From my calculations it would be perfectly feasible to charge batteries for an electric car at home, especially if you had two batteries, use one & charge the other.
Off-peak power still needs to be generated and in any case quite a modest photovoltaic cell setup on your roof would be adequate.
Converting cars to LNG only extends the fossil fuel/oil problem. In any case, we should be conserving gas to make things with, not burn it up.
We already have good Australian workable designs, have a look at Trev on http://www.unisa.edu.au/solarcar/trev/

Democritus: "generation of electricity produces far more CO2 than petrol"

Assuming you mean that when used to push a car, electricity produces far more CO2 than petrol: rubbish. In the worst case scenario for electricity (coal generated, petrol car), they are about the same.

Assuming it takes 25 KW to push a car at 100 Km/h [1], and assuming generating 1 KW/h of electricity produces 1Kg of CO2 [2], then driving the electric car 100 Km produces 25 Kg of CO2.

Assuming 10 Km/litre, and burning 1 litre of petrol produces 2.3 Kg of CO2 [3], the CO2 produced driving a petrol car is 23 Kg.

A coal fired generator runs at around 60% efficiency, the internal combustion engine at around 15%. However coal gets all of its energy from C + O2 --> CO2 (ie CO2 production), whereas hydrocarbons also gets some from 2 H2 + O2 --> 2 H2O (ie water production).

[1] The normal figure given is 20 KW. I used the more conservative figure of 25 KW as when in a hybrid Lexus driving along at 100 Km/h with air-conditioning on, it showed that figure on its dashboard.

[2] Figures on the web for CO2 per KWh of electricity produced from coal vary from around .4 Kg to 1Kg. I choose the more conservative figure. I suspect the difference is between generated and delivered.
http://www.sedo.energy.wa.gov.au/pages/heat_run.asp

[3] http://www.environment.tas.gov.au/anw_aq_rlap_motor_vehicle_emissions.html

Rstuart,

Before you rubbish what I am saying please at least make the effort to read the links you have provided.

Using the information I got from your websites I calculate that a small car using petrol at 7 litres per 100 km (my small car does better than this) would generate 16kg of CO2

A car using 20kW at 100kmph would use 20kwhr. Now the average kWhr generates 0.99 kg of CO2 according to the website, so with a reasonable charging/discharge efficiency of about 80%, an electric car would generate 25kg of CO2.

Your errors were assuming 100% charging efficiency, coal generation is about 35% efficient for black coal and about 25% for brown coal.

As the majority of electricity is generated from brown coal, nest from black coal, and a small swing load from gas co gen plants (60% efficiency) the 1kg of CO2 per kWhr is accurate.

Thus electricity generation has to improve by at least 35% for electricity powered cars to be even considered. This does not take into account the energy and cost of making and disposing of the batteries and the inconvenience of the short range.

Next time please check your calculation before you put your foot in it again.

Demo, the URl below contains some figures for the Tesla. Perhaps
the company has it wrong. Perhaps you could point out where.

http://www.teslamotors.com/efficiency/well_to_wheel.php

.

One more interesting suggestion that I have seen is electrified roadways.
A number of methods was proposed but the basic idea was that you drive
your electric car to the nearest main road and connect to the roadway
and use the roadway power from there on.

As a matter of interest there is an electric car parking and charging
point in the shopping centre at Dural in NSW.

Democritus, I think you are wrong, the efficiency in power stations and
the transmission system is such that there is less CO2 generated per km
than if you burn petrol in the very inefficient internal combustion
engine.

The suggestion of using solar cells to charge electric cars does
not have a technical flaw but a logical flaw.
The commuter drives home in late afternoon and the sun has gone down
and in the morning he is off before the sun is up for long enough.
You could charge batteries during the day and charge from them at
night but the losses involved would make it a no goer.

Democritus: "at least make the effort to read the links you have provided"

I did. And I just did again. What did I miss?

Democritus: "a small car is ... 25 Kg CO2 vs 16 Kg CO2"

The words in your original post I took issue with were "far more". My 25 Kg CO2 (electric) vs 23 Kg (electric) was intended to show they were at best an exaggeration. And your right I didn't take into account charging efficiency, but then I was being conservative in other areas. Then you come up with some figure of 25 Kg CO2 vs 16 Kg. If this was meant to be somehow representative of the state of play now - well its another exaggeration.

To avoid playing games with figures lets just look at the figures at they stand. Australian car fuel efficiency hasn't changed much in the past 10 years. It hovers around 8.7 km/litre [1]. So using 80% charging efficiency we get using my conservative figures 31 Kg CO2 (electric) for the 100 Km trip vs 26.5 Kg CO2 (petrol) for the same trip - for an average Australia car. That is a 14% difference - probably within the noise margin of these calculations.

Yes, in the future things may change. Car sizes will go down, but electricity generation will almost certainly become greener. For example a modern coal fired power station operates at 42% efficiency [2][3] - quite an improvement from the 35% you quote. 14% of our electricity comes from gas which produces 1/2 the CO2 of black coal. Renewables, from which we get around 8% of our electricity now, produce none. [4]

In view of all that, I still think your claim that electric cars produce "far more" CO2 now, or will do so in the future is, well, rubbish.

[1] http://www.ptua.org.au/myths/efficient.shtml
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rankine_cycle
[3] OK, so the 60% figure I gave was just plain wrong - got myself confused with the theoretical Carnot efficiency.
[4] http://velocity.ansto.gov.au/velocity/ans0011/article_03.asp