Summary
1. High Gasoline Price 2. Low MPG standard of Internal Combustion Engine based cars 3. Electric Utilities Support of Battery Powered Devices 4. Assurance from the electric utilities that they are ready to install charging stations in every house 5. Rising demand for electric energy in general - all of these factors point at electrically powered cars showing on the roads sooner than we expect.
Analysis
As someone recently told me: It is going to be a DC (Direct Current) world out there soon, it made me wonder.
At first, we all know what are the prospects of fuel efficiency of internal combustion engine based cars vs. current price of gasoline. Second, Toyota, Honda made significant advances (surrounded by hundreds of patents) in the field of hybrid vehicles, where broad utilization of a DC battery is shown. And, on the other hand, we all need electric energy and less emissions to curb that global warming and reduce our carbon footprints. Last, but not least, we are all aware of the climate change and energy independence. We need more alternative sources of energy.
However, since best predictions and analyses (IAE) of utilization of alternative energy are in the range of 5% within next 10 years, and prospects of discovery of new oil fields, its exploration, exploitation and refining are rather long term ones (but real), realistic vision points at more power plants built, mostly fossil fuel powered (currently about 82% of all power plants are coal powered, about 5% are waste-to-energy based, and the rest belongs to natural gas and nuclear), and nuclear powered in the mid term future that will power our cars, because prospects of being oil independent are slim ( today the US imports about 11 million barrels of oil per day). In reality, it will be more of coal powered, than nuclear guided by simple analysis of capital costs comparison. It could be also realistic to assume that due to the climate change and weather unpredictability new residential dwellings will be mandatory equipped (via enforcing a new standard) by standby electric energy generators that will allow consumer along with using the generator as a backup source, to sell energy back to so-called "intelligent energy grid", when a drop in the supply grid is experienced, The generators of such design are available, and with stronger energy policy we may see this in the not-too-distant future. On the other side, it is well known that All of the above strongly points at positive future of the electric cars.
