Along with every Republican president in the last 40 years I think reducing America's addiction to oil is worthwhile. Anyone who claims there's "no real merit" to that is ignorant or must be getting awesome blowjobs from Hugo Chavez. So I love EVs but current models don't work for me and I continue to drive my gasser…

I'm not aware of any federal mandate for the design and manufacture of electric vehicles. There's a tax credit of up to $7500 for buyers and the Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing Loan Program; if you don't think reducing American's disastrous addiction to foreign oil is worthwhile, vote for politicians who'll…

Lithium isn't toxic. All the alleged pollution from making a few hundred pounds of recyclable batteries is dwarfed by the pollution from making and then burning the 10 TONS of gasoline that a 35 mpg car will burn over 120,000 miles. Horses wouldn't be that green, they belch CO2 and methane and making then transporting…

But in California more electricity comes from natural gas, and in the Pacific Northwest a lot comes from hydro. See the generation mix for each state.

Nissan's plan to make 100,000s of Leafs annually on three continents disprove your thesis about mass-produced. As for "large part of the car market", we'll just have to see how many drivers are willing to endure the limited range; early adopters LOVE getting in a car that you overnight cheaply and…

As opposed to Ford and Nissan? The loan commitments include a $5.9 billion loan to Ford for upgrading factories in five states to produce 13 more fuel-efficient models, a $1.6 billion loan to Nissan to build advanced electric vehicles and advanced batteries, and a $465 million loan to Tesla Motors to manufacture its…

Nowadays for special characters I just enter "wikipedia smiley face", "wikipedia em dash", "wikipedia double prime symbol", etc. in the browser location bar. Usually the summary in Google search results has the Unicode glyph and I copy and paste that. In this case, "wikipedia e diaresis".

Silly indeed.

Real men hold the door ajar and drive the car at exactly the right high speed for the Venturi effect to suck the fluid clean out of the car. (As written up in some car magazine a long time ago.)

Electric car. One moving part, no spark plugs, starter motor, fuel injectors, oil filter, catalytic converter, muffler... It'll probably never be lighter (unless you get a tiny battery pack for a short commute), but it's already cheaper to run and batteries will steadily get cheaper.

Hy-Wire was awesome, I hope GM returns to it. Their fuel-cell Chevy Equinox (from 2007, getting old!) are very conventional. The Volt's big T-shaped battery preventing a fifth passenger and its conventional engine lump fall way short.

The Mercedes-Benz joystick control on the 1996 F 200 concept.

The Tesla Roadster has aggressive regenerative braking tied to the accelerator. Let up and the motor doesn't just cut off, it segues into generating electricity. Apparently that makes it a blast to drive with one pedal and you rarely press the brake pedal to engage the mechanical brakes. (Still doesn't have the safety…

In-wheel motors. Remember the QED Mini with 640 horsepower and monstrous torque at each wheel?

Research continues at many car companies... Mercedes-Benz and Hyundai both claim they'll have "affordable" hydrogen fuel cell vehicles by 2015, and will have them for sale *IF* the hydrogen infrastructure is there. But...

BMW i8 plug-in hybrid AWD turbodiesel! Let us pray it'll retain most of teh awesomeness of the Vision concept.

Because if you're going to run the engine, it's more efficient to mechanically connect it to the wheels, particularly if it's going through an e-CVT so you can still run it at one specific speed. Using the engine to charge the batteries to turn the wheels is a waste, unless you're banking power for later delivery,…

You can pay ~$2000 for a roof on the Prius and others that can run the A/C to keep the car cool and give a slight top-up to your battery. It's standard on the Fisker Karma and I think it will become a common option as prices drop. Currently photovoltaic coatings are too expensive for the tiny energy generated, but…

Saturns had those panels, owners loved it, what happened? Before that I think Porsche (when they were offering engineerng services) developed an unscratchable, un-dingable panel, but it had an orange peel texture, and car makers believed customers wouldn't go for it. Back in the 80s plastic sills were cool, remember…

Also Mazda developed a Wankel that could run on hydrogen.