I'll just point out an important fact about these ice shelves you've missed. They are floating, just happen to be attached to shore. Which means that even if they melted 100% - there would be no (significant[1]) change in overall sea levels because of it.

That's a science experiment you are welcome to perform at home.

[1] Note that because ice is salt-free and fresh water is less dense than sea water, once floating ice is melted it will slightly rise sea levels but the amount is pretty much insignificant at current levels of floating ice melt.

Users will only allow this if they are compensated appropriately.

Typical use case won't involve anywhere close to a full cycle. Today, typical use of an EV involves a partial cycle - probably 1/3rd to 1/2 cycle. 2 half cycles is easier on a pack than one full cycle - you can probably get 2-3x more "full" cycles by only half-cycling a modern battery pack. Limit depth of charge/discharge even more and you'll get even more use out of the pack.

That said - the real value won't come from performance large charge/discharges. It will come from many small charge/discharge events to provide grid regulation services. If a big load pops on, draw a bit of juice from batteries while conventional generators spin up. When it turns off use the excess juice to charge batteries.

Conventional generators are not good at spinning up and down quickly to match changes in load - by buffering this load and allowing the big generator to run closer to constant load you can significantly improve it's operating efficiency. Very frequently this inability to quickly match changes in load is what causes black outs (the recent San Diego blackout is a good example).

Worst case you're looking at a really hot or really cold day and you want to be able to draw 5 kW from storage during peak. This can go a long ways. I know that some utilities will pay ~$50/year just to have the option of being able to remotely control your air conditioner to keep it on a 50% duty cycle for one hour - they'll pay up to $200/year to have the option of being able to keep it off for a whole hour - and they may never need to use it!

So imagine being paid to simply leave your car plugged in to the grid just so the utility has the option of drawing power from it - and then being paid more if they actually use it. Having these resources available at little cost can be worth their weight in gold when they are needed.

That sounds like a cool project - got any details of it on a website somewhere?

I didn't think it was that hard to find LiFePO4 batteries these days online... What specifications/format were you looking for in a battery?

Great - let's start by going after the big wastes in spending - namely cutting defense spending significantly. Once that's done, we can worry about money spent on trying to accelerate development of renewable energy resources.

http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/solyndras-loan-guarantee-vs.-military-boondoggles/

Do you realize that you're talking about the man who plans on giving away most of his wealth to charity when he dies and is only leaving his children enough to build their own empire?

Read TheRaven64's comment above. Explains why sales tax only is highly regressive.

Anecdotally, my TOU rates here in southern California are $0.14 / kWh off-peak and $0.27 / kWh on-peak (12pm-8pm). The LEAF has a handy charge timer which makes it trivial to charge the car during off-peak hours. In 3 months of driving I have probably charged on-peak for about 1-2% of my total usage - a couple hours.

Because it's so easy to charge at off-peak rates, I would probably keep the same behavior even if the spread was minimal. Considering that it's beneficial for the battery's life to avoid spending time fully charged, it's a good idea to postpone charging regardless of on/off peak rates.

That's essentially what the J1772 charging standard does (with a few modifications).

The UL/NEC doesn't want people regularly plugging in to your typical 240V plugs - they aren't designed for that and are lacking important safety features (like GFCI circuits) which makes it too easy for people to electrocute themselves when handling the plug.

That said, one can send off the standard 120V Nissan LEAF charge cord to be modified (for about $240 + adapters) to run off 120-240V at 12-16A. Then with the right adapters you can plug into nearly any power source around.

Tesla sells you a handy kit to do this as well for the Roadster - but it costs quite a bit more ($1,500)

Every single one of your limitations applies to fuel cells, too.

Right now if fuel cells require extremely expensive and rare fueling stations making them a severe pain in the ass to charge. There's probably a handful of them across the country. And the cost of that fuel is expensive.

In the end - fuel cells are just another type of battery. Except more expensive than today's batteries and even harder to refuel.

EVs are not for everyone! Perhaps a plug-in hybrid would fit your needs better.

If you have a 2 mile commute, you should be riding your bike or walking. Not lugging 2 tons of steel back and forth. If too lazy to do either, get an e-assist bike.

You're in luck. The soon-to-be-sold in the USA Mitsubishi i has those exact batteries.

Unfortunately, recharge times will be currently limited to about 30 minutes from empty to 80% - same as the Nissan LEAF. Probably mostly due to how much power it takes to do so. Peak charge rates are around 50 kW.

It's easy to forget to good we've had it with gasoline - each gallon of gas has about 36 kWh worth of energy in it - and your typical automobile only uses about 20-30% of it!

The Tesla Roadster needs to very carefully maintain battery temps because it uses commodity lithium cells which do not like extremes in temperatures.

The LEAF and iMiEV have much more robust batteries which are more stable. They also have lower internal resistance which do not generate significant amounts of heat during charge and thus can tolerate wider ranges of temperatures without issue except perhaps some minor degradation of capacity over time if high temperatures are sustained for extended periods of time.

Modern lithium batteries are well over 90% efficient during charge/discharge.

Quick charging is not a problem for their battery life as long as you avoid quick charging all the way to 100% full capacity - this is why the Nissan LEAF and Mitsubishi iMiev quick charge to 80%. Charge rate is automatically tapered off as the battery fills up to avoid generating excess heat.

The GP comparing weather to climate pretty much causes him to lose all credibility on the subject...

For those interested in the difference, NASA has a good article on it:

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/noaa-n/climate/climate_weather.html