Points for fact-checking my thermo.

But.

The Tesla Model S is a mass-market EV. The MiEV is a mass-market EV. The Nissan Leaf is a mass-market EV. There's a long list of mass-market EVs that are absolutely, 100% ready for prime-time and they're selling. They aren't selling in Detroit, that doesn't surprise me at all; everywhere that isn't 100% committed to an obsolete technology is all over it, though.

I built with Advanced DC 9" motors and Optima yellow-tops back when I was in college. Shit might as well have been Kitty Hawk. Motor efficiency hasn't really changed in 50 years but the controllers we had back then were fuckin' through-hole circuitry. We were saying things like "some day soon there will be 1 farad capacitors." Aerodynamics doesn't change, electric motor efficiency doesn't much change, but the thing between the cord and the motor is virtually unrecognizable. We piled twelve hundred pounds of Sonnenschein NiMH batteries into Viking 23 and it cost $50k. The same equivalent energy from Honda is under a thousand dollars.

We're there, dude.