Don’t you love how everyone on the internet is a comedian?

Even the old lead-acid battery has about an 85% energy efficiency, and the power grid is about 95% efficient. The source-to-wheel efficiency of the fuel cell is, at best, about 35%: 70% for an electrolyzer and 50% for the fuel cell, assuming a hydrogen infrastructure that, unlike the power grid, does not already exist.

The best automotive internal combustion engine efficiency I know of is the Toyota Prius, which is about 32% efficient tops, not including the losses in drilling, shipping and processing oil and gasoline, also a dangerous fuel.

As for range, the GM EV1 had a 125 mile range, which was certainly enough for my daily driving (I could leave home every morning fully charged.) And it only had a nickel-metal-hydride battery pack. If you really need more (and you probably don’t) there’s lithium-ion, which can easily double it.

Hint: stop worrying about range or charging speed. As long as
I had enough to do your daily driving – and I nearly always did -
an overnight charge gave me a full ‘tank’ the next morning.

What if I needed to get to Vegas (from SD)? I’d drive to the airport.
Plenty of range for that too.

For a company that routinely spends billions (plural) on new
vehicles, $1B was a cheap way to get rid of the California ZEV
mandate. The only flaw in GM’s plan was that while they may
have made only 1117 EV1s, they leased virtually every one they
made and there was a long waiting list. This despite almost
zero advertising and an actively hostile sales force. I’d say that
was a pretty successful market trial that GM found just a little
embarrassing.

Paranoid? Maybe. Got a better explanation why they recalled working
cars from satisfied, PAYING owners and crushing them?

Please don’t turn on the TV to see that the Democrat candidate won the biggest share of the popular vote since Lyndon Johnson in 1964. I think it might break you.

Now for your feature presentation. My wang. It dances, it sings, it spits on the homeless, it is politically incorrect and extreme.

*watches it skateboard into the air and then crash into a tree* Pardon my while I pick up my dignity.

My motorcycle isn’t that exciting, but it is fun.

Though by your own definition, both the Republicans and Democrats are guilty of being insane: they keep fighting the same strategies over and over.

And for the record, I voted third party. I wasn’t expecting different results from either of the same parties.

Compressed air motors have been around for a long time, take a look at your dentist’s office.

The Tesla Roadster electric vehicle can travel 244 miles on a single charge, but it also takes 3.5 hours to recharge the vehicle. It also can accelerate 0-60 in less than 4 seconds with a top speed of 125mph.

However, it also costs $109k (base price) and needs a battery replacement every 100k miles or 5 years. It also uses Li-ion batteries which are not cheap.

The biggest cost involved with electric vehicles is the battery, not the production. Besides, larger manufacturers have produced electric vehicles before. GM spent over $1billion developing the EV1, but only 1117 cars were produced between 1997 and 2000. GM decided they would never make a profit and decided to buy back their “lease only” vehicles.

Epic ST:TNG quote of the day!

But let me reply.

The only engines (IE internal combustion engines; motor usually refers to electric motors) that do not run on oil instead use an oil substitute (ethanol, chicken fat, vegetable oil, etc), but none of the substitutes have proven to be effective.

Sure, we could go back to steam engines, but those are much heavier and produce much less power.

As for electric, they do not use “engines” they use electric “motors” for movement. Electric vehicles have yet to overcome the energy storage issue. Batteries are heavy, and cannot hold enough charge, not to mention inefficient. Fuel cells are better, because they store electricity as chemical energy, but those are still not feasible, as hydrogen is a dangerous fuel (would need to be compressed to be able to store enough, and god help you if you get into an accident and rupture the fuel storage tank).

The internal combustion engine really is a brilliant design, and is quite efficient. Though it has gone through more than 100 years of research and refinement. Design me an engine that runs on grass (without a chemical conversion) and we’ll make a ton of money.