There's a pretty big continuum between 2 minutes and overnight. Existing EV batteries can charge in half an hour at a suitable fast-charger station with a manageable cable assembly. Making them charge faster simply doesn't help because it (a) does not solve the problem of needing expensive high-power chargers everywhere, and (b) creates a new problem because you need ridiculously high voltage and/or current capacity in all the charging cables.

They aren't looking at charge swaps because the infrastructure cost is enormous. Better Place tried it in Israel (much smaller country with more political incentive for EV use) and went bankrupt because people really didn't need swaps as much as they thought they would, and because they could only get one model of car to use the compatible battery.

It's hard enough getting people to roll out the standard charging stations we have now and keeping them all operational, can you imagine getting 100x that investment before anyone even buys the cars? Now think about covering a country as big as the US with gas-station-sized underground robotic battery swapping facilities and keeping them all stocked and operational.

And since you will only have as many customers as you have buyers of compatible cars, to make the network viable you need lots of models using the same battery. We only barely managed to standardize the stupid plug, can you seriously imagine them agreeing on a fundamental part of their cars' chassis?

Battery swapping is a logistical nightmare. Sure, we could do it, but we could also build a base on the moon and rid the world of famine if we really wanted to, but we won't. Fixed 200-mile batteries and 10- or 20-minute superchargers are the most realistic way to go. (Tesla's superchargers work just fine without 00 gauge cables.)

Am I the only one skeptical of whether this is real or not? What they describe doesn't make a lot of sense to me:

So is it a battery or a capacitor? Maybe I'm just woefully ignorant of how lithium batteries work, but I was under the impression that it was the surface area of the electrodes and the activity of the electrolyte that govern the internal resistance, and hence the charge rate. Capacitance has nothing to do with it, unless you are charging up a capacitive "buffer" that drains into the chemical battery more slowly afterward, but that seems kind of pointless.

Pulling out buzzwords like "environmentally friendly" materials and nanodot "self-assembly" doesn't really help your plausibility, either. Anybody can make a box with banana jacks and an app with a timer in it.

In recent years at least, this is precisely the method they have used to develop CPR training for the general public. Even if a more complicated routine would result in a better chance of survival in any given case, they have to make the rules simple enough that people can remember and apply them years later and under stress. This increases the statistical survival rate overall, which is exactly the point.

But agree with everyone else, you could have explained this to a mildly intelligent person in about 1/4 of the words.

Reducing the number of pirates reduces the amount of piracy, increasing the efficiency of trade and spurring economic growth, resulting in greater energy use and thus global warming! Q.E.D.

And therein lies the utter whimsicality of the U.S. transportation system. Every day we get up and get into our metal cube and travel 1, 5, 20, even 50 miles to work. Then at the end of the day we get back in and reverse the trip. Wasting billions of man-hours of mental effort every year simply trying to keep our metal cube from hitting someone else's metal cube getting from point A to point B. Yet every attempt to build a transit system that would off-load this responsibility to trained professionals performing it for hundreds of people at once meets almost insurmountable criticism and only the barest of funding offers.

The fact that every one of these metal cubes is burning fossilized dinosaur plants and polluting the atmosphere is just icing on the cake. Electric cars are admittedly only a coping mechanism to deal with this dystopia in the least destructive manner. I'm sure there are many people who simply don't consider or know about their public transit options, and drive as a result. But until we get serious about transit investments, there isn't much choice for a lot of people.

"Burning American coal" is probably the lamest reason to buy an electric car.

Only if you live in West Virginia and you know they don't have solar panels on their house. But you can rub it in the face of any Prius driver you want. I don't understand how they can be so smug when all they're doing is using a *little less* gas by driving an underpowered, overcomplicated contraption--if they REALLY wanted to help the environment they would be driving electric. That's why I went straight to a Leaf--even better for the environment, AND I get plenty of torque and perfectly smooth acceleration.

This has been studied extensively as well. While specific chemistries have their own pollution issues, most EV batteries are made in Japan, Korea and the U.S., with relatively strong pollution controls. There is general agreement that the manufacturing impact is relatively small compared to the operating costs of both electric and gasoline cars.

It's easy to be skeptical of electric vehicles until you realize just how bad even the best gasoline cars are. All those tailpipe emissions are making you and the people around you sick. All the money you spend on gas goes back to the oil companies, and you know how they treat the environment... Not mention all the motor oil, frequent maintenance and potential breakdowns, and subconscious stress induced by the constant engine noise in a gas car. Whereas EVs are perfectly silent, never smell like gas or exhaust, have no routine mechanical maintenance and far fewer parts to break. And powering it with grid electricity costs between 1/3 and 1/5 of what a 35mpg car costs in gas, coming from power plants which are under constant pressure to improve their emissions. Or just put solar panels on your house and be carbon neutral.

Actually, I should have added: Even though fuel economy has increased dramatically since 2000, so has manufacturing energy efficiency. Most new auto plants include vast solar arrays on site for the simple reason that it is cheaper than buying power from the grid, no matter what the emissions.

And the details have been largely worked out. Studies have found that even on the dirtiest grid in the US modern electric cars match the emissions of a 34mpg car. Since this worst case scenario so rarely happens (the US grid is much cleaner than just coal, and getting cleaner all the time, and many EV owners install solar panels on their homes), Mazda will essentially have to race against the electric grid in trying to clean up their vehicles.

This MYTH has been debunked:

And as everyone in this thread knows, energy == emissions for all practical purposes...

That's what happens when your company doesn't have a pipeline to train new employees, and only focuses on maximizing return on the ones they have. A healthy organization would have people with 20 years of experience to replace those with 30 when they retire, and people with 10 years of experience to replace the ones with 20, etc. Reduces your efficiency in the short term because you have to support some who aren't as experienced but preserves institutional memory much better.

FTFY. They use big-government regulation to favor of businesses that "play the game" and donate to their campaigns. The rest of them are upstarts that they couldn't care less about.

Well, he does work from home. Be a sucker and click on a link so he can have a cup of coffee.