http://www.crunchgear.com/2008/11/11/new-battery-technology-lasts-up-to-7-times-as-longer-than-traditional-batteries/

http://www.engadget.com/2008/11/13/korean-geniuses-invent-lithium-batteries-with-eight-times-the-ju/

ok, $47,000??? ru kidding? figuring your sierra gets 15 mpg, with gas at $4/gallon, that means 235,000 miles are going to cost you $63,000 in gas alone. and that assumes gas stays at $4 for 7 years, which seems highly unlikely. more likely that total will be $100,000+. Electricity, on the other hand, will cost you about 2 cents a mile, so that’s less than $5000 to get all those miles.

Of course, electric rates could go up too; but if you get to own an electric car you’ll soon find it makes a lot of sense to use the money you’re not wasting on gas anymore to finance a rooftop photovoltaic system. $20,000 or so after rebates will give you plenty for all your driving needs plus all your residential electric, and you’re protected against future rate hikes. oh, and that $20k spent is going to depreciate a hell of a lot slower than a car – the panels will work at least 30 years, probably much more. so a worst case 7 year figure is about $5k, about the same you’d pay to the utility anyway. with an EV and PV on your roof you pay a lot up front, but your money is invested in assets that retain their value or even appreciate; while with an ICE car and gasoline your money just floats away to oil tycoons and saudi princes and the like.

then there’s the cost of the truck, which will surely depreciate to about zero after 7 years, so factor in $25k or so right there. the tesla, on the other hand, is sure to be a collector’s item, and may even be worth more than you paid for it after 7 years. take a past EV, for example. the 2002 Toyota Rav4-EV sold for $42,000, and 6 year old ones with ~50,000 miles now sell on ebay for $50,000-60,000. 0 is a pretty good cost of ownership over 7 years, I’d say.

and I don’t know what figures you used for all the maintenance that truck will need to get to 235000 miles, but given that it’s made by GM I’d expect you might even pay for the cost of the car again to drive that many miles. electric cars, on the other hand, require almost no maintenance. the only thing you’d have to do is replace the tires. even the brakes hardly wear at all thanks to regenerative “engine” braking.

so far it’s looking like the Tesla is much more economical with a possible life cycle cost as low as 0, more likely $10,000 or so, while the Sierra cost may be as high as $150,000, but I’ll grant you that the batteries are a big unknown. using lithium batteries in cars remains unproven, so only time will tell just how long they’ll last and how much the replacement cost will be. the NiMH batteries in the Rav4-EV, on the other hand, have demonstrated near perfect reliability over the millions of miles driven in those cars. many of them have topped 100,000 miles driven and shown no sign of range degradation. it’s quite plausible that those Rav4-EV battery packs will keep on delivering 100+ miles range upwards of your 235,000 miles figure. to make a more fair comparison with an EV you’d have to look at this example, as it’s the only production EV that’s been driven any significant amount.

nobody knows how much it’d cost to replace those Rav4 batteries, because nobody sells them. Toyota/Panasonic originally produced them, but our friends at Chevron bought the NiMH patent rights from GM/Ovonics and kindly slapped Toyota with a lawsuit to put a stop to the batteries and the Rav4 EV. Chevron’s battery company, Cobasys, also refuses to make any of its own NiMH large enough for EVs. and so you see the real problem with getting EVs on the road today, and why so many automakers blather on about how we “need lithium” to do it. NiMH is clearly the best choice, but nobody will stand up to Chevron.

Including gasoline/oil, tires, insurance, vehicle purchase, and nominal maintenence, my expenditures will be just over $47,000, or about 20 cents per mile.

With an expected life cycle of 100,000 miles, each Tesla battery pack will cost about $45,000. Given my current transportation requirements, the Tesla vehicle and battery purchases will cost about $342,000 — or at least $1.45 per mile.

If the battery packs cost only twice as much as the gasoline, or if gasoline costs would increase by at least 3 times, I would be quite tempted. But it appears the cost of an adequate electric car will continue to be waaaaay outta line for the next decade.

Maybe I can build a local commuter electric, but it’ll still set me back at least 10 grand + insurance and batteries. Looks like a no-win situtation.

The technology exists with many miles on it. Follow the money and ask yourself of anyone who claims expert status “who sign that guy’s pay check”.

We have done plug in cars. The people who used them loved them. The infrastructure was easily installed. They were a threat to the Status Quo of oil industry profits.