So you're not going to be satisfied until some arbitrary, indefensible requirement is met?

For comparison: The Nissan LEAF alone sold more in its first four years than the Toyota Prius in its first four years. EVs in total have sold roughly a third as many vehicles in four years as the *total* Prius sales in the past eighteen years. (536K[1] vs ~1.4M[2])

I don't think anyone could make a credible argument that the Prius was/is a failure, and EVs are on a trajectory to overcome them in market share despite naysayers, FUD and lack of availability.
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[1] http://insideevs.com/monthly-p...
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T...

There are no 2-dollar iPhone batteries because you can't (officially) replaces the iPhone's batteries :)

You're also dealing with different types of batteries here. The chemistry used in consumer electronics isn't the same as those used in (most) electric cars... only Tesla uses commodity cells.

An EV battery is also pretty much the equivalent to buying in bulk. If you purchased 500 iPhone batteries (~27kWh worth) at once you might possibly get them for $2 each.
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About 3% US market share of similarly-priced vehicles ($25K+) in just 4 years, despite many models being unavailable outside a handful of key states.

That's a far cry from "utter shit" for market penetration of a product that's significantly out of the norm and facing strong opposition.
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I know several people who stay away from the polls "as a protest", not realizing that they're not affecting anything at all; it's not seen as protest, but as apathy.

Yep that's right because once the pattern recognition has mastered the easy stuff -- which it seems to be close to doing -- they'll shut down all development on tackling edge cases and anomalies. That's how it works, right? We're still driving cars with shoe brakes and using regular picture framing glass so our bodies are cut up in an accident, right?

I mean, some of these problems like icy roads and snow might make for unsolvable problems but we already have cars that can detect loss of traction and go into traction control mode. Have you ever heard of ABS? Developments like that will likely come along for the special cases of autonomous driving. If they don't, it's certainly not a death knell on the technology. At this point, I'll accept a 95% solution.

That's it? That's your substance? Hell, why not try? Here are my own guesses:

• Insurance companies will struggle to adjust. You know all those annoying GEICO commercials? Prepare to watch a lot less of them and if you're in the auto insurance business, now would be a good time to diversify. And if you're not in that business, prepare to enjoy not having to pay monthly on auto insurance. Huge plus for the economy.
• Real Estate prices will fluctuate away from metropolises. Oh, 1,000 sq ft in a downtown townhouse is $1.5 million dollars? Or a nice house on 100 acres of land is $125,000 but it's one hour away from downtown? Yeah, I think I'll just take that hour drive twice a day and just watch netflix on my phone or read on my kindle or code on my laptop or even just sleep it.
• Drunk driving/texting while driving/distracted driving will become ailments of the past. Lose your license? Afraid of going home from happy hour "buzzed"? Just buy an autonomous car. A lot less accidents too -- huge plus for society.
• Organ sources will dry up. A lot of organs come from car & motorcycle accidents. Morbid but true. Need to up our game on printing organs in order to prepare for this.
• If idiots connect their cars or the underlying system to the internet, people will end up at hacked destinations.
• Parking will become a bigger business -- especially garages that work hand in hand with autonomous vehicles.

These are all, of course, many years off. But it is starting to look more and more inevitable.

Never ascribe to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest. She's not disconnected from reality, she's trying to disconnect you and me from reality.

She doesn't seem to be very good at it.

http://fiaformulae.com/en/live...

You're welcome.
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Then perhaps they're not really a fan of racing as such, but a fan of noise and foul odors.

For those people, there's always going to be monster truck rallies.
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Is your car's engine 760HP?

And your car gets 22 km per liter (52MPG)?
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The battery is fully integrated into the vehicle and is part of the structure. It can't be easily removed. Not for lack of want, though. Swappable batteries are under development, but it will likely mean compromises in the chassis construction.

I'm more annoyed that there is a *minimum* pit time, meaning drivers have to wait and get penalized if they leave the pits too early.
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It's also important, as I understand it, that the cars all be the same so they can limit the number of unknowns when evaluating performance and engineering of the vehicles.

My only complaint, and it's a minor one, is they're too gimmicky with the "Fan boost" thing.
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