Even you generated all the electricity with fossil fuel, you STILL end up winning big time because of the efficiency of the motors. If you are looking at 25- 35kWh/person/day being spent on the fuel cost, the 1-2kWh/person/day that is the embodied energy cost of a vehicle is small by comparison. It all helps but using less fuel is more important. Algal needs CO2 enrichment to produce a lot of fuel and photosynthesis is inefficient compared to even photovoltaic and especially concentrated solar. You would less land area for the same no. of cars if you had solar generation and electric cars than you would with algal.

Again, all the figures explained in detail in MacKay’s book.

An electric car needs to get electricity from somewhere, and much of the world (outside NZ) burns coal and crude oil to generate that electricity. Countries that use nuclear to generate electricity are burning a hell of lot of fuel to dig big holes in the Aussie outback and Northern Canada to mine and convert ore to fuel rods, a carbon footprint often not mentioned by nuclear energy proponents.

I believe that electric cars will exacerbate the global warming problem. We will be using fuel to build new infrastructure to plug our cars into, burn more fuel to make electricity that we will then turn around and inefficiently try and store in a chemical battery. Not to mention the amount of fuel we will burn trying to replace the worlds fleet of cars and installing electrified rail.

Before we take the electric car step, we need to begin generating a large proportion of our global electricity from renewable resources. NZ and Iceland already do this, but they constitute a tiny fraction of the world population.

A major step in improving fuel efficieny is in lengthening the life span of cars. A significant portion of the energy used by a vehicle is in its manufacture, assembly, and distribution. The parts in a typical car have been around the world several times before miles are put on the odometer. Consider the fuel used in the following chain, and the impact to global carbon emissions if we suddenly replaced the global car fleet with electric cars: – the source of the ore to make the metal, the location to smelt the ore, the various countries that parts are made in, until they are assembled in yet another country, and finally shipped to the destination country.

If we could develop a carbon neutral liquid fuel ( like algae oil) and run it in existing vehicles, we would save the world a hell of a lot more energy than replacing the global car fleet. We should buy one car and retrofit it. Never replace it.

If faced with the choice of selecting a future scenario about personal transport in the USA, the sources I would give most credit to are the NRC, GAO, and SAE publications.

I wouldn’t trust anything on a website ( and that obviously includes my own opinions here and elsewhere ), unless it fully cited published, peer-reviewed sources that I could check. YMMV.

I’d be concerned if policy was made because somebody on a website was good at English composition when expressing their views, but bereft of common sense.

You can read the NRC report chapter-by- chapter free on the NRC site, or pay about US$30 to purchase the pdf of the full report – but a better use of your money would be a present for a loved one.

Not sure if it has actually been crash tested ( didn’t read all the site ) – just simulated in software, but also in the US regulatory environment trikes are classed as bikes, so have different rules.

Besides, it appears to be a plug in hybrid with supercapacitors, so you’ll probably be dancing puree or experiencing near-instant immolation. Plug-in hybrids, according to the NRC, will not be economic for decades..

People puree is a significant concern, as vehicles get lighter their ability to safety move past big trucks at speed without being buffeted decreases. A 500 kg vehicle, even with expensive protective carbon tubs, will always come off worst when trying to drive through an oncoming 50 tonne truck.

AFAIK, but could be wrong, our vehicle design rules haven’t added anti-intrusion design requirements to trucks and trailers, so going under the wheels will generate puree, bouncing off might be less traumatic.

That’s why I say we have to segregate traffic of different sizes, and move heavy freight to dedicated times or roads, but preferably onto an optimised national rail + local road delivery system .