There’s a fine line between enthusiasm and lunacy. There’s a reason someone coined the term “fan” to describe over the top supporters of sports teams. Some percentage of people become untethered from reality over interest in a subject, like a sports team or even a whole sport. I’ve met college football fans in the South who will talk of nothing but college football.

I’ve always suspected that the same trait responsible for intense religiosity is responsible for intense enthusiasm or devotion to a narrow topic. I have no way of proving it, but that is my hunch. A lot of die hard Communists 100 years ago came from deeply religious families. It’s why Jews were over represented in Leftist causes. People immersed in hobbies often come from parents who were deeply committed to some cause or religion.

Those thoughts always come to mind when I run into electric car enthusiasts. They have the passion of a zealot for something that most people find uninteresting. 90% of people would be fine if a team of midgets were in the engine bay of their car, providing the propulsion. They just want to drive it where they need to go.

The electric car freaks and to a lesser extent the magic energy crowd, obsess over electric motors in the same way crazy old men in another era obsessed over steam engines. They lose themselves in minutiae and spend their free time re-reading details of the future electric car. They also write blog posts so other electric car fans can read and comment about their thoughts on electric cars.

One of the hallmarks of a cult is the adherents are convinced that the promised land is just over the next hill or around the next bend. The prophesies are inevitable and there’s nothing that will alter the future so they spend their time documenting the events leading to the ultimate event. Zero Hedge is a pretty good example. Greece did not blow up the world so they onto other “three key charts before the crash!!” postings.

From that post about electric cars:

Elon Musk has ushered in the age of the electric car, and whether or not it, too, was inevitable, it has certainly begun. The Tesla Model S has sold so well because, compared to old-fashioned gasoline cars:

I’ve omitted the list and want to focus on the highlighted words. I looked up the sales figured for the Tesla S. In 2015 they have sold 11,600, which sounds pretty good, until you look at the market sales data. So far in the US 5.3 million cars have been sold this year. Tesla has sold well, compared to previous attempts to market electric cars, but that’s hardly an accomplishment.

The Tesla Model S is a toy for a rich guy. It’s a $75,000 car that costs a lot to own, due to the infrastructure needed to charge it. If you live in Marin or Greenwich, it’s a cool status symbol and a fun toy for the weekend. When you blow $20K on a ski weekend, $75K for an electric car is just more grace on the cheap.

The rest of the post has that unhinged vibe that makes you wonder if it is not a put on. This item from his list of great benefits is hilarious to me: “It comes with an app that allows you to manage the car from your phone.” I’m pretty sure I’ve poked fun at people a few times using a line similar to that. “You can control your ice maker from your iPhone!”

The great hurdle for the electric car has been the same for 100 years. That is, how to quickly  and safely store chemical energy in a small container that can be quickly converted to kinetic energy. Gasoline and Diesel are really good for this. Batteries are not very good for this. Right now, the Tesla figures say it takes about ten hours to fully charge their car if it has the twin charger option.

That’s not useful for most people. Driving to work and back is fine, but if you have to go more than 100 miles from home, you’re out of luck. Given that material science has hit a wall in terms of battery design for these things, you can’t assume those charge times will drop quickly. Massive investment has yielded little progress. So much so, Elon Musk has dropped the search for a breakthrough and has invested big in conventional battery production. He’s betting against the breakthrough.

But, there may be a future for electric bikes and scooters. There are firms offering scooters that are fine for tooling around a city or campus and they can be charged quickly. The battery is removable so you can plug it in at school or work. A motorcycle with a 500 mile range and a few hours of charge time is another option that is within the possible.

All of those limits to electric cars have been known for years. The same is true with solar power, by the way. The science moves forward at a snails pace, pushing the day we are free from hydrocarbons further into the future. But, that never stops the fanatics. They are sure that electric cars powered by sunshine are just around the corner. All they need is a few trillion more dollars from the taxpayers…