Monday, May 31, 2010

The Practical Impracticability Of Electric Cars

How long does it take you to fill your tank at the local Stinker Station? Somewhat less than an hour and a half?

Their dream may be a good one. But it’s also problematic. There were, after all, five i-Mievs on this drive that needed charging, and with only one charger it didn’t take 20 minutes to fuel them. It took about an hour and a half.

Mitsubishi didn’t leave us to cool our heels during that charging, but took us to a nice lunch. Imagine how nasty the scene could get if five i-Miev owners showed up at one charger with the fifth in line finding out he’s going to be spending more than an hour cooling his heels at Sonic. So what if he has a coupon that gets him two milk shakes for the price of one?

A modest, average size gas station has, say, eight pumps. And usually those pumps push fuel at a rate of between five- and ten-gallons per minute. Going on the low end of the scale, lets say it takes three minutes to fuel up an average car with a 15-gallon tank. So in an hour, that eight-pump station could theoretically fuel 160 average cars from empty to full.

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