Then like most other people, when I get home I look at my budget, my needs, and the real world market, and make my decisions accordingly.
Sadly that’s not what drives development and adoption of new technologies. My grandmother told me about the one guy in her town that had a car and she would bring him gasoline from the pharmacy in bottles. Obviously it was a factory owner and the wealthiest guy in town. Thanks to him and his peers, car technology evolved to a point where affordable mass market production was possible.
One needs discretionary income to be an early adopter but unless one wants to fly to space, it doesn’t have to cost a fortune. I love the first exhibit in the Mercedes-Benz museum. It’s a mounted horse with a quote by German Emperor William I: “I don’t believe in the motor car, it is a temporary phenomenon.” So be careful when expressing concern about new technology, you might end up as a joke at the entrance of a museum 
Since I might just be the guy who got paid to develop the new energy or power technology, that having been my entire career, your scenario doesn’t seem likely to me. I’m looking forward to showing people the fielded results of an existing $800 million (to date) project to electrify one system on one vehicle. It pays the bills. Unlike software etc, doing development on high power equipment can cost a lot of money.
Its very true that you need discretionary income to participate in R&D, both as a developer or early consumer, so you can’t kill the working golden goose in chasing too many ideas. I can of course show people the interesting results of the promising energy/power related projects I’ve worked on that didn’t ultimately make technical sense. Equally interesting, and they also paid my bills. My choice is generally to work on the developer side and spend other people’s play money on things that usually don’t come to fruition. Having earned all my own money, and not having an excess of it, that’s what my financial health dictates.
OK, this thread seems to ‘expand’ a little.. Achim, I am with you, just ordered an i3 myself. I also admire BMW’s bold move.
The car is for my wife of course, ahem. She does not know yet. If I am a good boy I may get some miles in it too.
170 HP, 22kWh battery, average 130 km range. You are getting 160?
Thread drift alert!!
We have a Tesla Model S in our lab in England right now. We supply some electronics to them. It is an impressive vehicle
As we have drifted, nuclear is the only sensible modern fuel source other than shale gas. Germany pulling out was purely a political stunt after the Japanese accident. Modern nuclear is very safe.
Nuclear is the only currently known method that has any chance of delivering a solution to electric or mainly electric transport.
Everything else is either limited in its application (e.g. tidal power needs a place with big tides) or is just subsidy farming (wind, solar, etc). Here in the UK, large scale wind power is mostly subsidy farming.
Germany pulling out was purely a political stunt after the Japanese accident. Modern nuclear is very safe.
Safety was not the motive, the accident was just the right moment to implement a policy that had majority support in the population for about 10 years. The conservatives/liberals always supported nuclear despite their electorate being against it. The main reason for Germany’s move is the completely unsolved storage problem of nuclear waste. In the old days we would just bring our waste to La Hague and Sellerfield but neither of the facilities are open to new waste anymore. That was not an easy move given Germany’s strong position in supplying nuclear powerplant equipment.
I am fully behind that decision, nuclear is a dead end. Wind farming is going to be one of the main sources of energy and it is making great progress.
So, now the thread drift to electric cars has been overcome
Neil, your drift is unacceptable. Tesla Model S is great but it is a US product, and this is EUROGA remember ;)
Nuclear is fine as a bridge to sustainable energy is my view. And also more money needs to go to nuclear fusion.
A nuclear fusion device would be fine aboard a GA aircraft too!
it is making great progress.
Definitely, mainly in burning coal. Now you not only get the 34% efficiency of the coal firing plant, you also get the 80% efficiency of the battery.
For added benefit to the to the environment, they’re firing mostly brown coal, not hard coal 
The biggest advantage of electric vehicles are that the pollution doesn’t happen where the driving happens, but somewhere else.
Re Wind: I just wonder when the environmentalists notice that it has an effect on the environment (apart from the occasional slayed bird and the “visual pollution”).
I recently read a study that claimed global warming is going to reduce global temperature differences that drive the wind in a cube relationship. So the output of wind generators is expected to drop significantly (a third or so) in the next few decades.
I bought an electric vehicle yesterday (Renault Zoe).
A power plant has better controlled and cleaner combustion process than a car engine.
34% is the lower limit, then you have 85% in a modern LI-Ion battery and another 85% in the electric engine and electronics.
Is a total efficiency of just under 25% for an electric car powered by coal only. Not bad compared to the 18% of a non-turbocharged petrol engine.
We will see how long British Gas will need to put a plug next to my garage.
BMW is out of question as this company acts actively against GA in Germany (Fürstenfeldbruck)
