[Texgreen] Plug-in electric cars

[Roger Baker]

As you may know, the Austin city council is strongly encouraging the  
development of plug-in electric cars.

In a certain sense the problem of the electric car has been solved.  
Power everything. Goes 150 miles when you plug it in overnight to  
charge up on electricity that is much cheaper than gasoline:

<http://www.evworld.com/news.cfm?newsid=14338>

Then you dig a bit deeper and consider the battery.

It turns out that the model bought by actor Tom Hanks uses 5000  
rechargeable lithium laptop batteries. Consider their  
characteristics. They cost $100 a piece, and they last about five  
hundred charges or about two years.

Assume you are able to get a special deal and get them half price.  
Then the batteries only cost $250,000 instead of $500,000. You have  
to replace them every two years, so actually you end up paying  
$125,000 per year for your battery power.

I think, purely as a smart advertising move, the plug-in electric  
battery dealers ought to give away free cars when you buy their  
batteries.  -- Roger