Basis: 6×30 plus 1x100km round trips/week) Battery range vs fuel saving depends on the mix of distances travelled so you would need to do your own calculations.
The potential urban market is huge, particularly if goverments screw up their courage and introduce regulations to drive down of average fuel consumption of new cars.
Once there is a large market for plug in hybrids there will be pressure on manufactureres to develop cheaper, better electricty storage for cars. Longer range may encourage service stations to provide charging facilities on major highways and, if nothing else, battery range will become a source of boasting rights.
Plug in hybrids may end up evolving into pure electric, particularly if pure electric becomes cheap enough for specialized commuter cars. Perhaps 4 wheel motor cycles will evolve into into cheap, narrow, city friendly tilt cab cars?
Roberyt @18
What you say about stover is quite correct, but there are other options
1. Algae
2. Ground fuel
3. Invasive plants and even exotic fauna
4. land fill/sewage
5. Mallee, Jatropha
6. Panicum and Miscanthus
Of these I’m most enthusiastic about algae which can yield both alkane-fuels and diesel since starch and lipids are yielded.
Much of the back burning we do is potential fuel which we could use to make syngas and then F-T to diesel; ditto invasive plants and even exotic fauna. Landfill produces methane — so there’s obviously a path to butanol there. ADs also produce methane
Plants like panicum (US switchgrass) store lots of carbon in their roots and help the soil; profide windbreaks, fix carbon, absorb ag run off and of course would produce excellent butanol. Even the residuals can be pyrolised to return to the soil.
And of course we have lots of sugar …
I’ m sorry my attempted link above didn’t link here it is:
http://www.vrb.unsw.edu.au/
Yes the bio-diesel from algae lipids sounds promising. The beauty of such a system would be that it could be set up as a genuine carbon sequestration cycle – crudely put it goes like this: coal powered electricity generation station emits carbon dioxide which is fed into the ponds where the algae grow. The algae use sunlight and the CO2 to grow from which bio-diesel can be made.
Fran, the big problem with using sugar (I assume you mean to turn it into fuel-grade alcohol) is that first you have to ferment it (no problem – yeasts have been doing that for millions of years), but then you’ve got to distill it. The best you’re going to get with fermentation is south of 20%, so you need a massive energy input to drive off enough of the water so that it’ll burn.
Robert, I’m pretty sure Robert Rapier is as scathing about ethanol as he is about biodiesel – for either of them the energy costs of production make it prohibitive as a replacement for oil.
No worries Steveh@19 — I was simply conceding my lack of knowledge about the technology requirements. It would be a huge advantage if you could feasibly sub hydrogen for coking coal in this way. Even without nukes — using electrolytic cracking from sources like wind, wave, tidal etc …
You committed the famous neologism EV vehicles ….
I saw an example somewhere of some city — in Scandinavia I think — where there were these micro vehicles that you could use to get around the CBD with a range of about 40k and about that max speed too that sat in rows <folded up! I can’t find it now but it looked like they’d parked a bunch of ironing boards on the street. You rented them by the trip for a modest charge.
Here are some of the other concept cars I think are kind of cute: The tuvie and the tango. Apparently “without an energy-robbing transmission or differential, it accelerates from zero to 60 mph in about 4 seconds and finishes the standing 1/4 mile in about 12 seconds at over 100 mph”. Still with 2000 pounds of batteries in the floor, it’s not a very light vehicle. Quick though … no golf cart and narrow enough to slip through small spaces. Could be good in cities but look out pedestrians!
I drove behind something called a ‘fortwo’ through the Adelaide Hills the other day, it looks like it should be an electric vehicle, but from what I have read from Googling, they have both electric and non-electric [but very efficient] models – I’d like to know what I was following because I was impressed with the acceleration it seemed to have. I’d like someone to make a kind of micro-ute version, that’d do me for work.
We have solved the problem of people getting hit by reversing trucks by having them make that beeping sound when they reverse. It would be a simple measure to have all electric cars with distinctive beeping sounds for when they start up and begin moving backwards or forwards.
Hydrogen Fuel Cell Cars are the biggest fantasy since the nuclear power “too cheap to meter” wet dream.
Fuel cells of all types are an ENERGY source not a POWER source. This means that the rate of energy delivery (power) is limited. The moment you try to exceed a certain power level the fuel cell collapses electrically. They are great as a distributed generation source for example but that’s about it, they need to be teamed with a power source to provide useful work. (please don’t mention super-capacitors)
The consequence is that a fuel cell vehicle can only accelerate at a really pathetic rate. Try passing a semi on a hill or don’t live at the bottom of one because you will be hours getting to the top.
Consequently it is essential to combine the fuel cell with a battery to provide power for acceleration.
On Lithium.
Lithium Carbonate, (Chloride) the raw material for Lithium batteries comes from two places Tibet and Columbia, as well as Chile. There is plenty of Lithium containing material around (Spodumene for example)but lithium extraction from this source is costly. Do not expect the cost of lithium batteries to come down too soon. Besides which Lithium batteries have a limited cycle life and did I mention that they explode if the Li ion is ever reduced to the metal by overcharge.
Huggy
Robert@5
OK, I concede that the hydrogen economy is at best a long way off and more likely will never arrive. My problem – and why I give some credence to Jeremy Clarkson’s remarks about Tesla being “the wrong road” – is that I find it equally difficult to believe in the giant battery economy.
We keep getting hearing reassurances that battery technology is improving in leaps and bounds, but the fact is that Tesla is current state of the art, and it has something like 6800 plus separate lithium ion cells all, up weight 450kg or so, taking 16 hours to charge (and whether this is due to battery capacity to charge or limitations in household wiring is immaterial: the practical impact is still that your very expensive car is off the road for 2/3 of a day every 2-300k, and some say considerably shorter distances than that)
There are an awful lot of blithe assumptions about technological progress – and they may be slightly more plausible assumptions than those involved in the hydrogen economy, but operative word slightly for mine – in deeming the electric car the answer. And saying even that is avoiding all questions of “answer to what?” for fear of provoking the usual unseemly wrangle.
Wozza: a couple of points:
1) battery technology does keep improving every year.
2) Most of the time, cars do sit idle for sixteen hours a day. And for the other 1% of days, swap-and-go batteries work perfectly well – this service already exists for e-bikes in China.
3) The Tesla uses 6800 individual cells because, at the time they designed it, they had to use commodity lithium ion batteries designed for laptops. There are a bunch of factories starting to churn out much bigger lithium ion cells especially for plug-in hybrid and EV applications. The Tesla Model S will use these cells.
4) The Tesla may have several hundred kilograms of batteries in it. How much weight do you reckon they save by having an electric motor instead of an internal combustion engine/
t would be a simple measure to have all electric cars with distinctive beeping sounds for when they start up and begin moving backwards or forwards.
Silkworm, the problem is that they’re quiet at any speed, not just when starting and stopping. In fact, those are the times when they’re noisiest. Noise is wasted power so electric cars go out of their way to avoid making it.
One of my nightmares is a city inhabited by electric beeping machines that never stop.
Beeping indeed. Why can’t the make a cool swooshing noise, and make this future worth living in?
Robot butlers!
On the ball about algae as fuel,but,algae does already grow in a unusual pond called a sewerage system!?And algae grows in walls of plastic bags,or even columns of transparent materials..plenty of experiment going on.I like the idea of a one stop shop.A bog ,a fart a fire station etc….I would of thought the apparent intelligentsia of Melbourne would go down at look at the MMBW old pipings and hope the casings aren’t broke.Sitting on your arse thinking about fuel production would finally be an action rather than a thought.Carbon dioxide aplenty from coal fired power stations on both sides of Melb. Seems everyone accept Melburnians see potential and they let themselves be thoroughly rippped off.
Phones have ringtones, so the obvious name for the sound these cars will be made to make while driving is …. so obvious that Better Place has copyrighted it.
Wayback when, in the days of Whole Earth Catalogs, and lots of other hopelessly hopeful stuff, all self respecting Kombi owners (‘Anything else is just a car’) had the superbly detailed ‘How to keep your volkswagen alive: a manual of step by step procedures for the Compleat Idiot’ by the eccentric, and now late, John Muir. In the back of it was an order form for a cassette of various VW sounds, for diagnostic purposes, or somewhat bizarre listening pleasure. Someone has thoughtfully uploaded the soundfiles to the Wayback Machine Internet Archive , so my electric car, (donations of old F&P washing machines gratefully accepted, especially phase 6 ones) will be variously sound like ‘Foreign Object in Fan’, ‘Engine Missing on Two Cylinders’ and ‘Holey muffler’. ‘Broken Crankshaft’ should get a few looks at the lights.
Ah, Danny, that was a trip down memory lane! I remember using the Compleat Idiot’s guide to the Kombi a number of times to keep mine on the road. Dunno where my copy of the Last Whole Earth Catalog got to, though.
Robert@31: Not sure how big “several hundred kg” is but lets assume 500 kg for a Tesla with a range of 480 km. By comparison, a Tesla sized hybrid might go:
Battery =50 kg – for 50 km range.
Fuel =60 kg – gives 600km @ 10litres/100 km
Generator+motor=100 kg
TOTAL =210 kg
Not sure about the weight of gen +motor but keep in mind that all the motor does is drive the generator and generator output has only got to be slightly above average consumption. Suggests to me that plug in hybrids will weigh a lot less, cost a lot less and be far more practical than comparable pure electrics and that the TESLA is basically an expensive toy.
The sums suggest a different story if we are talking about light, one person specialist commute vehicles. We may be able to get commute sized ranges from quite small batteries.
Even if pure electric becomes viable there is still a need for bio-carbons to replace fossil oil. Think semi trailers, farm vehicles, petrochemicals etc. Ongoing research is needed even though I think fuel consumption for cars will drop dramatically. The current fuel consumption record for a car with driver could get from London to Melbourne on about 4 litres of fuel! There is room for progress even without electrics.
My electric car’s going to play Wagner. The boys love it.
Liam,
Try driving down Lygon Street with fully sick system belting out Mozart instead of hip hop
Is dream I have. Don’t own suitable car or system.
I’m going down Lygon Street in my electric car playing this at full volume…
I’ll see your Kraftwerk and raise you.
Neat Liam, but I’m having a little inside joke.
Also of note is Nissan’s ‘Leaf’, announced this week. One of the more ambitious electric projects from one of the majors, slated for a 2010 release.
From this wired article, it’s promoted as having around a 160km battery life, 150km/hr speed limit, but the main difference for mine is that it is aggressively targeting the mid-range, rather than luxury or moped market.
link
I can’t see youtube at work, Robert. I hope the Kraftwerk song is “Fahren, fahren, fahren auf der Autobahn”, for maximum joke.
Charging ? No Problem.
In Switzeralnd they provide electric car charging points in car parks and at workplaces. So just forget all that stuff about charging time The cars have about 22 hours out of 24 to charge.
People are working on induction loops that you park over. Also loops that work while you drive.
Huggy
Not my words. The words of Top Gear Magazine.
You lot should start your own Alternative motor club,and people can leave their real address with the organiser.And see if the thing can both travel and be completely modified along the way,wherever…. to be an alternative of some sort.That is a Sort of Revhead rolling show. Out here amongst the mechanicillati SOME ALMOST SPIT, that their chance to get a Subaru was beaten by the present cheapest of options!? Know of a Kombi with a siezed engine60 61 model thereabouts.
Electric cars are not significantly better for the environment than petrol/diesel cars. That’s because the main issue with cars is that their size, bulk and speed require so much land for roads and parking that your desired destinations end up being far away. Hence suburban sprawl, and increased travel miles for both people and the goods they consume.
Colin, suburbia isn’t going away any time soon. Nor is the desire of people to drive around it in cars.
Electric cars ARE significantly better for the environment than petrol/diesel cars. They are cheaper to manufacture and zero CO2 emissions from the vehicle.
Even powered by brown-coal-electricity the emissions are 50-70% less than an equivalent fossil fuel powered car (gas, petrol or diesel).
90% of trips every day in Melbourne could be done with electric cars.
It is a failure of “poltics as usual” that the best Kim Carr and Labor and subsidise is a Japanese (Toyota) hybrid and Ford and Holden greenwash cars (“fuel efficient” Commodores & motors etc).
We need electric cars and we need them now. They are coming. By 2011-2012 there will be half a dozen available as imports in Australia. We should build them here and export them.
Sigh. Yet another missed job creation and export opportunity (along with semi conductors, fuel cells, solar power, etc).
There’s still a big problem for those of us in the inner city that don’t have off street parking, therefore no off-street charging. Maybe if the law was changed (in a very significant way) I could have ownership of my front of house spot and install a little charging post thingy?
Can’t dismiss this problem, inner-city wankers like me are a large proportion of the initial take-up market.
Also, there’s a major truckload of high-value real estate going cheaply (except for all the contamination) with all the service stations, 90% of which wont be needed with home charging. Keep 10% for swap-n-go charging? Maybe turn them into apartment blocks?
Furious balancing @ 29, a “fortwo” is just a Smart car. Been around for yonks.
Speaking of failures of politics as usual, and semi-conductors:
What’s the difference between Karl Marx and a semi-conductor?… One’s a dielectric material, and the other’s a dialectical materialist.
Sorry about that, appalling I know, won’t happen again.
Wilful, there are business and green jobs opportunities to install recharging infrastructure in inner city streets and parking lots. This could be in conjunction with parking meters too. In the US and Britain, some car parks have panel arrays on their roofs to supply 100% clean electricity for this.
Personally, I would think that now Nissan is in the electric car business then the world has turned the corner for good!
America cannot go on shelling out circa 2 billion dollars a day for oil! THAT is unsustainable given, you know, terrorism! (…they are paying the enemy!)