Sigh.

I think a stronger case can be made for the opposite, that the industrial revolution ended slavery, not the other way around. Industrialization drove capital into equipment and away from slaves. Imagine being a company owner, assuming similar cost, does it make more sense to buy a piece of equipment that allows 2 men to do the work of 50 or to buy 50 men to do the work? Machines don’t get sick, and more importantly, they don’t run off if conditions are bad or if their wife is sold “down the river”. Industrialization made doing the right thing (ending slavery) economically advantageous.

I’m fine with going to electric cars if they are convenient and he can get the necessary investment to fund it on his own. I’d even be cool with it if the government cut taxes on businesses that invested in the technology. That being said I don’t want a government mandate to make the switch.

One last thing, I find his closing argument dishonest. At the moment, I don’t buy his argument that the end of slavery triggered the industrial revolution on its own. And gas burning cars are not morally equivalent to slavery.

Absent the development of some sort of rapid recharge battery, battery replacement stations would be the most likely way to handle refueling electric cars, but implementing that sounds much easier than it would actually be. Some initial thoughts on the challenges:

1. what would be the cost of transforming a gasoline fueling station into a battery replacement station? A current gas station has a gasoline capacity of around 25,000 gallons of gas, at 2.50 a gallon, that comes to around $63k in inventory. With that, using 20 gallons as the average volume per sale, the gas station can service 1250 cars. That would imply that a battery replacement station would need something approaching 1000 batteries in inventory to cover need. Using a conservative estimate of $5k per battery pack that means the refueling station would need to maintain roughly $5 million in inventory. That’s a huge capital investment for a small business and I think I am being conservative in my estimates. Depending on charging time, he may need more than 1000 batteries.

2. What type of special charging equipment would be needed to maintain 1000 car batteries? What changes would be needed to the power grid to support it? Off the top of my head, I don’t know, but I suspect the cost would be substantial.

3. Assuming a battery pack weighs several hundred pounds (Prius battery pack weighs 100 lb, but only supplies supplemental power), what equipment are you going to need to replace the batteries, even assuming the cars a designed for easy battery replacement? Obviously, you won’t be able to do it by hand, so each refueling becomes, at least the equivalent of an oil change (i.e. 30 minutes vs. 5 minutes).

4. How would you store the batteries? I can’t imagine a mechanism for storing them underground like gasoline, so you would need to store them above ground. This makes security a real problem because it is a lot more tempting to steal a multi-thousand dollar battery pack than it is to steal $50 worth of gas.

Yeah, I think Agassi agrees with you. Assuming that batter life is improved soon, his solution of transforming fueling stations into battery replacement stations seems to address your problem, in part. What did you think of his idea there?