The advantages of electric propulsion in urban traffic are clear, as are the advantages of combustion in terms of infrastructure and range. Hybrid systems using clean burn engines running optimally and using sustainable fuels, driving electric propulsion, offer the best of both worlds. 100% electric is a pipe dream. Millions of large vehicle batteries are also bad news.

Thanks for mentioning the batteries Alex! They are actually my biggest concern. If there was an electric car available with, say, supercapacitors with a 20 year life I'd buy one like a shot. (Assuming making each capacitor didn't involve digging up an acre of forest.)


Personally I'd advocate moving from cars to mass transit - and before anyone who knows me can say "well you would say that, wouldn't you" I should explain that I chose to work in the rail industry because I think mass transit is an important solution to many environmental and other issues, not vice versa :)


Regarding the demographic issue, I think we'd actually find that working practices would follow transportation changes without any political or other necessity for intervention. We've seen this happen already - the rise of mass transit caused people to move to urban centres, the rise of the car caused them to move out again (really noticeable through my career). It would be a brave person who would guess what will happen next.


On a side issue from Malcolm Davies' point above, I'd strongly recommend working from home: having previously spent 25 years making a 40 mile round trip every day to work, it's been wonderful for the last 2 1/2 years making a round trip to the station (to HQ or to clients) just once a fortnight on average. As a subject for another thread, the only actual problem I've found is that it's extremely difficult to mentor upcoming engineers in a home working environment. I'm not quite sure you mean Malcolm by "the inevitable domestic distractions", I can only say that a lot of people such as myself find you can get far more done at home than in an office, particularly an open plan office.


Coming back to the original question: if electric cars had exchangeable battery packs then it would be feasible to be charging one pack from local solar power at home or work while using another pack (I'm assuming most driving is during daylight). Voila, no extra load (or at least reduced extra load) on the wider infrastructure.


Cheers,


Andy