[confluence]

We'll power it with rooftop/plant-scale solar PV and nuclear fusion.

Recharge times are about as much an issue as they are for smart phones. Humans need to rest ~12 hours a day. During that time they charge their tablets, phones and wait for it - also their cars. Charging is not an issue if you need to sleep.

Long car trips are not relevant for the vast majority of people for the most time. iPod succeeded because it's what people needed - not what they thought they wanted.

[sliverstorm]

Good luck with that. Solar equipment still isn't cheap, and while I wish it was otherwise, the voting public is incredibly averse to anything with the word "nuclear".

Smart phones have 1000mAh batteries. A Nissan Leaf can mostly charge in a 12 hour period, and get 80 miles on that charge. What about if you want 200 miles, or if you've got an SUV? The grid is not prepared for that kind of power draw.

Agreed, but there is no clean solution yet for that remaining 5%, which will keep many people from buying one.

[kbenson]

Tesla's supercharger stations are designed specifically to address this 5%. He quotes studies about driving that show that most people stop for approximately 30-60 minutes every 200 miles or so. The Supercharger stations are supposed to be able to charge to 160 miles of usage in 30 minutes, enough time to get a bite to eat.

The specs for the Model S (options section of the site, actually) state the single plug charger replenished 31 miles of ranger per hour of charge, and the optional dual plug charger replenishes 62 miles of ranger per hour of charge.

That doesn't address power grid problems if there is a large influx of demand because of electric vehicles, but at least it's at night, when there's less demand on the system from other sources. Ideally, that would spur more power grid development, but I'm not going to make predictions on such sparse and tenuous assumptions (even if they come from myself).

[anamax]

> Tesla's supercharger stations are designed specifically to address this 5%. He quotes studies about driving that show that most people stop for approximately 30-60 minutes every 200 miles or so. The Supercharger stations are supposed to be able to charge to 160 miles of usage in 30 minutes, enough time to get a bite to eat.

I've driven cross-country many times and we never stopped for 30 minutes every 200 miles. We might be off the freeway for 15 minutes every 300 miles, but less than 10 minutes of that time is available for charging. (Pulling off the road and getting somewhere to do something takes time.)

And no, eating within walking distance of the only charging station in Elko, Winnemucca, or Battle Mountain isn't enough.

[yskchu]

Have you seen the Renault-Nissan's QuickDrop battery swap?

Solves your problem of charging for cross-country drives.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-Azrt_wUkc

And we even have some running in Israel already:

http://www.just-auto.com/the-just-auto-blog/israels-quick-dr...

[confluence]

You sure about that? See here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4568396