Considering the amount of repairs the average land rover product needs to run longer than a week I'd love to see how that balances out on C02 emissions :wink5:
And shipping, manufacture and disposal (everything is recycled when breaking cars one way or another) energy use must run parallel to their combustion equivalents. I'll give you manufacture of the batteries is dirty (although it's getting much cleaner, Photovoltaics are in the same boat) but i doubt 10 years of oil (~100 litres?) and service parts is any better. Don't forget a electric power train has considerably fewer parts to make and replace in the first place
In my examples the leaf and roadster's cells are both made in Japan (mostly nuclear, clean) and I've read plenty on what they intend to do with them when their lives are up (varying using them for back up power supplies to being fully broken down and re-used). Everyone seems to imply they're dropping these straight in the skip at the end of the batteries life cycle. The way i see it after you've changed the pack you've got practically a new car, the same period on a petrol car you would be thinking about gaskets, exhaust components, clutches etc over the next 10 years
Biofuels can be a short term solution but I'd be concerned with using arable land to grow fuel. It won't make the fuel any cheaper and food prices are already considered to be getting too expensive too quickly. There is also the issue of some modern engines don't like it.The modified algae grown in Vats method sounds a good idea though