
Electric cars can replace 90% of vehicles now on the road - dnetesn
http://phys.org/news/2016-08-electric-vehicles-drivers-percent-road.html
======
bluGill
No they could not, this study doesn't pass the smell test. It appears to me
that they looking at daily usage and saying that 90% of the cars on the road
are not making long trips on any given day - which is believable (actually
this seems small which makes me suspect their numbers are by mile). However if
you use your car for a longer trip just once you cannot replace it with an
electric car. You can argue that you can rent a car for those rare road trips
- but economically (but not environmentally) you only have to make a couple
such trips a year to make it better to own the non-electric.

If they said that electric cars can replace something in the range of 30-60%
of the cars I might believe it. A typical two+ car family can easily use the
electric car for daily trips, and the conventional car for both daily and the
rare long trips.

Note that I can only see the summary in the article, not the research. I have
to guess at where they are wrong, but the fact remains their claim doesn't
pass the smell test. It is very common for news to make the researchers look
like idiots for ignoring the obvious when in fact the real paper does not.

------
SixSigma
I would wager a considerable portion of journeys could be replaced by electric
bicycles

