On Nov 22, 2014, at 11:20 AM, Lee Hart via EV <ev@lists.evdl.org> wrote:
> So, how about if the charter restricts it to "vehicles powered by electric > motors and a fuel source *other than* conventional gasoline, diesel, or other > fossil fuels? > > In other words, itemize what "fuel sources" the list is NOT for discussing Even then, I don't think there should be a "one drop" purity test. Plugin hybrids are, in many instances, almost exclusively electric vehicles in practice. I don't think the Volt or the new BMW should be verboten, especially considering that few owners of those vehicles will stop at a gas station more than a couple times a year despite driving them daily. If the vehicle gets a significant portion of its motive energy from an external source of electricity, it should be fair game. How the vehicle stores that energy onboard, and whether or not the vehicle also takes on energy from non-electric sources, shouldn't matter. The Honda Insight shouldn't be a suitable vehicle for discussion, but, if somebody comes here owning an Insight and wants to replace / expand the battery pack and add a cable to plug it into the wall, we should be excited to help that person do so, even if the gasoline engine stays onboard after the modifications. (And, yes, part of the advice should be to consider ditching the gasoline engine in favor of expanded electric performance, but, though that's often a good idea, it's not always the most suitable option.) Of course, it's easy to imagine a big auto manufacturer creating a "compliance vehicle" that's a typical non-plugin hybrid with a tiny battery and the addition of a plug that'll give the vehicle a mile or three of electric range. I think we'd want to know about those sorts of vehicles and how to discourage their use; or, alternately, be open to helping people with modifications to such vehicles to give them meaningful all-electric ranges. We all here acknowledge that BEVs aren't yet one-size-fits-all solutions, and that there are many real-world scenarios where they're not suitable. What I don't personally understand is why so many encourage the use of a separate pure-gasoline vehicle to fill those gaps and discourage the use of a plugin hybrid. Two cars are better than one...because...why...? b& -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: signature.asc Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 801 bytes Desc: Message signed with OpenPGP using GPGMail URL: <http://lists.evdl.org/private.cgi/ev-evdl.org/attachments/20141122/de6761a4/attachment.pgp> _______________________________________________ UNSUBSCRIBE: http://www.evdl.org/help/index.html#usub http://lists.evdl.org/listinfo.cgi/ev-evdl.org For EV drag racing discussion, please use NEDRA (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NEDRA)
