For their own internal political reasons, the automakers have pursued technological dead ends, which they might reasonably have been expected to recognize as dead ends. The same applies for Silicon Valley. The result is that all we get is political gestures, rather than effective transportation. One problem is that the best solution is often to drive an automobile onto a railroad transporter car, park it, be carried for a considerable distance, and drive off at the other end. However, to the horror of the automakers, you can drive any old jalopy onto a transporter car. Industrial goods, such as railroad transporter cars, are commonly built to last for fifty years or more. Fifty years! Oh, the horror!!

Here is an extended piece I wrote a couple of years ago, discussing some of the issued related to electric cars:

http://rowboats-sd-ca.com/adtodd1a/blog_01.htm

Freedom is priceless.

Only the so called social engineering could change this… not. Take the example of Albania under the communist regime: for decades private cars and any religion were banned there by ‘law’. After the regime’s fall, the country was filled to brims with Europen junk-yards’ wrecks. Same will happen in North Korea when the pudgy Kim III followes Ghaddafi and the likes.

So technology improvement is the only way, forget all the social(ist) engineering. Car sharing and the likes will never amount to more than fringe experiments.

Also, we REALLY love our cars. They are personal statements. Plus, we use them to store a lot of sh*t our spouses don’t want cluttering up the house.

(Is this no longer a valid assumption in today’s information-based industry?)

The US natural gas boom has only a few years to go in so far as being relatively cheaper. As people adapt (build export infrastructure, switch some consumption where you can pick the fuel to natural gas), prices will converge with oil and the rest.

I don’t believe battery tech not improving in consumer electronics is correct: it’s just slow compared to Moore law, as there’s only been incremental improvements and no paradigm shifting breakthrough, but slow is not the same as zero.