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BrianG
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Join Date: Nov 2005
Location: Des Moines, IA
02.23.2010, 12:50 PM

yeah, 440v might be a little tough unless people specifically have their house wired that way. 220v would be much more common; probably 95% more common. Even 110v @ 8 hours isn't bad really.

You could probably get away with charging for "free" at work for now since it won't be very common. If more people get vehicles like this, I can see offices starting to have charging ports outside at parking places; kinda like the old style drive-in movie speakers. Of course, I'm sure they'd find a way to charge you for the convenience.

The naysayers will argue that this isn't really a "green" vehicle since the electricity used to charge it ultimately comes from burning fossil fuels in most cases. But it is more efficient to have one giant "engine" generating the power that to have an engine in each car. Would be easier to control emissions too.

I'm wondering how the cabin will be heated in winter. Electric heat is "expensive" in terms of power requirements, and it HAS to eat into the mileage. Speaking of that, I wonder what the base mileage is for winter vs summer.

Personally, I'd like to see an option for more capacity for people who feel 100 miles is not quite enough. Heck, even a manual bank-switching scheme would work. Even if double the capacity is not feasible (but it does look like there is plenty of room in the trunk), a "reserve" bank would be nice. Kinda like on some larger pickups where you flip a switch to swap between two gas tanks; my old employer had an F-450 (IIRC) box truck that had this.

Last edited by BrianG; 02.23.2010 at 12:51 PM.
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