Anthony , interesting.
I had an order in for the Nissan Leaf but they came up with a price
of $51,500 so I canceled.
That price is $20,000 dearer than the US price.
I expected that the Aussie ripoff would be there, but that was ridiculous.
I will be interested to see how much dearer the Volt will be here.
It was advertised on the TV last night.
The Leaf outsold the Volt by about 50% in the US last time I looked.

The Leaf would have suited my usage ideally but not at that price.
My present car is 13 years old and still going OK, but has a number
niggling things that need fixing.

The Ford Focus Electric is supposed to be out this year also.

Belly, yes clean energy, whatever that maybe is a promise but is not
very promising. It is the energy density of petrol & diesel that is
so hard to beat. The ERoEI of all the biofuels are so poor that it is
unlikely that they will ever replace oil.
We just won't be able to afford them.

It is quite possible that we may have to either have electric vehicles
or no vehicles.
Everything they do now to get oil is more and more expensive.
As the old fields deplete, the mix of old and new will be too expensive.

Bazz, I followed up what you said recently on fuel-cell driven transport and you are right, it's s no-goer. Given that the electrical grid is already in place to distribute energy to electric cars (rather than having to develop a hydrogen distribution system for fuel cell transport), it strikes me there may well need to be an upgrading of it to cope with future need. Also, I'd like to see the entire grid owned by government so small scale alternative energy producers can feed into it to get our transformation from a fossil-fuel driven society up and going. The multiplicity of ownership, cross-subsidization and bureacracy must be cut through as fast as is possible.

Anthonyve

you a are in total denial and your abusive tone illustates how heartless and interested in the truth you are on the issues. Labour is as hypocritical as the Greens crying over Assylm seekers. The numbers of people not being able to pay their utility bills have already increased dramatically without the lying tax. THis will only get worse as anyone who can add knows. The compensatiuon is not sustainable and is simply a con to hide the true impact.THe only liars in this are the deniers.

Luciferase, the "Smart Grid" as is now being promoted is under fast
development. Part of the aim is to cater for large numbers of electric
cars being charged at night.
One suggestion I have seen is for chargers being addressable by the
grid so if the load gets too much they can share the charge time around.
Certainly they are aiming to get cars charged in off peak periods which
if there were large numbers of electric cars, there may no longer be
an off peak period.

That an alternative generation system is needed is beyond dispute but
so far the only realistic alternative is nuclear.
All the alternatives need a full scale backup or a storage system.
Storage however seems to be a much harder project than alternative energy.

So far the only hope is nuclear, hot rocks, or cold fusion.

Bazz,
Have you looked at a company called A Better Place. They're starting with a trial distribution network for electric cars with changeover batteries in Canberra later this year. i believe that Renault are developing a car in partnership.
The company was set up by an Israeli IT specialist and the software to control charing/network demand is quite interesting.
They seem to have thought through many of the usual problems cited with EPVs.
Here's the website. http://www.betterplace.com.au/
What do you think?
Anthony
http://www.observationpoint.com.au

There was a doco on TV about better place a few days ago.
Quite a good system.
There could be a problem with their leasing charge for the battery.
It was reported to be E75 a month in Ireland.
You buy the car without battery.
That is more than I spend in petrol every month.
I presume when you swap a battery there is an additional charge on that.
It will be interesting to see how it goes.
The Reno is the Fluense. The Better Place web site has a photo of it.
So far it seems that Renault is the only one to have better Place exchange.