Waste such as Lithium or Nuc are not a show stopper.

Just another problem to overcome. I'm really over the "We can't fix it." attitudes. We can change or fix anything thing we wish it is just a matter of national or world will. I suppose once the oil is actually gone that attitude may change... I guess we could go back to burning trees... LOL

Ed

Originally Posted by scale only 4 me

Investors know that, that's why private money won't touch Battery powered vehicles.

Both Tesla and Fisker have had a fairly significant amount of private investment, it has not all been government money.

Investors include Palo Alto Investors, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Qatar Holdings, LLC, A123 Systems and Ace Investments.

Fisker Automotive has raised more than $500 million in private equity and, in September 2009, was approved for a $529 million government loan from the United States Department of Energy's Advanced Technologies Vehicle Manufacturing Loan Program initiated by Congress during the Bush Administration in 2007.

Tesla:

The IPO raised US$226 million for the company. It was the first American car maker to go public since the Ford Motor Company had its IPO in 1956.

Musk was the controlling investor in Tesla from the first financing round, funding the vast majority of the Series A capital investment round of US$7.5 million with personal funds.

Musk's Series A round included Compass Technology Partners and SDL Ventures, as well as many private investors. Musk later led Tesla Motors' Series B, US$13 million, investment round which added Valor Equity Partners to the funding team. Musk co-led the third, US$40 million round in May 2006 along with Technology Partners. Tesla's third round included investment from prominent entrepreneurs including Google co-founders Sergey Brin & Larry Page, former eBay President Jeff Skoll, Hyatt heir Nick Pritzker and added the VC firms Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Capricorn Management and The Bay Area Equity Fund managed by JPMorgan Chase. The fourth round in May 2007 added another US$45 million and brought the total investments to over US$105 million through private financing.

The fifth round in February 2008 added another US$40 million. Musk had contributed US$70 million of his own money to the company by this time. In October 2008, Musk succeeded Ze'ev Drori as CEO. Drori became Vice Chairman. He left the company in December. By January 2009, Tesla had raised US$187 million and delivered 147 cars.

Fisker has had more investment than just what is noted above. Both Fisker and Tesla have gotten a decent amount of private capital, so it is incorrect to imply that the private sector is not supporting electric cars/hybrids.

BTW -
The City of Los Angeles has a significant fleet of the Toyota Prius. I see them all the time when I am up there working.

Originally Posted by Hibrass

... I guess we could go back to burning trees... LOL

Ed

Actually we are moving that way to some extent at least... wood fired power plants (“biomass”) are coming online.

Judge,
my statemnt was a little extreme, of course some investor sepculate and cash in on the IPOs

Time will tell,, we'll see what happens when or if they ever start selling cars,, A123 stock looked real good to investors a couple years ago too. I'm sure some guys got healthy when it was @ $28. I just don't see these Niche auto makers making it long term unless they can sell to the masses..

Originally Posted by scale only 4 me

I just don't see these Niche auto makers making it long term unless they can sell to the masses..

I don't disagree with this. But I also think that innovation has to start somewhere and it rarely starts in the mass market.

Henry Ford is rolling in his grave right now

Originally Posted by scale only 4 me

Henry Ford is rolling in his grave right now

Of course Henry Ford did not invent or innovate the car, he did come up with the method of mass production, but somebody else pioneered the car. The first cars were not mass produced.

good point...what he did was not innovative at all....

Back to the first right turn in this thread. If you can avoid the screaming points of view, "Limits to Growth" is worth reading, as are the original Club of Rome world models that it is based on. In the analysis of these models the concept of substitution is mentioned as one of the most difficult things to model. In that point is the essence of the whole "we're running out of oil" argument, on both sides.

The people who said we would run out of oil in the 80s were right. And we did -- run out of $8/barrel oil.
Now we have to frac, and detergent and deepwater drill and ... to get oil out of previously uneconomic formations.

The people who say we will run out of oil in the next twenty years are right. We will run out of $100/barrel oil. And we will move to tar sands, oil shale and other currently non-economic sources.

And the people who say the oil will last 300 years are also right. But we will be talking $1000/barrel oil, some of it grown fresh from algae, and it will make solar cells and batteries and wind look damn good in comparison.

It will happen, and it will be somewhat painful. The amount of pain will depend on how well individuals, organizations and governments understand this and make appropriate plans for the future. I am betting the first two groups do a better job on the whole than the third, simply because they are more directly and better motivated.

Originally Posted by Judge

Of course Henry Ford did not invent or innovate the car, he did come up with the method of mass production, but somebody else pioneered the car. The first cars were not mass produced.

Neither is the Fisker or the Tesla new now is it?? they both borrow technolgy from the Volt, Shoot the Fisker uses a GM made engine for it's generator.

What Ford did do is make cars afordable for the common man,, without any Government money that I know of

Originally Posted by scale only 4 me

What Ford did do is make cars afordable for the common man,, without any Government money that I know of

Absolutely, and a big part of how he did that was paying his workers well above the average for similar workers, much to the chagrin of other industrial magnates of the time. Ford rightly understood that people should be paid enough to afford the things they make. In many ways he was a labor friendly employer whose ideas formed the foundation of the modern labor movement.

Originally Posted by Judge

Absolutely, and a big part of how he did that was paying his workers well above the average for similar workers, much to the chagrin of other industrial magnates of the time. Ford rightly understood that people should be paid enough to afford the things they make. In many ways he was a labor friendly employer whose ideas formed the foundation of the modern labor movement.

And now we have to pay the price, ie.. more expensive cars, for paying union workers a wage so they can afford the car, but the masses can't.

Originally Posted by japan3d

And now we have to pay the price, ie.. more expensive cars, for paying union workers a wage so they can afford the car, but the masses can't.

Huh? So you are defining union workers as something other than solidly middle class?

Here are some interesting union statistics:

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/union2.nr0.htm

Earnings

In 2011, among full-time wage and salary workers, union members had
median usual weekly earnings of $938, while those who were not union
members had median weekly earnings of $729. In addition to coverage by
a collective bargaining agreement, earnings differences reflect a
variety of influences, including variations in the distributions of
union members and nonunion employees by occupation, industry, firm
size, or geographic region.

So I guess your point is that $37,908 ($729/wk) is middle class, or the "masses", while $48,776 ($938/wk) is some sort of elite class??

3D,

You might want to read a couple of articles about Henry... We was a rabid anti-unionist and a Isolationist... Hardly a friend of the worker... Great man in his own right but certainly had flaws.. If I remember correctly the Ford company was the last car mfg to be unionized, (it's been awhile since I studied Henry Ford so I could be mistaken on that.) But this goes so far off track from the OP it is not even funny... LOL

Ed

Originally Posted by japan3d

And now we have to pay the price, ie.. more expensive cars, for paying union workers a wage so they can afford the car, but the masses can't.

I grew up in the Detroit area.....

should I comment on what unions have done for Detroit?