I can't take extension cords seriously. There are literally miles of fields around this house, and they're easily accessible by tractor - they're ploughed, sprayed and harvested every year. To make extension cords likely the entire area would have to be rewired, at a huge cost.

Nope, not after Cameron throws all the Poles out.

I can't take the idea of extension cords for farming seriously either.  I would suggest, though, that the assumptions we're making about battery power could be incorrect in a big way.  There's, for example, that technology they developed out in Silicon Valley that increases battery power tenfold.  Presumably there are ways we haven't gotten to yet that will allow us to get more juice out of them.

Even getting ten times the charge would get the job done for most people.  Then you'd be talking about driving 400-500 miles instead of 40-50.  Nobody other than guys driving semis is going to drive farther than that out of necessity, and truck drivers presumably won't mind getting a little more sleep.  If push came to shove, you could toss an extension cord or two out the window to charge it up every night.  Initially, at least, it's going to be crude arrangements like that before everybody's got electricity outlets on their driveways and stoops decades from now.

Conservatives want live babies so they can raise them to be dead soldiers. - George Carlin