Anyway it´s kind of funny to see how hated GM is, especially be the EV lovers, they seem to even wish it will go bancrupt even as it´s seemingly working dilligently on the Volt.

Americans complain about the gas prices, you should see them over here in Europe, even so I am thinking of buying a Cherokee Laredo V8 just to enjoy the last years of the gasoline age ! Here in Iceland we´ll be sitting pretty in our EV´s as we have dirt cheap electricity, but the problem is as in the US we have to get over our love of the dirty SUV, but perhaps they can become EV´s in time.

Not all utilities are as recalcitrant as your experience indicates – PG&E in California, seeing auto electrification as a major opportunity, is being very proactive about providing high power recharging facilities and smart meters. They explain it making an analogy to hotels that prosper when they have a high occupancy rate. Utilities limp along overnight providing a fraction of the power that’s needed during peak generation during the day. The prospect of increasing their “occupancy” overnight doing vehicle recharging is a very profitable proposition because they’ve already covered capital and overhead expenses during daytime operations.

Considering the problems w/new technology vehicles we can look to the experience GM had with the EV1 that, on balance, was the opposite of what one would expect – it turns out that total battery EV’s are low maintenance. But thinking about it, how could it be otherwise?

For openers, the motor has one moving part and the litany starts with there’s no transmission and fluid to service. There’s no exhaust system or muffler to replace, no cooling system or antifreeze & water pump to replace, no lubrication system and oil & filter to replace (and no oil leaks to fix), no fuel system to keep clean and no ignition system or spark plugs, points & wires to replace, no air filter, no egr valve & O2 sensor, no fan belts or timing belts, no lead/acid battery to replace, and front break wear is diminished by regenerative breaking. Periodic maintenance on battery EV’s consists of rotating the tires and changing the wiper blades. The comparison is so smash-mouth, one wonders why we’ve tolerated this brittle technology for so long – I admit that since it appears that we need a crisis to make some obvious changes that I’m glad that the perfect storm of steep oil price hikes and the need to reduce auto emissions is now driving the process ahead in a forward direction (‘sounds like Yogi doesn’t it:-).

But moderately priced full BEV is 5 – 8 years in the future when storage costs have moderated (they ought to develope like flat-panel monitors that have come down so much as their popularity grew) – I suspect the Volt will have a more conventional maintenance footprint owing to the generator and it’s many support subsystems. Looking forward for PHEV’s there are appealing possibilities for replacing the piston engine.

One that’s close to commercial availability is a dual rotor compound-cycle rotary design that grew out of the aborted Outboard Marine development project. It was taken over by the Mollier organization to provide high power to weight aircraft engines for it’s dreamed of personal VTOL aircraft (against all odds, it appears that they’ve got it off the ground). A Rotapower engine in the one liter class would replace what Chevy is using with an engine that’s possibly double the thermal efficiency weighing hundreds of pounds less. A material part of the weight saving comes from a NASA developed plasma coating for the rotors that allows them to be cooled by the fuel/air mixture as it’s injected rather than having an elaborate oil-cooling system used elsewhere. Because is has three moving parts and much simpler infrastructure, this engine appears capable of delivering many of the maintenance advantages of pure BEV with significantly reduced fuel consumption. And that’s just one example.

In all, I’m certain that it’s smart to expect the transition to auto electrification to take much longer than necessary owing to the variety of sources of inertia. But considering the challenge that the unsustainable trade deficit, high interest rates, a weak dollar, rogue producer government entanglements, and greenhouse gas emissions pose, the possibility of bi-partisan support for an all-hands-on-deck program to promote battery development and PHEV adoption in congress is not inconceivable.