The gas engine doesn’t get a pass on the coal sourced electricity. Running a refinery takes a lot of electric power. It takes between 3-4 kWh of electricity to make a gallon of gas. (take a look at an aerial photo of a refinery, there will always be a decent sized power substation sitting next to it)

A shallow pond in the middle of an otherwise barren desert. You “mine” lithium by disolving it from sand (what dissolves is lithium, what isn’t is ordinary rock). You refine it by spreading it out in big pools, and letting the water evaporate.

Well lithium batteries do come close to your contaminated water joke... Most of it is mined/refined by evaporating brine. Basically the same process that gives us road salt. The brine is sourced by dissolving sand from the Atacama desert, a place so devoid of life that they used it to test the “life detection”…

It should be noted that the study was funded by the petroleum industry.

Current EV owner. (VW eGolf, purchased Jan ‘15). We tried all the under $50K EV’s and hybrids available in Mass. With one exception, the I3. I loved the idea of it, all that carbon, etc. But we pulled up at the dealer, and saw one parked in the driveway. Sue hated the look, and we didn’t even turn into the dealership.

If you want something that looks normal, get an egolf. The only difference in the sheet metal is the lack of a tailpipe cutout in the roll pan

I also enjoy Wheeler Dealers, but I skip over the purchase and sale segments. I find Mike most annoying.

For those in NYC area. you can watch power wheels racing at the NYC World Maker Faire, Sept 26 and 27. Its at the Hall of Science in Queens.

You forgot baling wire (or at least a couple of coathangers). You can’t tie up a dragging muffler with zip ties or duct tape, it will just burn thru and add a bad smell to the trail of sparks.

A few more entries please. Many airlines charge even more than oversize rates for checking a Bicycle. (in some cases, even if it is a folding travel bike, packed into a normal sized bag). They do tend to give preferential treatment to golf clubs. Yes, I have known people to put their folding travel bike into a golf…

Well we got a letter from the service department for our new car suggesting it was time to bring it in for an oil change. One small thing: Its an e-Golf. The motor doesn’t contain oil, there isn’t an oil filter to change, etc... If you read the manual, (or ask the infotainment system) no service is required until 2…

The limit on speed is human reaction time. That hasn’t had any recent upgrades (and if we are being honest, it has been downgraded lately with all sorts of handy distractions)....

Just about anything that gets past the tech crew at the Department of Mutant Vehicles, at Black Rock City, should make the list.

Its called Bonsai. They don’t just shrink cars there...

We took a dead (the best kind) Reliant Robin, and converted it to coal fired steam. Went from this:

Well we counted for one of the January Golf’s. Electric in our case. While the electric drive is fun around the city, what we liked most about it, was that it was a golf first, and electric incidentally. It doesn’t scream “I am different and special” like the japanese and bmw. Ride was firm and informative enough to…

You missed front motor, fwd electrics, which is most of them on sale now. (focus, spark, fiat 500E, leaf, e-golf, i-mev, I3, and whatever the electric hyundai is called) Most are transverse motored, but some (Solectria) had it mounted longitudinally.

I don’t think it is the meanest looking, but it definitely intends to kill you.

We bought from Wellesly VW. I suspect it helped that we were looking at something that wasn’t going to be in a “additional dealer profit” opportunity, but a how are we going to find a buyer for it situation. If what you do is mostly urban, give the electric a try, its lots of fun off the line, as its full torque at 0…

We just went thru the whole buying process. In our case the big part was going to be deciding what we wanted, thanks to good taste in in-laws, it was going to be a cash deal, with essentially no expectations on the trade in. (we were retiring its predecessor after 15 years, as parts needed to pass inspection (starting…