Adrian wrote:
"Doctor Drivel" gurgled happily, sounding much
like they were saying:

My opinion is that the technology is JUST good enough to use for large
scale replacement of IC across the board in the next ten years.
Especially if attention is paid to the rest of the vehicle weight- and
aeodymamic-wise.

You got that right.

The aerodynamics barely come into play at town speeds. And why can't both
aerodynamic and weight efficiencies come into play for internal-
combustion vehicles as well? Simple. Because people WANT bigger cars and
they WANT cars which have high passive-safety scores. Both of which give
weight.

What people want is actually somewhat unknown, and in the case of the
USA at lest given cheap as chip gasoline, was easily supplied by bolting
a bloody great V8 into a 1940's truck body, and selling it to end users
at commercial vehicle taxation rates. But high gasoline prices are
frcing rethink even there..

Over here people buy a lot of small cars..and these would be ideal to be
replaced by something of not very massive performance, and fully electric.

The area that seems hardest to replace is the high mileage rep car. Big
luxury cars don't do high mileage,nor do delivery vans, shopping
trolleys, local busses, and the school run car, or indeed the majority
of off roaders and sports cars. Its the *long distance* vans, trucks,
coaches and rep cars that will be the hardest to replicate.

There may well come time however, when we see that any distance over
100 miles is better served by driving to a rail depot, and shifting a
container n(or indeed the whole car, as is done with the channel tunnel)
onto a train, rather than driving it there.