An Inconvenient Truth: The Oil Drum on Electric Vehicles

Updates

Later, September 5, 2012: Wow, speaking of batteries, I lost the bubble on this one. Is another one about to bite the dust? A123 down to 22 cents/share and 10% drop triggers short-selling alarm precluding further short sales until an up-tick, or something like that. Details at the link. A123 had been as high as $5.00/share this past year. Now down to 22 cents and falling. [See disclaimer for this site; this is not an investment site.]

Original Post

Link here to the Oil Drum.

Anyone who visits the "MillionDollarWay.blogspot," needs to visit the Oil Drum at least once a week and scroll down; it's an excellent site.

With regard to the linked story:

Batteries fail—as certainly as death and taxes. Rechargeable batteries at least offer the possibility of repeating the cycle, so are in this sense more like recurrent taxes than death. But alas, the story cannot repeat indefinitely. One cheerful thought after the other, yes? But wait, there’s more… Add to their inevitable demise an overall lackluster performance in battery storage technology, and we have ourselves the makings of a blog post on the failure of batteries to live up to their promises. 

To set the stage, the specific energy of gasoline—measured in kWh per kg, for instance—is about 400 times higher than that of a lead-acid battery, and about 200 times better than the Lithium-ion battery in the Chevrolet Volt. We should not expect batteries to rival the energy density delivered by our beloved fossil fuels—ever.

I think most folks with any common sense came to this same conclusion. I've been posting similar thoughts for quite some time. The linked article is full of graphs and very good writing. 

And for that performance, one can purchase a compact for $40,000.