An All-Electric Porsche?

[Pominoz]

Originally Posted by Giller

Where would this fit in our battle of Turbo's vs. NAs?

A Tesla fighter from Porsche? | Canoe

I think the full horror of the running costs of hybrid and battery powered vehicles is yet to surface because they're all so new.

I'm sure most people have experienced how pathetic the battery life gets on their mobile phone after a couple of years. Who's going to enjoy the cost taking their car in for it's 60K battery replacement service?

I wouldn't touch any of these cars, and I can only imagine how unpopular they'll be as second hand buys once they get a few years old and make their way down the food chain.

[Giller]

Originally Posted by Pominoz

I think the full horror of the running costs of hybrid and battery powered vehicles is yet to surface because they're all so new.

I'm sure most people have experienced how pathetic the battery life gets on their mobile phone after a couple of years. Who's going to enjoy the cost taking their car in for it's 60K battery replacement service?

I wouldn't touch any of these cars, and I can only imagine how unpopular they'll be as second hand buys once they get a few years old and make their way down the food chain.

Who knows what the future holds when it comes to R/D. What you are scared of now, people where scared of way back when when it came to what we have today. TImes change, technology improves, many parts become dramatically cheaper (heck, look at big screen tvs). The Prius has been out for some time and it sells quite well in resale. Batteries are expensive....but will quickly drop in price as technology and more demand (and therefore, a most likely drop in production costs) continue. When you can save a thousand or two in gas over the course of a year.....the batteries ain't so expensive anymore.

[Pominoz]

Originally Posted by Giller

Who knows what the future holds when it comes to R/D. What you are scared of now, people where scared of way back when when it came to what we have today. TImes change, technology improves, many parts become dramatically cheaper (heck, look at big screen tvs). The Prius has been out for some time and it sells quite well in resale. Batteries are expensive....but will quickly drop in price as technology and more demand (and therefore, a most likely drop in production costs) continue. When you can save a thousand or two in gas over the course of a year.....the batteries ain't so expensive anymore.

Personally I'm not scared of this technology, I just think it's essentially a complicated sticking plaster solution to what is basically non problem.

Batteries are always going to be less efficient than an engine that burns fuel directly. Until a car can run completely on recovered energy they're not really doing very much apart from increasing the cost of manufacture, and using up rare earth metals at a rate of knots.

Now that oil fracking is here, there is not likely to be an immediate shortage of oil, and as for global warming, ha!

You are right about technology moving on, and long term I expect Fusion Power to come along, which will make an alternative fuel to petrol (when needed) possible to synthesise, or maybe the hydrogen storage problem will be solved, who knows. Either way, all this investment in batteries and renewables is just dead money IMHO.