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Saturday, September 06, 2008

Rising Oil Prices, Malaysia (part 2): Is electric car viable?

Referring to my friends blogs on Proton's project on Electric Cars, I have to strongly disagree with him. Electric cars are the future! It's like education; you have to spend on fees (rolling out initial investment), you have to study hard to get the good results and you won't reap the benefit instantly.

But government have to support the project by giving the proper infrastructure. They can extend recharge points to all petrol station like they are doing with NGV, or at least Petronas. The idea is to get as many petrol alternatives as possible so that overall we have a lot more petrol alternative of fuel (Diesel, NGV, now Electric).

On the going greener, I agree with we have to go nuclear/renewables to reap most benefit from electric car development. Like Iran! Yeah, if only US will back off than harassing Iran on use of nuclear technology. I haven't talk renewables here like Solar or Wind technology or Wave technology. Yes they are still expensive compared to fossil fuel, but with rising cost of fossil fuel and decreasing cost of renewables via govt incentives (tax exempt on component import & mass productions) they might prove viable someday. Personally, I did my final year project on wind turbines and their cost will be able to compete fossil fuel in 10 years or so (mind you, it was 2 years back). Hell, they might be able to challenge the price as of this moment. Problems is, with rising oil price, material cost also increases. (Most lightweight materials is made out of petroleum products).

2004 article on Wind Energy cost comparison

Battery technology is still weak, but I'm sure they will improve over time. In time, with proper R&D they would be able to make it lighter and last long (like Energizer or Duracell comercial.. Hehe).

But do you know that my biggest fantasy would be to tap into lightning electricity. Finally we can use up all the thunderstorm we have locally for good use. =)

Guys if you are concerned citizen regarding this issue please read more on the websites that I linked as below:

Better Place: regarding electric car project

US wind power market research

2 comments:

SalamMedia said...

You are focusing on renewable energy more than you are talking about electric car. Wrong headline? Hehe.

Take for example Tesla super electric car. The battery cost USD20k. You need to change it every 100,000km (or miles, not sure). With R&D and stuff, they hope to lower the price to USD 12k. Sape ade duit byk ni tiap mase?

I heard from Proton, their electric cars will fetch a hefty 80k (Gen2). 20k difference tu, imagine that much for petrol, how long will it last?

But it really depends on what you want to argue, the present, future (5-15 years frame), or super future (15 and above).

nuestra familia said...

Cool Eddie, I haven't had real debates for years. Apparently my marriage is a bliss.. Haha.. Btw, I wrote a long rebuttal to your argument so I made it into a post already, again...