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Car fever

There is nothing wrong with our current car... except it's still tunning (mostly) on gas. Sure the hybrid tech has reduced the amount of gas it guzzles up, but still it would be nice to switch to something even more environmentally friendly.

There are just a few problems getting fully electric car at this point. First one is charging possibility. Our housing cooperative still don't have that option or even plans of making that possible. This would mean that at least until we finally manage to get ot through the car would need to be charged at the public charging stations. Just like the traditional combustion engine versions, except filling up the tank takes only minutes whereas filling up the battery even with the highest capacity chargers still takes ten times more. And those high capacity chargers are still rather rare around here.

The range is another limiting factor. Most of our drive is jus around the city with occasional trips to places 50 to 100 kms away. Those trips aren't a problem for most electric cars (as long as they are properly charged) but every now and then we do visit our home town. The distance isn't too long to warrant any longer stops along the way where you could convincingly charge the car at the same time, but long enough that most of the cars within the comfortable price range aren't up for the trip in a single charge.

Of course there is also the questionable environmental friendliness of those electric vehicles. While the running effect to the environment is much lower than the traditional engines, especially when charged using electricity from renewable sources, the initial strain produced by the manufacturing process is a lot higher mostly due the batteries. It takes years to offset that difference when calculating the lifetime impact to the environment.