Fill it up or Plug it in?
It's the night before your trip to visit some friends that live 200 miles away; you look down at that good old gas gauge, yes that part of your vehicle that we all dread looking at. The gauge says empty and you pull into the local gas station. Current price for a gallon of regular unleaded is $2.65 and you fill it up($53.00).Now depending on the amount of miles the average driver gets per gallon, they will pump roughly 5000 gallons of fuel into their vehicle if let's say they buy a new car and it takes them down the road for 100,000 miles. Besides the fuel consumption, other maintenance like oil changes and a host of other problems will plague this vehicles owner not to mention all the emissions that just this one car will put into our environment.
On the other hand, imagine another driver looking down at a battery gauge meter in their vehicle, and instead of pulling into the gas station they go home and plug the vehicle in and in less than 1 hr that vehicle has the ability of taking them over 200 miles before having to be recharged, all at a cost of about $4.00.This All electric car technology exists today with Ford, Toyota, and a few other companies leading the way in this revolutionary but much needed change to our transportation needs.
One company that is spearheading the way is Tesla Motors Inc which is based out of San Carlos, California. Tesla is in the final stages of rolling out their sedan in 2012. On its website, Tesla calls Model S "the world's first mass-produced electric vehicle" that can carry five adults and two children. The company says the car will have a range of up to 300 miles and can be charged in 45 minutes "from any outlet" for about $4, "a bargain even when gasoline is $1 a gallon” http://www.teslamotors.com/. Big car makers Ford and Toyota as mentioned earlier have been in this new technology for a few years now and are improving on their own all electric models.
With all this new technology and with the price of owning an All electric vehicle becoming more attractive and soon people will be asking themselves at the pump if they should switch from” filling it up to plugging it in”. Now that’s something to consider.
Reference:
http://www.teslamotors.com/
3 comments:
It sickens me each time I have to fill up my tank. Here in LA it hovers around $3.15 for the cheap stuff. If the electric car becomes the new standard, do you think electricity companies will start hiking up the prices to the point where it surpasses today's gas prices?
I think with everything that is happening with the BP situation in the Gulf, the Govt will be pushing for the development of wind,solar and other alternate energy sources and that situation hopefully would not factor in.
I remember my senior year of high school when gas was .89 cents a gallon at one gas station, sadly that will never happen again. Regular unleaded is around $2.59 a gallon right now and that’s still too high in my opinion. The thought of recharging a car in 45 minutes for $4 bucks almost sounds too good to be true but if it’s possible I welcome that change. Plus, it could help us become less dependent on foreign oil sources and help protect the environment.
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