The establishment vs Uber

[LochnarITB]

I'm continuing the tangent, but that was my first thought too. Telsa released the patents because they need others on board with their system so that the infrastructure gets built out to support it. I think most people realize that is one of the biggest factors holding back electric cars. If you never leave the 100 mile radius around your home, they're great. But people like to take road trips, made possible by pretty much never being more than 50 miles from a fuel station.

So either the basic battery design needs to be able to charge in 5 - 10 minutes off of the current grid with nothing special, just a lot of 120 or 240 outlets and meters to regulate it and charge people. Or lots of parties have to be making things with the current designs that require a fair bit of special infrastructure to charge things quickly to get the number of "fuel" stations that people need.

For a long time, I've thought that the best way to integrate electric vehicles with our current infrastructure is to build series hybrids, extended range electric vehicles. An electric vehicle that can be charged off the power grid for all the short range driving that everyone does ever day. All motive force is provided by electric motors acting as motor and transmission and providing regenerative braking. For extended range, the gas/diesel engine is constant speed, running only at its absolute best efficiency, without any mechanical connection to the drive train and only spinning a generator to feed the battery bank. The motor for the generator could even be something less conventional such as a turbine. Photovoltaics could extend the range even further.

Fossil fuels are still going to be with us for a very long time. For now, what we need is to get the most we can out of our finite supply.