What's the best way to get the news about nearly-free energy electric cars out to Third World countries?

Question

Canada, says that Revived Batteries could provide nearly-free energy to Third World countries, for people who won't be able to afford the $60,000+ electric cars. As the newspaper writers said, this is one of the solutions to global warming and climate change, and these Vancouver guys are fans of Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" and "Who Killed The Electric Car".

This info should be passed to appropriate agencies in other countries because the guys in Vancouver might be interested in teaching people to do this.

The fulltext of the article is below, as well as links to the two
newspaper articles.

http://revived-batteries-news.blogspot.com/
http://electric-vehicle-article.blogspot.com/
http://www.burnabynow.com/issues07/024207/news/024207nn1.html

Answer 1

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Don't let the anti-EV sentiments get to you. Many people have been decieved by petroleum-sponsored disinformation, and have no idea what an electric car really is, or that such vehicles can be built very cheaply. Most of the cost of an EV comes from the batteries, so a solution to high battery prices means cars can be built far more inexpensively than conventional autos.
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Example: Take a look at these Chinese electric vehicles, priced in American dollars - they are brand new vehicles that start at only $6500. With recycled batteries, the cost would be even lower:
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http://www.fevehicle.com/services.html
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As for powerplant pollution, and over-burdened electric plants, these are red herrings.
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Even when powerplants burn dirty fuel, there is far less pollution, because of the far greater efficiency of powerplants/EVs in fuel utilization, fuel transportation, energy storage, and motor efficiency. I could use several paragraphs proving this - but I don't have to - it's reflected right in the price of energy. Gasoline costs 10 to 15 cents per mile. Electric cars drive around for about a penny per mile. (EVs get about 4 miles per KWH. An off-peak KWH costs about 3 to 10 cents.) The reason for the difference is efficiency.
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Will EVs strain powerplants to breaking? No, because electric cars charge overnight, when electricity currently goes to waste. There's enough excess capacity available overnight to charge several million cars before any new plants would be needed. By that time, gasoline demand will have fallen - so the large amounts of electricity now used to refine gasoline can be used to charge electric cars instead.
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Answer 2

The concept of 'nearly free energy' sounds nice on paper.

Unfortunately in reality, there is no such thing as 'nearly free energy'.

People in third world countries have more important things to think about than fancy electric cars. There are people starving, and living in pathetic conditions (usually while the people responsible live in luxury).

Granted, it would be an excellent idea to break Americas oil addiction through the use of electric cars, but you have to look at the reality of the situation. People want powerful cars - there are some electrics that provide this power (see teslamotors.com for a mind numbing display of what is possible with electric cars). The problem is, all of these cars - even the 'nearly free' ones require electricity. In TN where I live, the electricity comes primarily from coal fire steam plants. Even if everyone here had an electric or hybrid car (and even if the majority were economical - which some are not), the added electrical demand would require all of the existing plants to run at full capacity (and would probably require additional ones to be built).

The only real solution is to work towards changing peoples mindset. Currently, people want to all drive their own car to work and other places - they only carpool when absolutely necessary. They want the 'freedom' that having your own car gives you. A lot of them purchase vehicles that are much bigger (or higher performance) than necessary, some simply as status symbols. Unless you can convince these people to switch to economical cars, or to start using public transportation (combined with an actual effort to promote and expand public transportation) this will never change.

Answer 3

Third World Country interest would work once "First World" interest has sufficiently grown.
As long as this type of news AND production is being subdued in the US and the advanced engineering withheld from US citizens, due to the greed of established producers of fuel-dependent vehicles, I don't think there's much hope for 3rd world either.