Re: [Amc-list] Electrics

[Tom Jennings <tomj@xxxxxxx>]

> You know, the one question that keeps popping up in my mind is why designers of electric cars aren't thinking in a "modular" fashion -- have a standardized size / form factor, stop in at the "electric charge station", pull up to the "battery pack dispenser", the automated "attendant" finds the locating anchors on your vehicle, you watch it pull out your battery pack, put it on the charge rail, take a charged unit off the rail, and slide it in the battery pack housing on your vehicle.  You pay the man for the charge and go.  Two minutes, max.
> 
> It seems so obvious to me; and it seems so stupid that everyone designing the cars designs them with a two to six hour "down" time planned in.  Who in their right mind is going to take an electric on a cross-country trip under those constraints?  With a modular system, "recharging" would be no more painful than filling up every 250 miles or so is now.

I thnk the days of one-vehicle-fits-all are ending. You WON'T take an 
electric vehicle cross-country, or on one that rambles through random 
countryside, just as you won't take AMTRAK to go shopping.

Interchangable packs: because the battery packs are so damn large that 
they take up every nook and cranny to jam them in there. Cars are 
designed *around* the battery packs.

I can't even imagine a world where a Ford car would take a Nissan pack, etc.

Unlike a refillable LP bbq tank, where there's not that much to go 
wrong, you can really ruin a battery. The bbq tank has low value 
relative to it's contents; a battery pack costs MUCH more than the 
"contents", even at 50cents/KWh.



Though it would require city/town layouts as used everywhere in the 
world but the U.S.:

For work, walk/bike to trains, subways, etc.

For quart-of-milk type stuff, walk or bike to the store.

Shopping, typical weekend errands, visits, movies, electric runabout.

Weekend trip out of town, gasoline car.

Kids and dogs to the beach, gasoline car.

Moving? Rent a truck.

Road trip? Ramblers!

But in the U.S. a big factor I think that never gets mentioned is, 
people use their drive/commute time as "personal time". Music, (damn 
phone calls), just not talking to others, whatever. There's many reasons 
not many of them good.

Also us car nuts are the last to ask -- I at least partly LIKE my 
commute, since I drive cars that I MADE or whatever you call this 
insanity. MOST people don't have that relationship to their iron horses.

I really would rather take the train to work.

It's also not either/or -- cars, no cars. That's silly. Even traffic 
planners just want REDUCTION in traffic. Even just this Lakers game 
business in LA dropped traffic 5 - 10% (on SUnday) and it was like the 
palce as deserted.

A 10% drop in cars on the road during rush hour would take it from 
jammed bumper to bumper to cruising at stated speed. More or less that's 
the goal.

A lot of anti-public-trans people think that there's some conspiratorial 
"slippery slope", that there's some underlying goal of "eliminating 
automobiles". That's just bizarre.

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