What's wrong with the electric car?

I wouldn't have even thought of owning one only a year or two ago, but electric cars are now advancing to the point where they are a legitimately viable option for many people. At least for those who live in the city and have a regular, short daily commute. The two vehicles that have caused me to pay attention are the Tesla S and the Chevy Volt.

The Telsa is by all accounts is a good car. Not just a good electric car, a good car period. One you would actually want to drive and enjoy doing it. However, it has an achilles heel. The same one that plagues all electric cars. Range and recharge time. Even with the largest battery pack option the Tesla has a range of 480 km. While much better than the Nissan Leaf's 117 km range, it's still nothing compared to the 1,000+ km range of the diesel Jetta and others. And even most regular gasoline vehicles have nearly double the range. Additionally, when the Jetta runs out of fuel, it only takes 5 minutes at any gas station to refuel. The Tesla will need much longer. Worst case scenario, and a very real scenario today with the dearth of supercharging stations, is being forced to charge via a standard 110v outlet. At this charge rate it takes an hour for every 8 km of range restored. At this rate, it will take 60 hours to get your 480 km back! So maybe you get lucky and find an RV park and you charge at the 10 kw rate from their 240v outlets. Now you're waiting an hour for every 50 km of range restored. That's about 9.6 hours to restore your 480 km of range. Plus I doubt you're going to do it for free. The RV park will likely make you rent a basic spot for the night. So let's be generous and say that it only costs you $10, it's still ruining your cost advantage to having an electric vehicle, not to mention that you had to sleep in your car in an RV park.
Let's go to magical fairy land for a minute and assume that Supercharger stations are as widely available as gas stations and that you can find one anywhere. Let's also assume that you have one of the top Tesla models which actually support Supercharging. You still are going to wait an hour to fully recharge your battery pack.

Imagine you were driving to your sister's wedding 1500 km away.
Your brother left his house down the block at the same time as you did, 06:00. He drove his fully loaded, Highline trim, sport-nav package Volkswagen Passat TDI for which he paid about $35,000. He made one stop for fuel, and ate lunch, went to the bathroom, stretched his legs and switched driving duties with his wife. 30 minutes for the fuel and stop. They made the trip in 16 hours counting stops and traffic. they arrived at 22:00 that night.
You drove your $72,400 Tesla Model S 85 kw standard model and left the $87,400 85 kw sport model home. You had to stop for two full Supercharge's which took 2 hours total, and then you took on a third half charge to finish the last leg so that took another half an hour. 
Your total trip took 15.5 hours driving time, 2.5 hours charging time for a total of 18 hours. You arrive at 00:00 in the morning and you miss the bachelor party and your mother asks why you can't be more like your brother. 

Now I'm not trying to belittle the Tesla. I think it's really great. What I'm saying is that electric cars are not there yet. There still needs to be a lot of charging infrastructure* built and charge times need to be improved. Ultimately we also need new battery technology that will increase range without increasing weight or cost. That may take a while.
This is where the Chevy Volt comes in. I'm really impressed with GM's thinking on this one. They were very aware of the realities of the situation as it is today and built a vehicle appropriate for conditions as they exist right now. Not based on some future infrastructure and materials that may exist down the road. The Volt is an electric car, not a hybrid. Don't let the gasoline engine fool you. Unlike a Prius where the gas engine shares the load of moving the vehicle, the engine in the Volt is just part of a large generator. The Volt always runs and motivates via electric drive motors. The difference is that when the battery pack get's low, the generator kicks on. Not only does it provide enough juice to power the electric drive motors, it also recharges the battery pack. It would be no different if you slung a big Honda generator into the trunk of your Tesla.
While the Volt isn't as cool or fancy as the Tesla, it is much more practical today, especially for single car families.

It's too bad you can't combine the Volt and the Tesla. Or can you?

CMT-30 microturbine hybrid.  (PDF datasheet)

Now this is a vehicle I'd buy today!

Looking forward, I wonder if another mid-term solution would be to replace the engine in the Volt with a bank of Supercapacitors. These could be charged in 5 minutes at a Supercharger type station and then operate as the gasoline engine did, by charging the regular battery pack while driving. You'd have fast fill-ups and long range.

Anyway, overall I think we're seeing the light at the end of the electric car tunnel. I think it's reasonable to believe that someone with a kid in grade school today will be able to send them off to University in a new, cool, long range, electric vehicle they'll be proud to drive.



*I won't even get into the fact that in the US much of that power comes from dirty coal power plants, negating the green reason for owning an electric car.