electric car

[still_one]

http://www.teslamotors.com/index.php?js_enabled=1

[texastoast]

1. And if we use wind energy to generate the electricity

We could tell the oil companies to go fuck themselves?

Could we?

[skids]

2. If that were your only objective...

...then you wouldn't need wind power, either.

Not that doing it with wind/wave/tidal/solar would not be a good thing.

Only hitch is transmission capacity. Were your power station on your roof or in your yard, or on the car itself, however, that would not be a hitch.

[texastoast]

3. I would like being off the grid entirely

But that is not the cup of tea of many. So, we need infrastructure?

[skids]

4. Depends...

Definitely we need infrastructure for urban centers.

As far as the rest of the country, I think if those that do want to go wholly or partially off the grid were able to do so, it would free enough resources for the rest.

There are two paths we could go down:

1) lots of interstate power lines with large generator facilities hauling power from one part of the country to another. This is the path we are on now, though we aren't doing to well at it.

2) Localized generator facilities and power storage systems, such that power can still be "traded" from state to state through storage systems, but the majority of it doesn't travel very far from where it is generated to where it is used.

In either scenario the prospect of enhancing the two-way street such that grid-tied customers with their own generation facilities can sell power back into the grid more easily is a separate issue, and is compatible with both.

Personally, I think in an age of disasterous weather phenomina, threat of social breakdown, and power-grabbing globalism, #1 is not so smart. It is however, the one we are going to do, as the powers that be would have it that way.