The GM volt. Will you buy this car?

[Zirak]

I'm just not a fan of an electric car that requires being plugged in. I am more of a fan of hybrid engine technology. Part of the issue with purely electric designs that need to be plugged in is that we already have a heavily taxed electric grid in this country and the government is constantly making it more difficult and expensive to build new capacity. I don't want millions of people plugging their cars in and taxing the grid more. Plus I have an issue with the attempts to force us into these cars. If electric and hybrid cars are the next great thing then they need to get there standing on their own merits not from government kick-backs to people who buy them. If you want to replace my gasoline car then give me something that does everything it can do and do it just as well and for the same price.

[Slamz]

I don't want millions of people plugging their cars in and taxing the grid more.

That may be a good point.

There have been threats of brown-outs here in the D.C. suburbs during the hotter summer days. They had to implement some rolling schedule of getting businesses to turn off their A/C for certain periods to avoid them.

I dunno how good it would be if we had, say, 500,000 people in this area go plug in their cars.


Found this in an article:

When plugged into a standard 120-volt socket, the electric car will draw 1,500 watts. By comparison, a medium-sized air conditioner or a countertop microwave oven will draw about 1,000 watts.

But the car can be charged faster, and therefore draw more power, when plugged into a home charging station. The first Leafs and Volts can draw 3,300 watts, and both carmakers may boost that to 6,600 watts soon. The Tesla Roadster, an electric sports car with a huge battery, can draw 16,800 watts. That's the equivalent of 280 60-watt light bulbs.

A modest home in the San Francisco Bay area that doesn't need air conditioning might draw 3,000 watts at most.

Transformers that distribute power from the electrical grid to homes are often designed to handle fewer than a dozen. Extra stress on a transformer from one or two electric vehicles could cause it to overheat and fail, knocking out power to the block.

The "nightmare" scenario, according to Austin Energy's Rabago: People come home from work on a hot afternoon, turn on the air conditioner and the plasma television, blend some frozen cocktail, start cooking dinner on an electric stove —and plug their car into a home charging station.