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Electric cars - How Green are they?

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I have to ask though, how many of these batteries could sit outside your ofice all day during a cold winter?? They still don't have a battery that can keep that charge range. So for those of us in northern areas, how many expect their employer to provide heated parking or all day top up charging.... Lacking some advance in battery technology to allow this I have to question the year round viability of plug in technolgy for much of the country.
 
Speaking of battery's ..... How much hazardous waste will used up battery`s generate? Just asking .....
 
A couple of months ago we had a severe cold snap. Well below zero for a few days. Saw many many Prius cars on the side of the road having some pretty severe electrical "issues".
 
Whole thing is a boondoggle, IMO. Cost of R&D, development, building the things... Charging them requires time and facilities, inconvenience is a BIG downside, then there's the "end-of-life" issues with reclamation and disposal of all the nasty materials. Sorry, it AIN'T as GREEN as folks would like to believe. Not the panacea.
 
I can't doubt that you did see these cars, but I doubt that the problem was electrical. The Prius does not depend on the batteries and electric motors for primary tractive power.

<span style="font-style: italic">It has a 1.5&#8209;L combustion engine, <span style="text-decoration: underline">supplemented</span> by two electric motors and a battery pack, which can provide only short bursts of pure electric travel—1 to 2 km at most. But the Prius can’t use grid power to charge its battery: It generates all its own electricity using both engine power and regenerative braking. Having a combination of electric motors and a combustion engine working in parallel is ­valuable, though, because it allows the Prius (and similar parallel hybrids) to use its fuel much more efficiently.</span>

So, failure due to cold weather SHOULD not strand a Prius! Could they have run out of "liquid" fuel???
 
angelfj said:
I can't doubt that you did see these cars, but I doubt that the problem was electrical. The Prius does not depend on the batteries and electric motors for primary tractive power.

<span style="font-style: italic">It has a 1.5&#8209;L combustion engine, <span style="text-decoration: underline">supplemented</span> by two electric motors and a battery pack, which can provide only short bursts of pure electric travel—1 to 2 km at most. But the Prius can’t use grid power to charge its battery: It generates all its own electricity using both engine power and regenerative braking. Having a combination of electric motors and a combustion engine working in parallel is ­valuable, though, because it allows the Prius (and similar parallel hybrids) to use its fuel much more efficiently.</span>

So, failure due to cold weather SHOULD not strand a Prius! Could they have run out of "liquid" fuel???
Click to expand...

8 dead prius along a 50 mile stretch of road, with temps at about -10. All on the same morning, doubtful they all ran out of gas (liquid fuel). Do not know what was wrong, but 8 of the same type of car dead on the same morning did stand out.
 
<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:]8 dead prius along a 50 mile stretch of road, with temps at about -10.[/QUOTE]

I'll bet THAT picture never made any headlines.

Wasn't Al Gore's kid driving a Prius when he got nailed for speeding in California last year? I guess they're OK in warm weather......for now.......
 
angelfj said:
Maybe Banjo or one of the other "professionals" may have a theory.
Click to expand...

Possibly, too many unknowns to truly pinpoint anything. They could have all been high mileage cars, got bad gas at the same station, or a multitiude of other things. The only apparent commonality was the extreme cold weather and lack of non-hybrid drive cars dead in the same stretch.
 
All this effort being put into low distance electric cars. I can see some utility in the city, but for many of us their range just is not enough to satisfy our driving needs. I would much prefer conversion to natural gas to get us off foreign oil. I would start with the post office and all government vehicles, then expand the gas delivery system to the public and commercial use. I know that natural gas has only 60% the energy of gasoline, but we have a lot of it. Those living in the mountains may have a problem, but there are a whole lot of us living in the flat lands where this fuel would work just fine.
 
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