XPost: rec.arts.sf.written, rec.arts.sf.science
From: seawasp@sgeinc.invalid.com
On 1/14/14 9:29 AM, Leszek Karlik wrote:
> On Tue, 14 Jan 2014 13:20:24 +0100, Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)
> wrote:
>
> [...]
>> However, that would not save you much if anything because you'd
>> still have to maintain all those vehicles.
>
> Luckily, electric vehicles are significantly less maintenance-intensive
> than
> internal combustion vehicles.
>
Unluckily, there aren't that many electric vehicles, their energy
density is terrible (and thus their range sucks), and their refuelling
time is generally ridiculous. Also, much of the maintenance on vehicles
isn't the engine -- those usually run for a long time without
maintenance other than oil changes, which are cheap; it's things like
brakes, suspension, tires, etc., which are there regardless of the
propulsion method. (How often do you need to replace the batteries to
maintain a reasonable cruising range? I don't know, offhand, though even
if it's a period of 10 years that's gonna be thousands of dollars in
maintenance costs -- MUCH more than I've spent so far on my IC car in
maintenance over 10 years)
We have a HUGE infrastructure dedicated to IC vehicles; changing over
to all-electric would be ludicrously costly. Doing so when the vehicles
themselves have very significant shortcomings when compared to the
established vehicles is also extremely unlikely. Electric vehicles are
popular among a small segment of the public right now, but something
will have to change to make it a large segment.
--
Sea Wasp
/^\
;;;
Website: http://www.grandcentralarena.com Blog:
http://seawasp.livejournal.com
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)
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