NOTE: This is posted by me on behalf of William Ernest Schenewerk, Ph.D., a listerner.

1. Ice cream trucks.   I have narrowly missed crushing children twice near where I live.
     Stopped about 2 meters short in each case. My 10 year DMV record is empty.
     There is also the 2 or 3 times women have blocked half the road at the illegal day care
     centr. Just as I give up and pass, short child in back seat opens door and gets out into
     the only remaining open lane. 3 more narrow misses. Total of 5.   Adding a tonnne of
     of dead weight to a vehicle will significantly increase the number of crushed humans.
2. Catalina.   Houses on Catalina island have a parking place for a golf-cart type vehicle.
     All such vehicles I saw were gasoline powered. Batteries will not climb the hills around
     Avalon. Next trip, see for yourself
3. Glendale College.   There is a steep hill from the main campas to the parking lot. I can
    almost keep up with the electric vehicle used to haul people up the hill.
4. Drag racing. While maximum performance electric vehicles can go 0 to 100 in 5 seconds or
     so, engine powered vehicles do 0 to 325 in the same length of time. Still a signifant
     performance gap.
5. Efficiency. Batteries under heavy draw recover about 1/2 the charging energy under heavy
    draw. Gasoline engines (burning hydrogen perhaps) recover 1/4 the "charging energy" Trouble is
     that an aluminum gasoline car will weigh half as much as the battery vehicle, thus both
     consume roughly the same equivalent amount of fuel. There is also #1 above.
6. Resources. Most battery vehicles use exotic materials that require significant energy to
    produce. It takes about a decade to breakeven on energy or money when buying a hybrid
    subcompact versus the non-hybrid version of the same vehicle. I used an aluminum car analysis
    to get this number.   Also the hybrid is heaver.   See #1 above.
7. Maintenance. Most of these cars, even the hybrid are low-production units. Co-worker had a
    (then new design) car with a CVT (transmission in it). When transmission started wearing out,
    auto shop got transmission on ground and then said: "we can not fix this"   No parts available,
    even from dealer. Dealer offered a new transmission for $5k.
8. Fuel cells have to be at 80 Centigrade to work. Tough to fly in to LAX and expect to drive to
    Bakerfields if the car sat in the airport parking for a week.
9. Two cars required. At present, battery cars actually have an advantage in urban settings. Too bad
    most Americans live in the suburbs. Most "Renewable energy" (AKA useless) energy options
    require tearing down most of the existing housing stock so we can live in urban centers like
    San Francisco. It also helps to make dogs illegal. Otherwise two cars are needed to drive one
    on the freeway and the other on short trips. That requires insurance, parking, and depriciation.
    Each car cost about the same as each dog, about $8k/year. The real estate lady's dog needs a
    heart valve or $15k.

Pure EV's have a fraction of the moving parts of an internal combustion engine - once established they should be cheaper to make and easier to maintain. The few remaining hurdles to mass production will be easily overcome now that high gas prices are providing additional motivation. Call me an optimist.

You are basing your bias completely on the types of electric vehicles that are currently around. You need to look at where technology is going in the future.

We must push for advances that make the electric vehicle feasable. Battery technology is showing signs of taking off. We are still a couple years off but hang in there.

EVs are very simple and low maintenance. Once we have the batteries the EVs will take over transportation. Once gas hits $6-$7 a gallon the market will be huge.

We really don't have any other viable choices if we want to wean ourselves off the oil nipple.

Good point... when discussing the future, me must realize that we will be working with future technology.

I'm particularly interested in the future of the "super capacitors". If they pan out - like Phoenix Automotive claims, for example - once high-voltage charging stations are in place, there won't be any reason why we can't drive like we do now. I can imagine easily pulling into a charging station, plugging in the high-voltage cable, going to the bathroom and ten driving another couple-hundred miles to the next station.

1. Ice cream trucks.   I have narrowly missed crushing children twice near where I live.
     Stopped about 2 meters short in each case. My 10 year DMV record is empty.
     There is also the 2 or 3 times women have blocked half the road at the illegal day care
     centr. Just as I give up and pass, short child in back seat opens door and gets out into
     the only remaining open lane. 3 more narrow misses. Total of 5.   Adding a tonnne of
     of dead weight to a vehicle will significantly increase the number of crushed humans.

A. Due to the quietness of the EV it is unknown whether EVs will cause more accidents or not. Due to their weight it is also unknown whether severity of accidents will be higher or lower.

2. Catalina.   Houses on Catalina island have a parking place for a golf-cart type vehicle.
     All such vehicles I saw were gasoline powered. Batteries will not climb the hills around
     Avalon. Next trip, see for yourself

A. EVs can easily be made more powerful than gas cars. Most locomotives and largest of mining trucks use electric power.

http://www.howstuffworks.com/diesel-locomotive.htm

3. Glendale College.   There is a steep hill from the main campas to the parking lot. I can
    almost keep up with the electric vehicle used to haul people up the hill.

A. Just use a bigger electric motor.

4. Drag racing. While maximum performance electric vehicles can go 0 to 100 in 5 seconds or
     so, engine powered vehicles do 0 to 325 in the same length of time. Still a signifant
     performance gap.

A. An electric dragracer can easily beat any gas car on the strip. And you wont have to worry about destroying the engine.

5. Efficiency. Batteries under heavy draw recover about 1/2 the charging energy under heavy
    draw. Gasoline engines (burning hydrogen perhaps) recover 1/4 the "charging energy" Trouble is
     that an aluminum gasoline car will weigh half as much as the battery vehicle, thus both
     consume roughly the same equivalent amount of fuel. There is also #1 above.

An electric Honda Prius consumes 250 W-Hr per mile. If you cover an acre with PV cells you can drive 6,000,000 miles a year off the power. While biodiesel you would only be able to drive 1,500 miles off the same acre.

6. Resources. Most battery vehicles use exotic materials that require significant energy to
    produce. It takes about a decade to breakeven on energy or money when buying a hybrid
    subcompact versus the non-hybrid version of the same vehicle. I used an aluminum car analysis
    to get this number.   Also the hybrid is heaver.   See #1 above.

To build an eletric car you need far fewer parts and it would be cheaper to build overall. Electric Motor, charge controller, and a battery thats about it. The battery is recycled.

7. Maintenance. Most of these cars, even the hybrid are low-production units. Co-worker had a
    (then new design) car with a CVT (transmission in it). When transmission started wearing out,
    auto shop got transmission on ground and then said: "we can not fix this"   No parts available,
    even from dealer. Dealer offered a new transmission

A. There is no virtually no maintenence on an electric car. No oil changes, no tune ups, no smog checks, a brushless electric motor will never wear out and if it does it will cost to rplace as mush as a wet-dry vac at home depot, $50.

8. Fuel cells have to be at 80 Centigrade to work. Tough to fly in to LAX and expect to drive to Bakerfields if the car sat in the airport parking for a week.

A. Fuel cells are hydrogen are a joke imho. To make hydrogen you can either use fossil fuels or electricity. If you use electricity, you can make hydrogen for about $2 gas equilivent.

9. Two cars required. At present, battery cars actually have an advantage in urban settings. Too bad
    most Americans live in the suburbs. Most "Renewable energy" (AKA useless) energy options
    require tearing down most of the existing housing stock so we can live in urban centers like
    San Francisco. It also helps to make dogs illegal. Otherwise two cars are needed to drive one
    on the freeway and the other on short trips. That requires insurance, parking, and depriciation.
    Each car cost about the same as each dog, about $8k/year. The real estate lady's dog needs a
    heart valve or $15k.

Wow. It sure is easy to come up with reasons why EVs suck, eh? Have you tried listing the reasons that gas cars suck? You've fallen into the common trap of comparing old-tech EVs with what we SHOULD have had and COULD have had already by now. Same thing happens with Fuel Cell cars all the time. Battery Evs only have 100 miles range. But Fuel Cells will have 500 miles range, and all these other great things. Well, that's comparing 12-year-old battery car tech with pie-in-the-sky-hopeful tech of FCV's. The bottom line is that even the ancient EVs like I drive (Rav4EV) work great, and fulfill 90% of my driving needs.

Since this sort of thing comes up regularly, I decided to make a list of them. After spending hours on it, I sort of gave up the project. I need to revisit to tune up some of the items. But you'll see that many variations on your complaints are common misperceptions. Interestingly, I don't have an entry for the icecream truck deaths yet. Hmmm

Anyway, here is the list from my EVnut.com pages:

http://evnut.com/docs/evs-wont_work.doc

Most of those arguments only apply to lead-acid based NEVs.

Electric Vehicle are not died, because you all for got one that the big automakers are researching very heavily called Fuel Cell Vehicles and another plus we create alot of biomass everyday that is also carbon neutral could be into fuel.

Fuel Cell is a pure chemical to electrical energy exchange and the fuel stack is the same as a battery though the lost factor is not as high as batteries though with the help of capacitors I think that energy storage could go much higher.

Fuel Cell Hybrid Systems that will charge today's and tomorrow's batteries along with capacitors.

----------

Cost of lithium is really getting the stuff and how much is there, since its a finite material means of supply plus if lithium was not explosive material into a battery would be much different altogether. Safety reliability is a problem if you crush it little bit can also cause an explosion. A few other less exotic materials for batteries meet the EU Standard for RoHS and are extremely eco-friendly and long shell life with less runaway charge problems.

-------

Zinc Air or Nickel is much better than that in all areas of eco-friendly and disposal areas plus cost efficient on the environment plus the safety of handling.

Electric Vehicle are not died, because you all for got one that the big automakers are researching very heavily called Fuel Cell Vehicles and another plus we create alot of biomass everyday that is also carbon neutral could be into fuel.

Fuel Cell is a pure chemical to electrical energy exchange and the fuel stack is the same as a battery though the lost factor is not as high as batteries though with the help of capacitors I think that energy storage could go much higher.

Fuel Cell Hybrid Systems that will charge today's and tomorrow's batteries along with capacitors.

----------

Cost of lithium is really getting the stuff and how much is there, since its a finite material means of supply plus if lithium was not explosive material into a battery would be much different altogether. Safety reliability is a problem if you crush it little bit can also cause an explosion. A few other less exotic materials for batteries meet the EU Standard for RoHS and are extremely eco-friendly and long shell life with less runaway charge problems.

-------

Zinc Air or Nickel is much better than that in all areas of eco-friendly and disposal areas plus cost efficient on the environment plus the safety of handling.

Nobody has "forgotten" about hydrogen fuel cells. They simply can't compete with battery tech. The car makers had the choice of what to bring to market in the 90's. 100% of them brought battery cars. The car makers have the choice of what to bring to market in the next two years. 100% of them are bringing battery cars.

Yes, Li can catch fire. But it is no more dangerous than the gasoline we are so happy with. Andno more dangerous than a pressurized tank of H2. We have had "safe" versions for many many years. Valence is the biggest maker of batteries that you can shoot bullets through.

You an think of a fuel cell stack as a very inefficient, expensive battery.