[LINK] Standards, please! The third coming of electric vehicles

[jim birch]

On 18 April 2012 15:34, David Boxall wrote:

For mine, electric vehicles are neither the most practical, nor the
> least environmentally damaging option.
>

As time goes on we will have exploited all the low extraction cost crude
oil and will move up the cost ladder.  At some point something else will
become more economic.  Gas could become bigger but it will run out too.
Eventually, we're down to using a man made fuel - or walking. If a carbon
tax is added to the economics to reduce the climate impact these changes
happen sooner.

Sucking a couple of hundred million of years of stored high density energy
out of the ground has been a great racket.  However, when the party's over
it won't be a repeat option on this particular planet for a long time.

Batteries have problems, but like all technologies

- they will improve incrementally over time
- they benefit from economies of scale.
- mass adoption would generate new operational infrastructure, like battery
change stations, recycling factories, etc.

What's the alternative for a mobile energy source?  Hydrogen fuel cells?
Biofuels?

Jim