When would you buy an electric car?

[0roo0roo]

Originally posted by: boomerang

Originally posted by: Modelworks

Originally posted by: boomerang

Originally posted by: Modelworks
You guys talking about battery swaps at the station do realize they are not like changing a car battery now ? These things weigh 1000lbs + and take a forklift to move, they often take up several square feet. You are not just going to swap them out and be on your way.

When I was a working man, I regularly moved around tooling that weighed as much as 140,000 lbs. Moving something weighing 1000 lbs is nothing. It truly is. It's all what you're used to. I can understand an individual who works in an office environment thinking it's waaay out there but it isn't by any means.

You do it from the bottom of the car. You provide a means to index the battery to the vehicle which can also double as a means to index the tooling for changing the battery. The mechanism comes up from the bottom, indexes itself on the battery and unclamps it from the car. That battery is transported out of the way to a charging rack and the replacement battery moves into position. It is lifted into place, indexed and clamped. During the process, the bar code on the battery is read as well as the VIN of the vehicle for tracking purposes. A database is maintained to track the status of the battery.

Really, it's not a big deal at all.

You are dreaming if you think people will go for that.
There is no way that a change like that can be done quickly. There are too many safety concerns. You would have to put the vehicle on a lift, take out the old battery pack, place it somewhere so it can be recharged, then get a new one and place it in the vehicle, take the vehicle off the lift and do the paperwork, get paid.

That is at least 20 minutes or more to accomplish and that is if the person doing the work really rushes. People are not going to do that when they can fill up and go in a minute or two.

Look, I'm not going to argue this point. But I'm going to take the risk of pissing you off (which I really don't want to do) and tell you that if you have no experience in a manufacturing environment, you have no idea how fast things can be done.

My example used a quick oil change model. The car is driven over an opening in the floor and the whole process is completed from below. Totally automated. It would take 3 minutes tops. With multiple bays, there would be no more wait than a wait at a typical gas station.

Battery storage and charging is all done in the basement of the facility. Just as the quick oil change stores their waste oil tanks, etc., there will be plenty of room for battery storage and the equipment to change and charge them.

Have you not seem automated equipment run in a manufacturing environment? On TV even? Things happen very quickly. This is as doable as it gets. Watch How It's Made sometime.

ugh..dooable? you are talking heavy duty automation, something far beyond a petrol station type technology. in military application perhaps. but for wide spread consumer use...thats just not economically feasible. you are talking a crew of people per station. right now you are lucky to have one person at a station, and they are only there to sell candy bars.

 

[irishScott]

I drive a lot, so 300 miles minimum, 400 miles to be considered "good" in my book. 500+ would be sweet.

This is all assuming that gas stations/hotels start providing outlets en-masse. Top speed, price and pickup are also a concern.

 

[SSSnail]

If I can't make it to Vegas in a single charge, I won't consider it.

 

[irishScott]

Originally posted by: 0roo0roo

Originally posted by: boomerang

Originally posted by: Modelworks

Originally posted by: boomerang

Originally posted by: Modelworks
You guys talking about battery swaps at the station do realize they are not like changing a car battery now ? These things weigh 1000lbs + and take a forklift to move, they often take up several square feet. You are not just going to swap them out and be on your way.

When I was a working man, I regularly moved around tooling that weighed as much as 140,000 lbs. Moving something weighing 1000 lbs is nothing. It truly is. It's all what you're used to. I can understand an individual who works in an office environment thinking it's waaay out there but it isn't by any means.

You do it from the bottom of the car. You provide a means to index the battery to the vehicle which can also double as a means to index the tooling for changing the battery. The mechanism comes up from the bottom, indexes itself on the battery and unclamps it from the car. That battery is transported out of the way to a charging rack and the replacement battery moves into position. It is lifted into place, indexed and clamped. During the process, the bar code on the battery is read as well as the VIN of the vehicle for tracking purposes. A database is maintained to track the status of the battery.

Really, it's not a big deal at all.

You are dreaming if you think people will go for that.
There is no way that a change like that can be done quickly. There are too many safety concerns. You would have to put the vehicle on a lift, take out the old battery pack, place it somewhere so it can be recharged, then get a new one and place it in the vehicle, take the vehicle off the lift and do the paperwork, get paid.

That is at least 20 minutes or more to accomplish and that is if the person doing the work really rushes. People are not going to do that when they can fill up and go in a minute or two.

Look, I'm not going to argue this point. But I'm going to take the risk of pissing you off (which I really don't want to do) and tell you that if you have no experience in a manufacturing environment, you have no idea how fast things can be done.

My example used a quick oil change model. The car is driven over an opening in the floor and the whole process is completed from below. Totally automated. It would take 3 minutes tops. With multiple bays, there would be no more wait than a wait at a typical gas station.

Battery storage and charging is all done in the basement of the facility. Just as the quick oil change stores their waste oil tanks, etc., there will be plenty of room for battery storage and the equipment to change and charge them.

Have you not seem automated equipment run in a manufacturing environment? On TV even? Things happen very quickly. This is as doable as it gets. Watch How It's Made sometime.

ugh..dooable? you are talking heavy duty automation, something far beyond a petrol station type technology. in military application perhaps. but for wide spread consumer use...thats just not economically feasible. you are talking a crew of people per station. right now you are lucky to have one person at a station, and they are only there to sell candy bars.

And gas. Not all of us pay with cards. 😛

Suffice to say if the entire electric car industry carried a standard battery the system could work, but good luck getting that to happen. If electric cars ever take off the only standardization we'll see will be the outlets. Unless they make some miracle battery that can charge in the average time it takes to fill a gas tank and still power a car for 500 miles.

What would be nice would be a smaller, maybe 10 gallon gas tank to be used if the electric runs out, but then you have the problem of creating a hybrid engine/two separate and probably underpowered engines.

So in short I don't see them becoming viable in the near future. It's kinda like Iron Man. We have most of the technology we'd need to build a suit like that (however ridiculously expensive it may be), now all we need is that magical chest piece.

 

[cliftonite]

100 would be enough for me. I drive about 30 miles each day.

 

[DrPizza]

Originally posted by: Cattlegod

Originally posted by: boomerang

Originally posted by: Brovane

Originally posted by: boomerang

Originally posted by: Squisher

Originally posted by: Cattlegod
imho, they just need to have modular batteries - meaning you pay 50 bucks to swap out your battery for a fully charged one at a 'battery' station.

the battery stations then recharge them for use for new people to pull up.

This way the mileage requirement doesn't matter.

If you made the module universal and an easily accessible self locking roll out unit. It shouldn't take 5 minutes to roll one out and roll a new one back in. Heck, the whole thing could be automated.

Cost in today's electricity is about $.035/mile (Prius), so a power pack that has a 200 mile range has about $7.00 of electricity in it.

A "fill-up" shouldn't cost more than $15-$20

Absolutely. It could be done similar to a quick oil change. Pull in over an open pit with automated swap. Piece of cake.

The biggest hurdle would be getting numerous auto manufacturers to throw aside their egos and utilize a common battery configuration.

So who will be responsible for replacing them when the battery pack eventually goes bad?

That's a question I was going to give a quick answer to until I thought about it for a bit. The battery packs of course could be date coded. They would be warranted by the manufacturer. So if there was a failure of whatever kind during that time frame the warranty would handle that.

As for their eventual demise, the battery station is a business. That eventuality would have to be factored into their business model. It would be priced into every battery swap done.

exactly, that is why i was saying ~ 50 bucks a swap - to cover the labor and used life of the battery.

The only problem would be people abusing the system. meaning they charge the battery at home and when the battery is near the end of its life, swap it out for cheap. i'm sure something can be devised to prevent this.

50 bucks a swap? That pretty much defeats the purpose most people would have with getting an electric vehicle: to save money on fuel costs.

 

[Bignate603]

I'd consider it with a 50 mile range. A 100 mile range would be more than enough, though I'd wonder how much much running the AC would eat into that range. If I got one I'd get it as a commuting vehicle. We'd still have a gas powered car for road trips and things, but one of the vehicles could easily be an electric vehicle with a shorter range.

 

[zinfamous]

~250 miles, prolific charging stations, cost.


would also like some decent pick-up.

 

[l0cke]

I would buy an Aptera (maybe the hybrid, just in case) right now if you could buy them in CO.

 

[boomerang]

Originally posted by: 0roo0roo
ugh..dooable? you are talking heavy duty automation, something far beyond a petrol station type technology. in military application perhaps. but for wide spread consumer use...thats just not economically feasible. you are talking a crew of people per station. right now you are lucky to have one person at a station, and they are only there to sell candy bars.

I'm glad you guys have whatever jobs you have. With thinking like this widespread, we'd still be clubbing women over the head while wearing a bearskin coat.

This is like saying there's no way cars will ever catch on, because you'll need a lot of specialized equipment that's really expensive to repair them. How could we afford all this equipment and train all those people? It's not economically feasible.

No, no horses are here to stay.

Keep pushing your pencils and answering the phone.

 

[TruePaige]

Originally posted by: boomerang

Originally posted by: 0roo0roo
ugh..dooable? you are talking heavy duty automation, something far beyond a petrol station type technology. in military application perhaps. but for wide spread consumer use...thats just not economically feasible. you are talking a crew of people per station. right now you are lucky to have one person at a station, and they are only there to sell candy bars.

I'm glad you guys have whatever jobs you have. With thinking like this widespread, we'd still be clubbing women over the head while wearing a bearskin coat.

This is like saying there's no way cars will ever catch on, because you'll need a lot of specialized equipment that's really expensive to repair them. How could we afford all this equipment and train all those people? It's not economically feasible.

No, no horses are here to stay.

Keep pushing your pencils and answering the phone.

Seriously. How would we ever get complex computers into a usable size with parts that a normal person could carry around and swap out if they failed?

 

[DougoMan]

:roll: Battery Swapping? :roll:

That is the most idiotic idea I have ever heard. Not only would it be wildly expensive but manufacturers would never agree on a single battery design.

It would cost almost nothing to put a high voltage line for quick charging in. Already you can get an 80% charge in 30 minutes. And I am sure that will be improved upon long before any battery swapping station would come into existance. No labor and all you have to pay for is the electricity.

 

[0roo0roo]

Originally posted by: TruePaige

Originally posted by: boomerang

Originally posted by: 0roo0roo
ugh..dooable? you are talking heavy duty automation, something far beyond a petrol station type technology. in military application perhaps. but for wide spread consumer use...thats just not economically feasible. you are talking a crew of people per station. right now you are lucky to have one person at a station, and they are only there to sell candy bars.

I'm glad you guys have whatever jobs you have. With thinking like this widespread, we'd still be clubbing women over the head while wearing a bearskin coat.

This is like saying there's no way cars will ever catch on, because you'll need a lot of specialized equipment that's really expensive to repair them. How could we afford all this equipment and train all those people? It's not economically feasible.

No, no horses are here to stay.

Keep pushing your pencils and answering the phone.

Seriously. How would we ever get complex computers into a usable size with parts that a normal person could carry around and swap out if they failed?

not sure what your point is. no one said never. but if you were to claim that it was possible to build such a computer in 1960 you be an idiot regardless of future potential. you'd be even stupider to mandate that you attempt to force it into being before its time as well.

 

[Squisher]

Originally posted by: 0roo0roo

Originally posted by: boomerang

Originally posted by: Modelworks

Originally posted by: boomerang

Originally posted by: Modelworks
You guys talking about battery swaps at the station do realize they are not like changing a car battery now ? These things weigh 1000lbs + and take a forklift to move, they often take up several square feet. You are not just going to swap them out and be on your way.

When I was a working man, I regularly moved around tooling that weighed as much as 140,000 lbs. Moving something weighing 1000 lbs is nothing. It truly is. It's all what you're used to. I can understand an individual who works in an office environment thinking it's waaay out there but it isn't by any means.

You do it from the bottom of the car. You provide a means to index the battery to the vehicle which can also double as a means to index the tooling for changing the battery. The mechanism comes up from the bottom, indexes itself on the battery and unclamps it from the car. That battery is transported out of the way to a charging rack and the replacement battery moves into position. It is lifted into place, indexed and clamped. During the process, the bar code on the battery is read as well as the VIN of the vehicle for tracking purposes. A database is maintained to track the status of the battery.

Really, it's not a big deal at all.

You are dreaming if you think people will go for that.
There is no way that a change like that can be done quickly. There are too many safety concerns. You would have to put the vehicle on a lift, take out the old battery pack, place it somewhere so it can be recharged, then get a new one and place it in the vehicle, take the vehicle off the lift and do the paperwork, get paid.

That is at least 20 minutes or more to accomplish and that is if the person doing the work really rushes. People are not going to do that when they can fill up and go in a minute or two.

Look, I'm not going to argue this point. But I'm going to take the risk of pissing you off (which I really don't want to do) and tell you that if you have no experience in a manufacturing environment, you have no idea how fast things can be done.

My example used a quick oil change model. The car is driven over an opening in the floor and the whole process is completed from below. Totally automated. It would take 3 minutes tops. With multiple bays, there would be no more wait than a wait at a typical gas station.

Battery storage and charging is all done in the basement of the facility. Just as the quick oil change stores their waste oil tanks, etc., there will be plenty of room for battery storage and the equipment to change and charge them.

Have you not seem automated equipment run in a manufacturing environment? On TV even? Things happen very quickly. This is as doable as it gets. Watch How It's Made sometime.

ugh..dooable? you are talking heavy duty automation, something far beyond a petrol station type technology. in military application perhaps. but for wide spread consumer use...thats just not economically feasible. you are talking a crew of people per station. right now you are lucky to have one person at a station, and they are only there to sell candy bars.

You are talking about no more automation then it takes to dig a hole in the ground to house a storage tank fill with a toxic substance, then have an electrified pumping device pump the toxic and flammable substance into a car.

Like boomerang said, you have to see a modern manufacturing facility do a quick tooling change. I've seen 50,000 lb. dies rolled out of a press and another rolled in and functioning in 5 minutes. Rolling a 1000 lb. power pack battery sliding on rollers could be done with nothing but human power in 10 seconds. You could even build into a car the ability to incline the base of the battery holding area so that gravity rolls the battery out. 2 degrees should do it.

Keep the power packs in a racker stacker like this and have the rollers mounted to the forks.

Everything we are talking about is so common place if you were to ask someone to engineer something like this it shouldn't take a week. Although, it might take all the automakers and the government a year to decide on a standard.

Another issue would be that all cars would have a similar access hatch in the back, side, or front to slide in the power pack.

 

[skyking]

Here's another thing to consider:
Employers will get onboard. Look at all the incentives for ridesharing and carpooling now. Being green is very popular.
Employers with parking lots will put in plug ins for your cars, it will happen. Right now I could plug in at my work, but it is a small shop.
Now your 100 mile range car is ready to go another 100 when your shift is over.

 

[0roo0roo]

Originally posted by: Squisher

Originally posted by: 0roo0roo

Originally posted by: boomerang

Originally posted by: Modelworks

Originally posted by: boomerang

Originally posted by: Modelworks
You guys talking about battery swaps at the station do realize they are not like changing a car battery now ? These things weigh 1000lbs + and take a forklift to move, they often take up several square feet. You are not just going to swap them out and be on your way.

When I was a working man, I regularly moved around tooling that weighed as much as 140,000 lbs. Moving something weighing 1000 lbs is nothing. It truly is. It's all what you're used to. I can understand an individual who works in an office environment thinking it's waaay out there but it isn't by any means.

You do it from the bottom of the car. You provide a means to index the battery to the vehicle which can also double as a means to index the tooling for changing the battery. The mechanism comes up from the bottom, indexes itself on the battery and unclamps it from the car. That battery is transported out of the way to a charging rack and the replacement battery moves into position. It is lifted into place, indexed and clamped. During the process, the bar code on the battery is read as well as the VIN of the vehicle for tracking purposes. A database is maintained to track the status of the battery.

Really, it's not a big deal at all.

You are dreaming if you think people will go for that.
There is no way that a change like that can be done quickly. There are too many safety concerns. You would have to put the vehicle on a lift, take out the old battery pack, place it somewhere so it can be recharged, then get a new one and place it in the vehicle, take the vehicle off the lift and do the paperwork, get paid.

That is at least 20 minutes or more to accomplish and that is if the person doing the work really rushes. People are not going to do that when they can fill up and go in a minute or two.

Look, I'm not going to argue this point. But I'm going to take the risk of pissing you off (which I really don't want to do) and tell you that if you have no experience in a manufacturing environment, you have no idea how fast things can be done.

My example used a quick oil change model. The car is driven over an opening in the floor and the whole process is completed from below. Totally automated. It would take 3 minutes tops. With multiple bays, there would be no more wait than a wait at a typical gas station.

Battery storage and charging is all done in the basement of the facility. Just as the quick oil change stores their waste oil tanks, etc., there will be plenty of room for battery storage and the equipment to change and charge them.

Have you not seem automated equipment run in a manufacturing environment? On TV even? Things happen very quickly. This is as doable as it gets. Watch How It's Made sometime.

ugh..dooable? you are talking heavy duty automation, something far beyond a petrol station type technology. in military application perhaps. but for wide spread consumer use...thats just not economically feasible. you are talking a crew of people per station. right now you are lucky to have one person at a station, and they are only there to sell candy bars.

You are talking about no more automation then it takes to dig a hole in the ground to house a storage tank fill with a toxic substance, then have an electrified pumping device pump the toxic and flammable substance into a car.

Like boomerang said, you have to see a modern manufacturing facility do a quick tooling change. I've seen 50,000 lb. dies rolled out of a press and another rolled in and functioning in 5 minutes. Rolling a 1000 lb. power pack battery sliding on rollers could be done with nothing but human power in 10 seconds. You could even build into a car the ability to incline the base of the battery holding area so that gravity rolls the battery out. 2 degrees should do it.

Keep the power packs in a racker stacker like this and have the rollers mounted to the forks.

Everything we are talking about is so common place if you were to ask someone to engineer something like this it shouldn't take a week. Although, it might take all the automakers and the government a year to decide on a standard.

Another issue would be that all cars would have a similar access hatch in the back, side, or front to slide in the power pack.

yea sounds easy until you actually think about it, it would take several technicians to be there handling these massive batteries, there would have to huge banks of chargers in a huge underground warehouse esp for heavier trafficked areas, and to supply that level of charge you'd have to have some serious hookups. a few stations in big cities might be able to hack such a thing, but the farther out inthe boonies you get the more onerous such a setup even with smaller battery storage areas would be. if every car basically had to go through the process of an oil change to get a fill up there would be lines... the lower the battery capacity the worse it would be.

 

[Squisher]

Originally posted by: 0roo0roo
yea sounds easy until you actually think about it, it would take several technicians to be there handling these massive batteries, there would have to huge banks of chargers in a huge underground warehouse esp for heavier trafficked areas, and to supply that level of charge you'd have to have some serious hookups. a few stations in big cities might be able to hack such a thing, but the farther out inthe boonies you get the more onerous such a setup even with smaller battery storage areas would be. if every car basically had to go through the process of an oil change to get a fill up there would be lines... the lower the battery capacity the worse it would be.

I think you're hung up on the notion that the batteries would be put in through the bottom like they are done now. A battery pack that was 6 inches tall 4 feet wide and long could be slid in through a front access panel. You could drive up to a station that had already loaded a fully charged battery ready for the next customer. With computer visual recognition, laser indexing or old fashioned guide pin pilots the station could adjust to the position of your car. Nothing needs to be underground. I don't see any reason it would take longer than a typical fill-up does today.

Supplying the electricity to these charging stations out in the boonies might be an issue, but one that could be worked out. I don't see a 100% electrically driven fleet for a long time, maybe we will never get there.

 

[Raduque]

Originally posted by: Zenmervolt

Originally posted by: Cattlegod
people said putting 30 gallons of explosive gasoline into a pressurized thin metal container underneath a car made the same arguments back in the day 🙂

Fuel tanks aren't pressurized. In fact, prior to the 1970s they were vented straight to atmosphere. Even today with evaporative controls they aren't supposed to pressurize to any significant degree but rather to purge through the charcoal canister.

ZV

Why then, do some tanks go PSSHHHHH when you open them, and some cars (Like my mom's Eclipse) pitch a fit if the lid isn't screwed on all the way?

 

[tk149]

Assuming that the electric is as roomy, safe, convenient to fill up, and priced competitively with my ICE car:

300 miles. I'm willing to stop more often if the price of electricity is cheaper than gas.

Oh, and the battery has to last 5 years and not cost more than a $300 to replace.

 

[0roo0roo]

Originally posted by: Squisher

Originally posted by: 0roo0roo
yea sounds easy until you actually think about it, it would take several technicians to be there handling these massive batteries, there would have to huge banks of chargers in a huge underground warehouse esp for heavier trafficked areas, and to supply that level of charge you'd have to have some serious hookups. a few stations in big cities might be able to hack such a thing, but the farther out inthe boonies you get the more onerous such a setup even with smaller battery storage areas would be. if every car basically had to go through the process of an oil change to get a fill up there would be lines... the lower the battery capacity the worse it would be.

I think you're hung up on the notion that the batteries would be put in through the bottom like they are done now. A battery pack that was 6 inches tall 4 feet wide and long could be slid in through a front access panel. You could drive up to a station that had already loaded a fully charged battery ready for the next customer. With computer visual recognition, laser indexing or old fashioned guide pin pilots the station could adjust to the position of your car. Nothing needs to be underground. I don't see any reason it would take longer than a typical fill-up does today.

Supplying the electricity to these charging stations out in the boonies might be an issue, but one that could be worked out. I don't see a 100% electrically driven fleet for a long time, maybe we will never get there.

the volts 40 mile pack is almost 400 pounds.
a full ev's pack would be even more. such packs have to integrate cooling as well as the batteries. if you are talking multiples of 400 pounds for a workable ev you see why the packs become T shaped to better fit the internal structure of a car. once that happens you need not just a hole in the ground, but a lift.

 

[natto fire]

Originally posted by: 91TTZ

Originally posted by: Eli
Wow, lots of FUD in this thread.

1) Electric motors are superior to internal combustion engines in nearly every way imaginable. They can produce nearly full torque at 0RPM. Imagine a car with 1,000ftlbs of torque at 500RPM. It would dust your Impala SS without even blinking. Of course, you would probably only have a 25 mile range with current battery technology.. lol.

It all depends on how much horsepower it makes. Torque alone isn't going to get you anywhere. If it has 1000 ft lbs of torque but only 150 hp, it will smoke its tires at the line and then start bogging down as the speed progresses.

That is what transmissions are for. It would actually be making 95.2 HP at that engine speed, btw. (Hint: HP is not a force, merely a calculation from torque...)

 

[91TTZ]

Originally posted by: Raduque

Originally posted by: Zenmervolt

Originally posted by: Cattlegod
people said putting 30 gallons of explosive gasoline into a pressurized thin metal container underneath a car made the same arguments back in the day 🙂

Fuel tanks aren't pressurized. In fact, prior to the 1970s they were vented straight to atmosphere. Even today with evaporative controls they aren't supposed to pressurize to any significant degree but rather to purge through the charcoal canister.

ZV

Why then, do some tanks go PSSHHHHH when you open them, and some cars (Like my mom's Eclipse) pitch a fit if the lid isn't screwed on all the way?

The gas tank does hold some pressure, but it's not much. In fact, many cars will throw a check engine light if the ECU detects that the evap system isn't holding pressure.

 

[Eli]

Originally posted by: 91TTZ

Originally posted by: Eli
Wow, lots of FUD in this thread.

1) Electric motors are superior to internal combustion engines in nearly every way imaginable. They can produce nearly full torque at 0RPM. Imagine a car with 1,000ftlbs of torque at 500RPM. It would dust your Impala SS without even blinking. Of course, you would probably only have a 25 mile range with current battery technology.. lol.

It all depends on how much horsepower it makes. Torque alone isn't going to get you anywhere. If it has 1000 ft lbs of torque but only 150 hp, it will smoke its tires at the line and then start bogging down as the speed progresses.

But HP is a function of torque and RPM.

An electric motor that makes 1,000ftlbs would hit 150HP at only 800RPM....

I will re-iterate; an electric motor is superior to an internal combustion engine in just about every way imaginable. There is a reason trains and ships use a diesel engine to generate electricity and use it to power an electric motor, rather than just using the diesel engine outright.

If our theoretical motor made 1,000ftlbs at 1000RPM and only 500ftlbs at 5,000RPM, it would still be producing 476HP. It would also be producing almost 200HP at only 1,000RPM. Can an ICE do that? No.

 

[Sea Moose]

i own an electric car.... its 1/10th scale though 😛

 

[Mr.IncrediblyBored]

Originally posted by: irishScott
And gas. Not all of us pay with cards. 😛

Suffice to say if the entire electric car industry carried a standard battery the system could work, but good luck getting that to happen. If electric cars ever take off the only standardization we'll see will be the outlets. Unless they make some miracle battery that can charge in the average time it takes to fill a gas tank and still power a car for 500 miles.

What would be nice would be a smaller, maybe 10 gallon gas tank to be used if the electric runs out, but then you have the problem of creating a hybrid engine/two separate and probably underpowered engines.

So in short I don't see them becoming viable in the near future. It's kinda like Iron Man. We have most of the technology we'd need to build a suit like that (however ridiculously expensive it may be), now all we need is that magical chest piece.

It's called the Chevy Volt and will be on sale at the end of 2010. Except it's not a traditional "hybrid" powertrain. The gas motor kicks on to keep the battery at a constant charge and power the electric motor. The engine works only as a generator, while the electric motors always moves the car.

I'm surprised. The hype machine is pouring on so thick I thought everybody knew about the Volt by now.

http://www.chevrolet.com/pages...fault/fuel/electric.do
http://gm-volt.com/