Yeah, well, there’s yuppies and there’s yuppies. There’s yuppies who are the 20-25 year-old “swingin’ hipster smart-phone Apple users” who don’t actually have much disposable income, and then there’s the 35-50 year-old yuppies who do have most of the disposable income.
I’m not so much misrepresenting it as making fun of it. My post#200 provided some real data as to what percent of those who will be in the market would have their needs met by an EV vs not. It has been well established that someone who really needs their new car purchase to travel distances outside an EVs range should not buy an EV. But for a variety of reasons only a minority actually fall into that group for their next car to be bought.
On a hot day you’ll be sweating it out hoping your EV has enough juice to make it home in the event of a traffic jam. And unless your wife is attached at the hip you won’t be able to go to separate functions after work because the EV won’t make it.
And I remind you that you’re the one who brought up the scenario where people will hold onto their last car when buying an EV because of range limitations.
If the goal is to reduce co2 and dependency on foreign oil then a diesel does that without sacrificing anything.
For me, the problem with electric as of right now is that it’s not going to be anything more than a niche solution.
More development should be done, but my suspicion is that long term there won’t be any move towards battery vehicles unless there is a game changing technology breakthrough.
Diesel is technology that is available right now that offers real world significant emissions and economy savings - it would be nice to see advantage being taken of this.
In the long run, (meaning the next 50 years) I don’t see a move from some form of liquid fuel EXCEPT in the case of vehicle platooning or if there is some breakthrough that alllows vehicles to draw power from a central source (like the trams of old)
Um no. I would have plenty of juice to make it home even in the hypothetical worst case scenarios and on any day other than that I would have plenty left over to drive into the city and around town and back again. And no, I never brought up holding on to a last car. You have misunderstood what I thought was fairly clearly made point: most families have more than one car, two thirds in fact. The individual who really does have the occasional need to travel outside the EV’s range (which is fewer people than you apparently think) can easily swap cars with his/her spouse for the day. The number of families that need both of their cars to travel more than 100 miles on any given day is, I believe, quite small.
Exactly this.
An EV is fine if your needs are really very very predictable. But as soon as you move to even a 5% unpredictability factor (i.e 1 day in 20 you run out of juice) the EV simply is not going to be a solution.
And think about it - say I drive to work, drive home, then go out to a friend’s house for a dinner party that is 60miles away - if I can’t charge my car there I am screwed. And if that party is 10 pax, all driving their own car, will the friend have enough charging stations? I wouldn’t think so.
Also think this way. Over the weekend I took a 1200 km round trip, On the way back I pulled into a gas station to top up. There was maybe 18 pumps, with about 10 cars queued waiting.
I wasn’t even waiting 5 minutes for an empty slot. In the same situation with an EV how long would I have been waiting?
I’m largely in agreement with you, but I think you’re being a little too kind to EV. The reason being it’s not “any given day” that you might need to travel out of range. It’s “anytime in the next three years of ownership” - which you can be pretty sure the circumstance WILL arise.
It then becomes a matter of “how many times am I willing to live with”. Naturally if it only happens once in three years, the EV is a great option, if it’s happening once a month - meh, not so much.
Actually I am very sure in my family it would never occur. I drive more than 100 miles in a day a few times a year and that is always in the wagon because I am dropping off or picking up my current college kid and his stuff. If for a family it would occur that both would need to travel over the EV range even once every 3 months I would suggest that an EV is not a good choice for them.
Anyway, some Volt information, specifically regarding the issue of who the early adopters of the Volt are - the same people who were the early adopters of the Prius and probably for the same reasons:
A volt is not an EV so this has nothing to do with what was said.
Sorry I should have added earlier - it’s also “in a day” that you have to consider, but “between charges” which are two very different things
No, it was doubling back to the other discussion about who the early adopters of the Volt are. I figured you could follow that.
Who needs diesels? Ford’s been working on this for at least the last three years, as well. Laser sparkplug replacements.
The number of families that need both cars to carry more than 2 passengers on any given day is quite small as well. However, the overwhelming majority of cars on the road carry more than 2 people, for the same reason that EVs will have trouble being more than niche vehicles. You get reduced utility without reduced expense. Under those conditions, you’re a niche player in the market.
To compensate for reduced utility, you need noticeable and significant cost savings, not just a theoretical payback in X years, actual “You will save $YYY per month owning this electric car.”
I don’t understand why hybrids can’t be considered as satisfying the OP. Consider this admittedly fantasy scenario:
Gas at $10/gallon. Leaf-like cars are equipped with very small turbine-style electric generators and 4-6 gallon fuel tanks to extend their range (plus solar panels for another couple kwh/day). Turbines will burn anything- biofuel, ethanol, natural gas, gasoline, whatever. Dependence on gasoline has been reduced 75% for passenger cars due to the adoption of this kind of vehicle, and because gas is so expensive (which it wouldn’t be anymore if demand were reduced like this, but never mind that) it makes more sense for people to fill up their chemtanks with something else (which becomes more feasible nationally at 25% demand, and with say windpower displacing a lot of natural-gas electric generation). People pulling into a station plug in for 20 minutes for a 50% charge while simultaneously filling up- motivated by the fact that the electricity is 10x cheaper than the fuel.
In a case like this electric cars have effectively replaced gasoline cars. I can’t see why we’d have to choose between an all BEV or an ICE, IF this kind of hybrid becomes feasible/affordable.
I am optimistic that electric vehicles will eventually prevail. But I think it will be a slow and costly transition. How can it not be? The manufacturers can not create the market out of whole cloth.
Level 3 quick charge standards still need to be adopted. Vehicle design and technology still needs to come a long way for the electric vehicle to be a “do it all” vehicle, if it ever will be.
But I think they are getting close to being a practical intra-city commuter and grocery getter for people that currently have a gasoline powered vehicle that fits this description.
Most promising to me are the leaps and bounds being made in the area of electric motorcycles. A 2 wheeled EV market probably isn’t going to be big in the US, but in Asia and Europe it could be the link, the introduction to EV that gets the next generation into into the EV automobile market.
I don’t think EV’s need any introduction. We are a battery loving planet. When they can go 300 miles and can be recharged in 5 minutes and are price competitive people will stampede to buy them.
[QUOTE=Magiver]
I don’t think EV’s need any introduction. We are a battery loving planet. When they can go 300 miles and can be recharged in 5 minutes and are price competitive people will stampede to buy them.
[/QUOTE]
Hell, I’d say if they solved just two of those three (maybe even just one of them) there will be a noticeable uptick in EV sales. There will probably be a lot more interest in the things even as they are, if gas prices stay high for a sustained period of time.
-XT
But unless you grow the market, you will be hard pressed get enough investment and innovation to get that sort of performance. Government mandates, subsidies, and tax policy can only go so far. It will still take market demand to further ramp up the rate of advancement.
Battery loving or not, few people have experience driving an electric vehicle outside of a governed golf cart. They don’t know the drivability characteristics of electric and what they don’t know they fear. Electric drive has a lot to offer from a performance standpoint and not just an economy stand point.
Beyond the battery, there is zero innovation involved. It’s old technology. If the leaf went 300 miles and recharged in minutes at fuel stations and sold for $15K you couldn’t give away a traditional ice car. Electric cars represent no technological challenge beyond the battery.
The battery is EVERYTHING. Currently Lithium-Ion batteries are expensive, heavy, and in the aviation vernacular, hanger queens. There are technologies that make it a fast charging battery but it hasn’t hit the market yet. Not sure what the hold up is but each innovation changes the marketing mix of EV’s.
What about this technology?