|
It's interesting to sit and watch this play out from the sidelines for certain. Everyone here can remember within the last few years when the decision was put between DVD and blu-ray. For a while though it was a toss-up to see who was superior(namely to see if DVD could match), but eventually blu-ray won out.
I'm not certain electricity is really the answer. It has its enormous limitations, as of today.
Batteries are heavy. Even super high-grade Fuel cells(I attend Tennessee Tech and our ChE department makes some of the highest output fuel cells) are much heavier than their gasoline equivalent.
Fuel Cells burn out. Despite the fact the Lead-Acids are heavier and hold less charge than the new counterparts they can last longer and lets face it not many people are very keen on dropping several grand to replace the battery packs every 5 years or so.(talk to your landline phone company, they buy them used repair them trickle charge them all the time and when the power goes dead use it to run the power in your phone lines(some of the batteries are from the 50s)). It's different to run into transmission trouble or engine hiccups at 150,000 miles because those aren't for certain. The batteries going out is.
"ultra-capacitors" don't really exist yet. Alot of people are pushing ideas that say they have the possibility to a path of creating them. . . but all that really means is they think if you drop a billion in their lap they can make one. A billion USD is alot for I think.
So unless some form of nuclear battery, small scale nuclear reactor(1MW=1300 HP), formidable battery, new rare-earth metal or alloy is discovered I don't see electricity winning out over a conventional fuel.
If the U.S. went EV today it would just make your home electric bill go up, because the U.S. power grid is more than 10 years from getting mostly off of Coal and onto "free" power supplies.
"Hot, Flat and Crowded" by Thomas Freidman has more research on what would be necessary to go EV than I care to think about.
|