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It seems that an electric car ought to be superior to a gasoline-powered car in almost every way. No transmission is really needed, since an electric motor provides the same torque output no matter how fast it’s spinning. The car doesn’t even need a reverse gear; the motor just turns backwards. The Tesla Roadster nonetheless implements a two-gear transmission; one can leave the car in second gear and drive normally without thinking about things. The first gear seems to be there just so the car can achieve that impressive 0-60 time, but if you drive that way all the time you’ll eat the battery and the range’ll be a lot less than 250 miles…

Something Tesla downplays in their FAQ is the availability of a conversion kit to create a plug-in hybrid out of a car such as the Toyota Prius. I’d be interested to see a head-to-head comparison (in terms of range, recharge time, and power) between (1) a Tesla Roadster, (2) a plug-in Prius (with an empty gas tank), (3) a plug-in Prius with a full gas tank (for increased range, but would add weight), and (4) a plug-in Prius with its gas tank and gasoline engine fully removed (to decrease weight for maximal efficiency).

I was filling up my Accord’s 15-gallon tank last night, and thinking about how big a 15-gallon tank really is. 15 gallons takes up a lot of space! Three of those big bottles that go atop the water cooler. I wonder if the volume of space taken up by the batteries in an electric car such as this one are less than 15 fluid gallons of volume… And if that’s the case, it’s not like battery space should really be such a huge issue when it comes to electric cars, and so old battery technology ought to have been workable. Who killed the electric car?

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See my friend Tony’s [http://evconvert.blogspot.com/ Documenting the conversion of a Scion xA gas car (ICE) to a fully electric car (BEV)] project blog for more fun than a barrel of monkeys (which costs more than a barrel of oil, but you get more fun out of it than barrels of oil and monkeys, or even oily monkeys).