First comes the electric car.

Then the bicycle hook-up to charge the electric car.

Let's face it. I'm mostly too lazy to bike to work (it's just a tad too far to face in the cold mornings). But I do like to ride my bicycle. So I want an electric car that can be charged at home by a power generator attached to my bicycle. The technology to charge things via bicycles already exists, this is just the logical next step. And it could certainly incentivize people to actually use their treadmills and stationary bikes.

To me, that would be the best of all possible worlds.

We flyover-state denizens did not start the puerile name-calling.

I guess I finally got sick of my old friends who moved to/ live on the coasts scorning anyone in the Midwestern regions as being automatically conservative, Bush-lovin', Hummer drivin' yokel redneck scourges of humanity.

Please, you idiots - you are thinking about the South, not the Midwest.

So I'll be damned if I - a flyover progressive who could give a crap about "Gods, Guns & Gays" or any of that neocon bullshit - don't exactly bow down to worship at the Almighty Liberal Altar of the Coastals.

Sorry to hurt your tender feelings, though. Does Starbucks sell a sympathy card yet? ;-)

First they buy trolley and bus lines to destroy the transportation infrastructure and they fight tooth and nail every safety, emission and mileage improvement in the automobile. why does anyone defer decision making to this pack of prostitutes. their latest and greatest insult to america was the joint destruction of the ev-1, I say joint as in oil companies. their one chance to make the world a better place and they choose to screw the pooch or in this case america, maybe even the world, we would have been leaders in the world. sort of like having al gore as president, no iraq war maybe no 911 and the world would have been a better place. ah gm, oh I know lets give them a tax break or better yet tax money because they chose to market obscenities (trucks and suvs) instead of doing something smart.

AT&T commercials, complete with Tom Selleck voiceovers, telling us how we'll be able to work from the beach, among other things, back in 1997 or 1998. The tag line was "but you will". John Dvorak wrote something remarkably similar to this post in PC Magazine at the time, wondering if anyone had ever spent so much money advertising something you couldn't buy.

The Segway was the first, maybe best, instance of buzz marketing in the internet age. Billboards proclaiming "IT is coming" all over the place. Hints that one of the world's greatest inventors was involved. The media ate it up like candy.

As for electrics and plug-ins - Most cars will charge during off-peak hours, so they won't have any real impact on the grid or cause the powerplants to produce any more pollution. It'll be a problem when electric and plugins reach critical mass in about 10 years, when our dilapidated grid won't be able to keep up with demand.

The real problem with electrics is going to be financial. Right now everyone is banking on some sort of lithium battery - Li-Ion, Li-Polymer. These batteries lose around 20% of their capacity every year from the time they are manufactured, depending on temperature. So your Tesla's 220 mile range is going to be about 120 after 3 years if you live in San Diego, less if you live anywhere else (cold weather brings it's own set of challenges for batteries and electric motors). If you manage to run one completely dead, it may never charge again or just take 36 hours to charge (there are electronic controls in place to prevent that, but it still happens). Battery technology simply isn't where we need it to be for electric cars to really work, and there isn't anything on the horizon that looks much better than lithium.

Manufacturers can't subsidize electrics forever, so sooner or later the cost of replacing $7000 worth of batteries every few years will get passed along to the consumer. Standardization will help lower costs, but they are never going to be cheap. Batteries will be leased seperately, selling your car will become a nightmare.

All in all, it might be more cost effective to start investing in high-density infrastructure, reducing the need for cars, than it will be to try to sustain the suburban sprawl built on 30 cent gas.

And I do it all without vilifying car owners.

Instead, you merely vilify everyone who doesn't live near you, the very definition of provincialism. Nice.

Several people have pointed out that plug-in hybrids like the Volt still, of course, rely on the grid. Meaning they still not only produce CO2 through power plants (many coal fired), but also acid rain and everything else that comes with producing electricity. BUT STILL! Pacific NW National Lab did a study in 2007 saying a shift to plug-ins would nonetheless save up to 27% in greenhouse gas emissions. That number would be higher in states like California with cleaner power, and get higher as we brought more wind and solar into the grid. So it is an improvement...

Personally, I'm holding out for a plug-in hybrid that can burn biodiesel (from algae) in the gas engine.

@crunchette: You're so right, it's in the charter! Strange that I don't own a Mac, but I'm sure if I was the Machinist for longer than a week they'd make me buy one, the bastards.

@Misanthrope and BeatnikBob: Indeed, it's hard to count on GM. My take is that if there is any hope of dealing with climate change we're probably going to have to suck it up and forget what we know about GM, Exxon and others, because despite being part of the problem they are going to have to be part of the solution. If we want electrics or hybrids, somebody has got to make a shitload of them. And if we want biofuels somebody is going to have to distribute a shitload of it.

@lonewolfy: Seconded! Unless we can harness our collective coastal bitching and somehow run cars on that...