Naturally aspirated 4 cycle otto engines are roughly 25-30% efficient in terms of converting the thermal energy into mechanical energy. Turbo charged gets better. Turbo Diesels are much better, near 40%.

Nuclear energy is above 90% efficiency, some plants near 98% efficient.

Supplementing a nuclear plant with wind/solar/hydro power is currently the best practical method we have.

Batteries are great and all, but their longevity is a problem, as is waste when they are worn out and have to be replaced. They can be pretty toxic.

For a daily driver, I'd be perfectly satisfied with an electric vehicle with a range of 80-100 miles or so. That would be plenty to go to/from work, and the occasional errand or visiting a friends house. But I'd still need a gas car for road trips.

You referring to Lithium-Air batteries? Said to hold around 5 times the amount of energy as Lithium-Ion?

I usually pay around $100 per week. $1.69 per litre at around 50 litres and do around 750-850+km per week of driving. Full tank lasts me about 750km.

I wouldn't mind getting an electric car. But there are two fairly big problems.

1. I would MUCH rather drive a manual and I don't know of any electric car that isn't an auto.
2. Electricity prices in Australia just keep soaring skywards. It's increased by around 100% in like the last 10 years. What used to cost around $500 every 3 months is now around $800-1000. My last bill was $350 and I'm barely home to use any electrical appliance and rarely ever watch TV.

Another minor problem is that I also love the sound of a good engine.

Charging an electric car would still be very very cheap compared to diesel/petrol/LPG, not sure what, but it would be in the single dollar's range.

The big problem with electric cars is the economics, sure they are good for the environment (in driving, production is another matter) but they will never save you money. The battery's are still stupidly expensive, and they aren't a lifetime part. You will need to replace them in 10 years or so. So depreciation will hit used prices hard, or your maintenance cost.

Brushless motors also require little to no maintenance and even when they do its just the bearings on the rotor's that need replacement down the line. They are a sealed unit and tend to last a LONG time.

If we had cheaper batteries with fast recharge times and a common infrastructure to handle charging of the cars then electric would really be the ONLY way to go.

Yeah I don't deny this but given that I would have to charge the car 8+ times a week the costs will add up to double figures. Still cheaper but for how long? Australia's coal power plants are over 50 years old, they weren't designed to last this long. Pretty sure one of the coal power plants in Perth is running at over 100% capacity too.

Someone on another forum mentioned this. The batteries still work albeit not 100%. They would be very useful for storing excess energy from solar power in your home for use when solar energy isn't working (aka night or rainy day) instead of supplying it to the grid.

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So long as they start supplying manual variants :D

Electric motors have 100% torque available at 0 RPM. There is no reason for gearing really, and in fact Tesla tried it, but then went back to single speed setups. Its not worth the extra weight and friction introduced. There is also reliability problems with the amount of torque and how fast the system can respond to throttle input.

I.C. engines have nothing on electric system when it comes to throttle response.

I.C. Petrol/Gas engines don't start producing usable torque until about 1,000rpm or so, most cruising speeds are in the 1500-2000rpm range. Being that you must have a manual I'm sure you are familiar with what happens if you leave it in a high gear too long when decelerationg. You get crap for throttle response and power.

Not so with an electric motor, at 0rpm it will have 100% torque available, so if it has 400lb/ft torque, you get ALL of that at 0rpm the minute you hit the accelerator pedal. The only issue is current draw, can the batteries supply it, and can the controller handle it.

These are my test drives of Mitsubishi iMiev and Toyota Prius Plug-In:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVOWanDDygA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZmk77YLxo4

I will be testing Prius Plug-In for another week, starting on Thursday and I will be posting videos with embeded OBD2 data on video.

We only get 19 seconds of video?! http://www.discussworldissues.com/fo...ilies/sad1.gif