Solar Roof, page-3

That sure is a great vision for the electric future. Another good thing about this future is that if society plays it smart we can eliminate large amounts of pollution. I'm sick of walking down city streets around the world and breathing in car fumes and cigarette smoke. There isn't much we can do about the cigarette smoke other than take on the big cigarette companies by making smoking illegal or restrict it to private properties only or tax it out of existence (like we have done in Australia...you need a good income now a days to be a pack a day smoker) but by making cars electric in this way there is effectively zero pollution other than the pollution stream involved in the manufacture of the EV and roof tiles. If we can get the costs of these electric systems down far enough by a rapid uptake of these technologies, the companies that produce these products could afford to cap (capture) a big percentage of the pollution produced down their manufacturing lines as well, hence eliminating pollution further.

Pollution in Chinese cities is a big problem also partly due to steel mills that exist around some of them so they are desperate to bring pollution levels down by any means they can. Chinese cities are not suited to this style of holistic uptake of electricity generation (ie individual energy generating roof tiles) but the EV is one thing they will be working on to solve their pollution problems. In the West the motivating force for EV will be more the lower cost of running and maintaining such cars. When both your neighbours own a car that performs as well as your gas guzzler, looks as good as your gas guzzler, and runs at a fraction of the cost and costs less to maintain than your gas guzzler how will that make you feel? Only the die hard petrol enthusiasts will cling onto their cars in the end. Eventually these cars become collectable and finally museum pieces.

With disruptive technologies there are always the innovators who shine a light on the future, Elon Musk is such a person and judging by that presentation a fairly genuine, inspiring and humble character. Eshmun