3/26/16

One thing is for certain, the age of crude oil is on its way out. People still use gasoline, but electric cars have certainly caught up in terms of power and performance, and have crossed the threshold of cost...they are cheaper to own than gasoline powered cars.

Even with the hikes in power costs across the board, it's still costing less than 3 cents per mile to charge a car battery at home, while it's 3 or 4 times that at the pump, at least.

More people are buying electric cars now, basically every automotive manufacturer is selling whatever they can make, and pre-orders are running in the years for some models.

It's all in the battery technology discovered as a result of the booming cell phone and other portable electronic device market. New technologies sped to market in an extremely competitive field, thus massively increasing power storage on a small scale. Today, cell phones go months without needing to be charged, and laptop computers can run for days.

It was only natural for this to work to automobiles...for in one voice during the oil spike of 2008, and further cemented in 2011 the automotive manufacturers said they were done with oil. They saw the small, light batteries providing such power, and did the math.

It's also caused a boom in the battery and electric motor markets. Lawn mowers, weed wackers, snow blowers, all kinds of things became cheaper to run with equal power.

The cars are great, more powerful than any car I've ever driven, and quiet. In some areas like San Francisco, you can actually hear conversations on the street in heavy traffic.

If the pace keeps us as it's going now...the United States will be a net exporter of oil before the decade is out.

It hasn't been without its problems...for the US has experienced brownouts across the nation as more and more automobiles are plugged into the grid each night...but the rates have gotten so high in many areas solar panels and wind generators pay for themselves, so people install them until the price begins to ease finally.