On Tue, 17 Jun 2008 17:10:35 -0400 daestrom wrote: | Gerald Newton wrote: |> On Jun 16, 9:14 pm, James Sweet wrote: |>>> Fairbanks, Alaska it gets 50 below in the winter and has freezing |>>> temperatures for six months out of the year. We use electric battery |>>> blankets, head bolt and transmission heaters in the winter. It used |>>> to cost about $100 a month to plug in a car from October to March, |>>> but that cost has risen by about 50 percent. Battery powered cars |>>> are out of the question here. The same applies to solar power and |>>> wind |>>> power. There are about 100,000 people living noth of the 63 meridian |>>> that have this problem in Alaska. |>>
|>>> ---------------- |>>
|>> That's a pretty tiny minority of the population really, and a special |>> case for sure. With a population of over 300 million, 100k is but a |>> drop in the bucket, and I'll stand by my assertion that for the vast |>> majority of the population, the temperature is not an issue. |>> Obviously not everyone everywhere could get by with an electric |>> vehicle, but the same can be said of any type of vehicle. |>
|> I think there are other northern states where batteries would be a |> problem including Montana, Minnesota, North Dakota, Michigan and |> Wisconsin. |> For these new hybrid cars to be accepted they will have to operate in |> freezing temperaures of at least 20 degrees F below zero. | | Growing up in Michigan, I can attest that it gets colder here in NY. | Michigan has the Great Lakes to help moderate the temperatures of any artic | air coming down from Canada. International Falls, Minnesota is often in the | news as a cold place. And here in New York we see -10F to -20F a few times | each winter.
I understand that they are doing a lot of alternative electric cars in Iceland these days, due to the cheaper hydrothermal energy sources.