Tired of going to the gas station.

You know, I hope this doesn't sound lazy but i'm tired of going to the gas station! Especially living in Northwest Indiana where in the winter it is even worse getting gas - its freezing! Tell me it has not happened to you - you are leaving in the morning and have an appointment only to look down and see you need to stop for gas! How nice will it be to have a full tank every day!!!???? Although maybe it will seem like a hassle having to plug it in everynight - Nah, with the money I will be saving I am sure it will not bother me!!

Americans are complaining about gas prices going over $3/gallon -- here in Canada gas in Vancouver city is $1.26/liter, which is about $5/USgal. Cheaper in the 'burbs and surrounding small towns, I hear.

Here in Finland and most other parts of the Europe gas costs around 1.5 EUR/liter, so that is with current exchange rate $2.08/liter or $7.87/gallon.

If I drive about 10kmiles / year with BEV vs 50mpg car I would be saving $1574 every year in gas, and if 100kWh is enough for 300 miles I would spend about $462 in electricity saving $1112 each year + about $250 in oil/year (based on other thread) + undetermined amount of other maintenance savings.

If battery pack costs $200/kWh that's $20000. It would take me about 14.5 years to counter bigger initial price of the car (assuming PEM+emotor costs about same as ICE costs).

Not quite there yet, but we are close. Very soon BEV is actually cheaper to own than ICE car.

That's for money. If you count convenience of not having to go to gas station in, I think we are already winning :-)

Not having to go to a gas station is definitely a big advantage of an EV. People don't realize how much of a hassle it is to have to stop and do that dirty task every 200 to 400 miles.

Most people don't realize that we only spend 4% of our time driving. The other 96%, the car is idle. What makes stopping at a service station a pain in the fill pipe is that you are going somewhere, and you have to take this detour. How much easier, how much less stress to pull into the garage every night and automatically have it full every morning, at about half the price of gasoline. Of course, you miss out on the slim jims, the beer, the twinkies, the chips at 200% prices, and the chance to bond with some of your ICE drivin' buds.

I want a total electric work truck in the 3/4 to one ton range all wheel drive all the time for towing and bring cargo to my electric generating wind mill manufacturing facility. When is that going to happen?

You mean pickup truck? I'm guessing maybe two years from now. Tesla makes Model S based SUV first, then maybe it is time for pickup truck. If Tesla goes for two-engine approach for AWD (I don't see why not) then you get somewhere near 1000Nm torque from engine, which is around 8000Nm measured at the wheels (2000Nm/wheel). That's a lot more than any ICE car gives you.

And there is no clutch engaged in bringing engine torque to the wheels. No need to rev up the ICE! Torque is applied starting from 0 rpm. Electronic traction control is built into the electronics that control the amount of power sent to the motor.
Electric AWD truck will be great car for towing.

The bar-hoppers' REV

The short end of the range.

Everyone in downtown Houston has somewhere they need to go -- that’s a given. But you can’t always find a taxi, and walking even a few blocks in the heat of summer will really make you sweat.

Now there’s a new way to get around town: The REV Eco-Shuttle, an all-electric, eco-friendly way to travel from point A to point B.

And that’s exactly what REV founder, Erik Ibarra, had in mind.

“It started out as a tips-only service, meaning it was a free ride as long as you tipped the driver,” Ibarra says. “We had a lot of regulars. There was a guy who did his laundry at a laundromat every Saturday, and he’d call us for a ride when he was finished. He’d pile all his laundry on the REV seats, and we’d drive him home. We also picked a lady up and took her to get her medicine at the pharmacy once a month.”

But the need for REV’s services took an interesting turn.

“Eventually, using the REV for a ride became an evening thing,” he says. “People would call us for a ride so they could bar-hop or so they could get home after a night of partying.”

Is this the kind of car many suggested USA should go to instead of the big SUV's and macho pickups. Just bring it here and see how quick we jump to it.

VW to be introduced in China next year. 600 dolllars USA. One seater, passengers? Unveiled at stockholders meating as most economical car in the world.Safety not sacrificed as the impact and rollover protection comparable to GT racing cars. Gas tank 1.7 gallons.1 cylinder diesel.Speed 74.6 MPH.Travel distance with full tank 404 miles.

Even I could buy this and would in a New York minute.

Oh yes put post here because don't think I would be going to gas station that often. This will be goood to have in the mix as response to ripoff gas prices until the electric cars make their impact. Know the oil cos are not solely to blame, also ripoff taxes on fuel. This will be good tool in the arsenal to combat all this gouging of the consumer.

Now any naysyers just bring your wise srguments on. Based on response from suggestion of "floating boycott" idea. Will probably be a 'bleeped" if you do and "bleeped" if you don't. Some folks just like to be condescending and contrary.

I am surprised at the lack of comments about this car. A friend sent me pictures and everything. Is this legit from VW and have I got the price right in USA dollars?


It's gotten a bit tedious to read your same comment in multiple threads in multiple forums. Most of us read everything.

I look for what's new and don't want to see it repeated 10 times (or more).

@Timo I am agree with him, better to have Pickup trucks as compare to car in that case. Let see how much Tesla will take time for it. I don't think so that it will take two years. Soon we will able to see it

to starsphereaz sorry i missed your post, my email is

Is that site for real? About half the sentences are in incoherent and meaningless English. What a bunch of junk!

Almost as bad as much of the spam we've been getting.

The other day I found a gasoline receipt from 1998. The price of a gallon of regular gas in 1998 was $0.939 US. That's 94 cents! Now, 13 years later, the price has quadrupled to $3.75 a gallon.

What do you imagine it will cost 13 years from now? $7.50 or $11.25 or $15.00 per gallon? You could be talking about $140 or more to fill the tank in a midsize car. The average American could be spending $500 per month, per car for gasoline. Clearly, we need to get plug-in vehicles on the road as soon as possible.

Thank you Tesla Motors for leading the way!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

In Europe, taxes are high. So we had prices of around $2.5 a gallon already in 1991. From that point, prices today have risen to around $7 a gallon. So, American car drivers cannot expect much compassion from over here :-)

My source is an article in German, but with contemporary pictures of Opel cars (GM's other daughter in Europe) that may make it worth for you to look at anyway.

From that data, I made a logarithmic plot of gas prices and fitted a 4,5% annual increase since 1986. That equals to doubling every 15 years.

The very mathematical issue is this: an exponential grow will defeat anything else. You can improve mpg, drive less miles, no way: at some point in the future, driving a yard with a Prius will cost a month's salary. So clearly, things cannot go on like this forever. Since it is improbable that the problem can be solved at the supply side ("drill, baby, drill!") it must happen on the consumption side.


Nor should we. European taxes on gasoline have helped keep down the use of the automobile there for only the most really necessary uses.

I was impressed in Germany that the family of a friend of my daughter would transport the car by train for family vacations and use it at the destination.

Of course, in North America the real estate is spread out. Many states (e.g. California, Montana, and Texas) are larger in extent than most European countries. People do drive across those states. My own family has typically taken trips of anywhere from 1500 to 6000 miles round trip each year.

If the U.S. had raised gasoline taxes and used it to build a more economical and reliable infrastructure of interstate transportation, maybe more people could afford to take family vacations by rail and only use cars at end points.

Furthermore, it would have slowed the depletion of petroleum resources and increased the rate of development of alternate energy sources.

If the U.S. put as much effort into the development of fusion as into warfare, we might have licked the problem by now.

Of course population also grows exponentially, and although it's slowed in Europe and the U.S., and China, it's still a problem in the poorest countries.

The UN puts out "bands" of population predictions. The only accurate one to date has been the lower edge of the lowest band. By that standard, world population will peat at about 8 bn in around 2030, and begin to decline.

It's an "S-curve", nothing to do with exponentiality.

typo: "will peak".

"predicitions are difficult, especially the ones concerning the future" - Niels Bohr

Exponential grow is obviously a phenomenon that cannot go on forever. Sooner or later some effects kick in that limit further grow. That will from the "S-curve" that Brian mentioned.

However, crude oil is a diminishing resource. We will see rising prices (that's easy to predict) with occasional spikes and downturns again. Especially if the peaks take out the global economy, throttling oil consumption along, prices will drop to a level where some people say: All right, that was a bit inconvenient, but now oil is cheap and abundant. No need to think about getting off of it. Scrap those MPG limitations, ATM loans and all that stuff.

As you say, exponential growth of anything (except numbers) can't continue forever. However, if there were no constrains it would. The only reason it's stopping is that resources are limited. Even if they weren't, space would be a limiting factor. The trouble is that reduction in growth usually doesn't happen until after resource limitation becomes apparent to the general population. The result is an intermediate period of "pain" for many involved.

The increase in oil price stop when there is no oil left. Then demand can't go any higher compared to availability. Oil will still exist, but it will be synthetic (as in really synthetic, made from something else than crude oil).

The price of oil will skyrocket years before there is no oil left. When the remaining oil becomes more expensive to (get to) drill, oil companies will want to maintain their margin, and prices will go up significantly. If we don't have viable, cost effective alternatives in the transportation industry before then, the "oil wars" will ensue.

Sounds like Sci-Fi? We're heading that way. I can't think of any other product whose price has quadrupled in the last 13 years. Price of a gallon of gas: (1998 94 cents) vs (2011 $3.75).

Well, except for Gold ($400 - $1,700 per ounce).

In constant dollars oil is the same price as it was in about 1980. Reserves are held constant and growing by the "invisible hand" of pricing. As soon as the price rises, more exploration and tech is applied, and the reserves are restored. Peak oil is an illusion, and will not drive the electrification of transportation. That's why my attention is on the quality, convenience, and "local pollution" (particulates and hydrocarbons) reductions.

Wealth and quality of life improvements will drive change, not shortages and "exponential" anything. Such predictions have a 100% failure rate. You'd think the doomsayers and "peakers" would learn, but apparently there's such a huge psychological payoff for being a pessimistic prognosticator that actual accuracy and results don't faze them.

Crude oil is limited resource, and burning it removes it from cycle permanently, so it will run out sooner or later. There is no doubt about that. Peak oil will happen, and oil prices will go up.

That has nothing to do with "doomsayers", it's just plain logic. Easily accessible crude oil is already nearly drilled out. There might be some places where it still exist, but it will get more and more difficult to "just drill" it.

DavidM mentioned "oil wars" already happen. US has waged wars in middle-east to ensure access to cheap oil whenever there has been some minor (or major, or imagined) conflict that could hinder that access. If there is no oil or similar gain then US does nothing. Think Rwandan Genocide. Victim count that nearly rivals WW2 death camp victims. One conflict where way superior military force intervene would have saved hundreds of thousands of lives. What happened? Nothing. There was no monetary gain to save those people and end the conflict (Euro-region isn't any better in that).

This is swerving into a "peak oil" dispute, but I will just conclude by saying that there is zero economic historical evidence of your assertions. I repeat that pricing and technology have held the reserves timeline constant for over half a century, and actually expanded it.

Substitution with cheaper more accessible resources, whether NG or FF will occur long before oil shortages occur.

Zero historical economic because there was plenty of oil left. There isn't anymore. That's like saying that "there was sugar last week in the cupboard, so there will be sugar indefinitely there, I don't need to go to shop yet".

Of course there will be substitutions, any form of electricity production and any kind of biofuels count as "substitution", but crude oil will run out and at that point gasoline price will increase dramatically. It just isn't as cheap to produce gasoline from biofuels or any other source than it is to just plain drill the oil where it exists and refine it.

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