It depends what you mean by it.

1) why does it have to be 0%

2) The only real issue (and not sure how much it is) is the tires, anything else is not (metal is good for many car parts, the seats can be leather or natural fibers, dashboards can be made from other materials.....) the truth is pre-1950's cars had very little "plastic" in them. The reason it is used so much is that it is very cheap and not because they need to be made of such materials or they are better

3) don't forget that most plastics today are petrochemical based, but plastics existed long before the petrochemical industry and so some of those older plastics can resurface in importance for example look up Casein plastic that is made from milk and was big before the petroleum business made it less interesting


4) like I said before, tires are the hardest to replace because there is no going back (it is easy to use a steal body or bumper like older cars instead of plastic but a car can't be built today that uses wagon wheels made of wood and iron or tires of pure natural rubber). If someone builds a car and that is the only thing that needs oil in the car that would still probably be less then what a tank full of gas needs.

But even that is not hopeless since we have stuff like [Link: popularmechanics.com] or [Link: goodyear.com] ....

Does anyone know how the free charging stations get financed/paid for?
Is there a federal program that pays for this?
Is this a loan/lease that has finite number of months/years before the model becomes a paid service?

I only have 4 stations in my metro area of about 1,000,000 people.
From what I can tell:
1 is at a Nissan dealership
1 is at municipal building (not sure if it's accessible to non-employees)
1 is at a private company (not sure if it's accessible to non-employees)
1 is at a Latitude gas station (not sure if it's free)

I'm trying to picture how this charging in town would work for me or my wife.
I can see if the stations were available at the mall, grocery store or book store.
In my town, all but the 1 Latitudes location are not not a destination location, so if it takes 30-45min to get a quick charge, what do people do while they wait?

Time is money, and if I had to dedicate an hour (30-40min charge + short drive time) each day to top off my batteries at a conservative $20/hr, that would be more than $100 per week in wasted productivity.
Mathematically, this just doesn't add up for me.
Now, if that Tesla model S can go 250+ miles on a single charge, then I would only have to charge the car at home at the end of the day (overnight) and that would make more sense.

So you need an expert to review audio gear, but they don't have to be an expert to review anything else? That's just plain stupid of an argument. Either they know what they are doing, or they don't. You don't get to have it both ways and pick the ones that you agree with.

IMO, this is a problem that will become bigger as more EVs are sold. I believe right now, there are some tax breaks to businesses for putting in a charging station. But right now, these are novelties. A business puts one in as a perk to customers, occasionally someone uses it. The business eats the cost, just like free refills. But when all of their customers have EVs, what business wants to put in twenty chargers and eat that electric bill?

I saw something that Israel is building battery stations, and experimenting with cars with swappable batteries. Kind of like the Blue Rhino propane ranks. Pull in, get a new battery, move on in 10 minutes. This would probably bring back the service station attendant.

The whole idea of EVs just seems too inconvenient for Americans. I think, if Honda has success with their fuel cell car (they seem to be the leader with that right now), then it could end up killing the EV, because it would be more of a lateral move.

that is always true and always meaning less. Every business is all about profits. And every business needs to do what it needs to do. Let me ask you this, 200 years ago did modern gas powered cars exist? no. There mode of transportation was the horse, you had horse breeders that raised them, you had stables that took care of them, you had smiths making and shoeing horses..... With the automobile those "industries" shriveled up but new ones took their place such as car manufacturers, mechanics, valet parking attendants....



fully agree


so? isn't that the oil companies problem? why is it mine. If the CEO or stake holders make a bit less profit, how does it affect me?


that is completely wrong
1) the refining process refinery and crude type will all play a difference in how much gas comes out of a barrel of oil.
Here is a nice informative source that has no reason to BS and should know what they are talking about

look at this first chart based on crude type ( I will get aback to it in my second point)



is the red bar (gas) the same in all the bar graphs? obviously not, the lighter the crude the more gas can be extracted and the heavier the crude the less gas that can be produced

Now look at the second chart




all three refineries use the same Heavy Crude Oil but again the amount of gas produced is different because they are built for different results

That is why I said before charts like the one I posted earlier with roughly 20 gallons of gas per barrel of oil can be misleading.

2) the lighter crudes that give more gas are getting used up fast and so your hypothesis is the direct opposite of reality. As time passes if nothing changes (same amount of cars using the same amount of gas every year) we will end up needing more and more barrels of oil to get the exact same amount of gas as we get today since we will be more depended on the heavier crudes as the lighter ones get used up.


that makes no sense what so ever

1) like I said before gas can be used to make electricity

--- a) I have a gas generator for my home that works on gas that I get from the same pump I get the gas for my car from
--- b) 1% of electricity in the US is made from gas (and I am not talking Natural gas, that is much higher)
--- c) also (did not point this out before) but every car out there has a gas generator in them , it is called the alternator, that is why you can drive your car, if the alternator (or alternator belt) brakes you won't get far since eventually your batter will be out of juice and there won't be a spark in the pistons to ignite the gas so that your car can move, it is also why if the battery is dead the car won't even start and you need to charge it or use jumper cables from someone else's battery (once the first spark happens and the car starts the alternator can charge it which is why you only need that spark to get it going)

2) if it is so explosive and dangerous why do you travel with your car that has a tank full of it? I know in movies and TV shows cars explode for no reason and yes gas is ignitable (like propane or any of the other similarly flammable substances) but how often have you seen an actual accident where the car exploded in real life?

3) what ever you pay a gallon is that price because speculators in the oil futures run the prices up because they know they more or less always go up. If we drive electrical cars and like you said earlier gas becomes an unwanted by product mostly good for just chucking away and crude prices drop and hurts the oil barrooms why would the electrical company be paying high prices to burn it. Like everything in this world it is a matter of supply and demand.

Do what my friend does. Do it at lunch time or grab a Starbucks.

I don't know but from what I have read I think it is mostly financed by the car companies (like Tesla) and the locations (where the pump is situated. Here the pumps are a paid service (2.50$ a charge no matter how long you leave the car or how much power it needs while it is plugged) and it is hydro-Quebec (the power company) as well as locations (like Fin said there is a benefit to the locations bottom line if you go there and stay there for a long time.



I would guess yes but never read anything about it with any time frame. I see it more as a way to get the infrastructure in place in order to make EVs more interesting. It is like anything else for example why buy a 4K TV when there is no 4k content to watch on it? why release 4k content when almost no one has a 4K TV to watch it on?


for many people it does not add up, that is the reality of the situation, and it won't for some time and maybe never.

I see these stations more as a convenience than anything else (i.e. if the car can go 100 miles and that is good enough most days Joe won't be screwed the day he needs to go 120 miles if he can charge it that day at such a station). The idea is that you mostly charge at home and that is why I don't see the "free charge stations" as a big deal as some others did earlier. The reality is that if the car is charged at home and then topped off at the charging station while you are there anyways the car probably uses very little electricity at that secondary location.

I don't see it as a big issue. The problem is convenience vs reality.

Like Mario pointed out it takes a long time to charge add to that the minimal cost and it gets interesting . For example if it costs the business 2$/h for the car that is parked there the price of the electricity might easily be minor compared to the guy spending that time and his money.


don't know about Israel, but there are some plans like that in the US. [Link: teslamotors.com]

but I am not sold on this idea. A propane tank is a simple and cheap thing. A batter is not and there lies the issue in my opinion. What if the battery I swap in is not as good as the battery I swapped out. Look at all your rechargeable stuff, look at your car, batteries don't age well, batteries can be misused.

That works for now, as long as it's 1 charging station. But as EVs become more popular, I don't see businesses putting in 10 to 20 chargers to keep up with demand. Someone may come up with an easy way for mass recharging at public locations and make it all a mute issue.



Agreed. That's why the fuel cell car seems like a more logical evolution.

I do not believe that the future of EV Cars will be governed by charging stations. There are far more advanced batteries and fuel cells in the works, that will not only extend range, they will be far smaller, opening the prospects for hot swap battery exchange stations.

Even though the electric car first hit the scene in the early 1900's I think we have only scratched the surface of what will be coming down the pipe.but before that can happen i still believe that there has to be a major paradigm shift in the way we view transportation and our dependance on oil based products.
 

Most of the Tesla owners have chargers installed at their homes...

The newer Teslas will have a range of up to 500 miles.

Did I say that?

What is with your hostility on the subject of Teslas?

That is not as new an idea as you might think. The flash point of gas is around -40. That means that at that temperature gas can’t burn and so a car won't work and even a bit before that it is incredibly hard to ignite an engine. So in the far north where the temperature might dip below that flash point temperature parking lots look like



so the car can plug in and the electric heater in them keeps the gas warm while parked.

If those lots in the pics can have cars plugged in at each spot to run the cars heater why is it so unimaginable the same thing where you live but in this case used for charging EVs? Now don’t get me wrong I am guessing the EV chargers (royalties for the different parts) and so might be a bit more expensive to buy than a simple plug that costs under 1$ but the rest of the installation must be more or less the same and we are talking about a one time cost for putting it in service. That is why I looked at the charging (electricity usage) cost and not installation and when one looks at the electricity usage having 1, 2, 10 or 20 plugs does not make any difference so the only question becomes does the cost of the electricity siphon make sense versus what someone might spend in the place.
Now don’t get me wrong, I am not defending free fill ups or trying to make a case for them (personally I see it as a luxury and people that want to drive should pay for that privilege and not be subsidized). But will it make sense for a store or would it be more of a hassle? [Link: hydroquebec.com] “ target=”jas”>hydro Quebec ran a pilot project from 2010 to 2013 with 30 Mitsubishi i-MiEVs (only EV mass produced in 2010 and easy to get ahold of when the study started), I won’t bore you with everything they looked at but the study found out that that on average on days the EVs were used the people needed [Link: hydroquebec.com]” target=”sk”> 1.46$ worth of electricity to drive around. That is for the whole day of driving and not how much it would have cost for the fill up where they stopped. Now imagine if we take a simple scenario where that average guy leaves home, drives to work (1/2 of the driving), leaves the car plugged in all day and drives back home where he plugs it in. He would have only put 73 cents worth of electricity at work (power used on the way to work) and the other 73 cents at home (power used on the way back home). And if we go with a more complex example and it was not just work home, but 60 cents of electricity at work 25 cents at the grocery store where he stopped to get food and 65 cents back home that night. The numbers easily get to the point where they are too small and the “administrative costs” make it ridiculous to go after them. Now this is obviously not the cost of fully charging a Tesla, but unlike normal cars where the only option is to fill the tank at a station you would have to assume (unless it is a road trip or a hotel) that each stop away from home will just be to top off the vehicle. That is why HQ decided to charge a fixed 2.50$ for a fill up at each of their stations, it more than covers the electricity used in probably all the situations while making it worth the trouble of administrating the service (i.e. they are making a nice profit on that 2.50)

exactly. The car is idle for many hours at home it does not make sense to go out of your way and wait just to charge it even if it is free and relatively fast. This is more about options (if someone wants to drive long distances) and peace of mind (what if I can't make it back home)




are you sure about that? The only thing I ever read is them saying that one day it might be possible

Saw it today.


I just say let the electric car naysayers keep rolling coal in their pick-me-ups!