Focus brought up this interesting topic (at least with me)....over electric cars. Few Americans realize this, but as you go around Europe...you find various rates. So in Iceland and some of the Nordic countries....there's fairly reasonable (cheap) electricity. Germany? It's in the top five in terms of cost per kWh. Buying an electric car? Here, there is a limited and marginal savings on what it'd cost if you drove 600 miles on gas or drove it on battery-power.
The car industry knows this issue, and would basically like for the German government to re-invent this whole method of electrical cost.
The problem here? There's this moral obligation that Germany attached itself to....the carbon footprint. Their view is that they want less power created and that even means less electrical power. Yet, the electrical car would be a much lesser footprint....if you went this direction.
The movement toward wind power and solar energy? This would help, but then you need to help finance this path to the alternate sites, and that means more cost added to make this possible.
I've sat with the German wife and discussed this topic on numerous occasions. She agrees on the eventual occurrence of us having an electrical car. She doesn't want to hook that charger up to the grid. She wants a massive solar cell operation on the roof. But she's not convinced that the technology and cost are at some prime moment of reality. Me? I look at the 150-odd days a year of cloudy weather and wonder how this would work without hooking up to the grid. Two weeks ago, we actually had like eight days in a row of solid sunshine. The last four days....solid clouds.
Out of 82-million Germans....I would make a guess that roughly seventy-five million are skeptical of this whole thing and just aren't that sold on battery cars. It would help if some massive change were to occur with electrical rates, but I just see that happening over the next ten years.
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