The stranglehold of the oil lobby is a possible monkey wrench to the widespread adoption of solar power and electric cars. The buggy whip lobby in 1900 wasn't quite as powerful. With the tweeting cheeto and his corporate swamp, who knows what efforts will be made to roll back the clock. Tho he did say he would put solar panels on his wall. And we know he never lies!

Jay Leno has a 1909 Baker, and he says he gets about 100 mile range, and can go 20 -25 m.p.h. It was the car of choice for women, and charging stations were common.

There is a website for solar energy by zip. Clicking on a random spot in Delaware 39.6 N, 75.8 E, showed 4.68 hours of sun per day (averaged over a year). An 8 Kw system would yield about 10,000 Kw Hrs per year. I think there are other solar calculators that will give a breakdown by month, but if you are grid tied and have net metering, the excess in June will balance out the deficiency in December. 10 K Kw hrs would charge a 60 Kw hr battery about 160 times. (probably a week or so in February is about right.) You might need more panels if you also want to run your house. A quick check of AltEstore.com showed panels as low as 59 cents a watt. So for about 5 grand, you could get enough panels to charge the car every two days. Most solar panels come with a 20 -25 year warranty but last indefinitely (some of the originals from the 60's and 70's are still producing). That would be about 6000 full charges over 20 years. If you drive 200 miles per charge, that is about 1.2 million miles of driving for an investment of $5000, maybe $10,000 if we throw in inverters, chargers, roof mounting systems, wires, meters, etc. If we assume a comparable vehicle gets 30 MPG, and petrol or diesel remain at $2.50 a gallon for the next 20 years (not likely), the fuel cost to drive 1.2 million miles would be about $100,000. This is not counting oil changes, exhaust systems, and a lot of other maintenance which is largely absent with electric vehicles. And you will likely still have a functional PV system at the end of the 20 years!

Wind and solar power are getting cheaper every day, while fossil power is trending upward over the long run. Less than 1% of the land area of the U.S. could generate enough solar power to run the whole country in all forms of energy. A 2012 study by Stanford University and the U. of Delaware(!) determined that the theoretical maximum wind power that could be generated on earth would be 250 terawatts, 11 times global consumption of all forms of energy. This would mean windmills everywhere and is obviously not practical. A Scientific American article (3/12/15) projected that wind could power 35% of the U.S. by 2050.

Just as the early computers were expensive toys for affluent geeks, the first modern electric cars are costly, tho it is a much simpler technology, and will soon be cheaper than the Rube Goldberg devices with the myriad of moving parts we all know and love. The 18 or so moving parts in an EV will be available at Autozone.

Not factored into the fossil economy is not only climate chaos, but an estimated 200,000 people per year in the U.S. alone, who die an average of 10 years early due to fossil pollution. A recent MIT study (news.mit.edu) details what sectors contribute to this problem. 53,000 deaths are attributed to pollution from the transportation sector, and 52,000 to power generation. In our "free" market system, such costs are externalized and do not factor in to corporate costs or profits. If anything they probably own the hospitals and morgues. How much does fossil power really cost?

At the risk of being politically incorrect, i would say that in view of these factors, it is a good thing that the gub'mint has thrown a few crumbs of subsidy to jump start cleaner energy. A fraction of the subsidies to fossil and nuclear, tho; think depletion allowances, public lands leased for pennies on the dollar, tax breaks, off shoring, eminent domain for pipelines that nobody wants, etc. etc. etc.

From what Dr. Seba is saying, we are now at or near a point where economics alone are taking over, and his projections are based on pure economics and technological advance, not subsidies. Meanwhile, the Chinese installed more solar in 2016 alone than the total installed capacity in the U.S.! They are making China great again, and leaving us behind.

The tragedy is that we have lost decades. In the early 1900's, solar water heaters were common in Florida and California. In Barry Commoner's 1979 book,"The Politics of Energy" he referenced a study that photovoltaic cells could have been brought down to 10 cents a watt with a sufficient investment to jump start mass production. In the 1990's, GM built a fleet of electric cars, the EV-1, which they leased, then recalled and crushed over the strenuous protests of the customers. See the film "Who killed the electric car".

I could go on and on, but i have to get up tomorrow and change the transmission fluid and filter on my '82 300D! Good night.