This is an old article (May 2011) about electric cars, but it's very interesting and still relevant. There are many implications that this sort of technology could have on the economy, both positive and negative. For now consider this question - does the potential for a car to make money for you make you willing to pay more upfront for it?
raj saleh
9/14/2011 03:24:28 am
i think the concept is great and i look forward the the electrical age with optimism, but it seams to good to be true. a system that is put into effect to help make our lives easier isnt going to turn around and pay us for doing so.
Will Melton
9/15/2011 02:38:47 pm
V2G research provides a good theory about owners receiving a profit by owning an electric car. However, I highly doubt any energy company will give back money to consumers, so don't be naive. Also, Americans do not want electric cars for the time being. There are simply too many downsides to owning an electric car. I really do not see a surge for demand of electric cars for at least another decade. A technological breakthrough needs to happen for electric cars to surpass the performance of gas driven cars.
Kyle Jay
9/16/2011 12:24:33 am
My biggest issue with the discharging of an electric car is: What if they electric car a person has is their only means of transportation? Think about this, most electric cars available today take around 8 hours and a 220 volt charger to get a range of ~100-150 miles. Imagine a person with an electric car gets home, puts his car on charge. Seeing as he only drove 50 miles today, he still has around a 50% charge left. It's a hot summer day, electricity is in high demand, so the grid starts drawing electricity from his car, until 2 hours later, the car is discharged and begins recharging again. Suddenly, the person has an emergency, hops in their electric car and.... its been discharged by the grid. Although this scenario seems farfetched, (along with many issues with the article not included to save time and space in the article, most American households wanting an electric car would most likely have a fossil fuel vehicle for trips out of the range of the electric) the owner of the car is out of luck. This could be potentially life threatening if taken to this extreme displayed here. I'm no opponent of electric cars, I think they can be very useful if your lifestyle can dictate the shortcomings of owning one. I think this is a good idea too, I just want to see a little research on how issues like this could be handled. Only discharge to a percentage set by the owner according to percentage charge/range could be a potential fix.
10363181
2/20/2012 11:26:45 am
I feel that taking an approach towards electric cars is great, but there will always be room for improvement. So it will obviously take time to work out the kinks to get where we are saving a bunch of money. Only problem with this is what about people who rely on horsepower to do there every day jobs, can an electric car work in negative degree weather where it has to stay on 24 hrs a day and be reliable to get the job done. Comments are closed.
|
About the BlogThis is the blog containing resources for all courses and presentations. For updates on required current events readings, podcasts, and videos subscribe to the RSS Feed Archives
July 2017
Categories
All
|