I have to say that I agree-it makes no sense to make vehicles that cost 3-4 times that of conventional gasoline fueled vehicles, and have such poor utility.
I also think that spending taxpayer funds on subsidizing their sale and operation is a mistake-it would be much better to offer incentives for people to use smaller-engined vehicles.
Also, the US Office of management and Budget concurs-they see electric car development as a net loss for the economy.
Do you disagree?
There should be incentives to having higher MPG cars for the buyer. One was would be to add any vehicle getting more than 50 MPG to be eligible for the corporate write-off depreciation the same way that 6,000 lb GVH trucks are. Overnite you would see doctors stop driving Suburbans and instead driving a Prius and other such mpg cars. That would create some nice market demand.
Encourage high MPG (including electric) through other schemes such as zero sales tax on them, or other ways to drive the market. Let the market then decide which is the best way to get high MPG.
Electric is not a complete bust, and there is some interesting stuff coming out. The design of the Tesla is amazing, with its engine build into the frame, lower center of gravity, etc.
Just because they aren’t as useful as IC cars doesn’t make them useless. I see them all the time at factories and other industrial plants. Not to mention golf courses. They could be equally useful in small towns if they were made cheap and street legal.
Also, just because they aren’t great yet doesn’t mean they won’t be.
I do agree though that subsidies aren’t necessary. But I say that about ALL government subsidies, so there’s nothing special about electric vehicles in that regard.
I don’t agree. While the battery-only EV may scare off consumers, I see it as part of the evolving technology geared toward finding a solution. FWIW my money is on technology like the plug-in hybrid EV, which runs on battery for the first ~80 miles then switches to gas. Great for a daily commute (which could be all-battery with a plug-in charge overnight in your garage, when electical rates are lower in some parts of the country), and useable for a longer drive with the gas-engine kicking in after an hour.
As far as infrastructure, I see 220V vehicle chargers in a lot of places around Chicago–all tollway rest stops have them, and there’s one at the Wallgreens up the street from me. But I agree there will need to be some kind of paradigm-shift; future charging stations most likely will not to work like our current gas stations, and I wonder if the cost and range limits of EVs will encourage local car-sharing services like Zipcar. Personally I’d love to see technology where a flat battery can be easily swapped for a fully charged one, but that may be a bridge too far with the technology.
Bottom line: EV technology is going to have to go in a lot of different directions before the market can shake out a model that works, and inevitably other market forces are going to cause a paradigm-shift in automobile culture. The least likely scenario IMO is the exact same system we have now with EV’s just a substitute for gas vehicles–if that’s what the guy from Greenpeace is imagining, there’s no wonder why he thinks EVs are a bust.
I remember in the '80s people saying home computers were a bust since they were underpowered, hard to use, expensive, and useless for anything but saving recipes and playing games which could be played better on a console.
People today are developing batteries which will cut substantial amounts from the cost of electric cars. Tesla just announced that they are setting up a network of fast charging stations where drivers of their cars can get free recharges quickly.
Priuses used to be expensive also, but in California they were allowed in car pool lanes, and their numbers skyrocketed. When I bought mine the price was quite reasonable, and I could bargain just like for a normal car. There are so many that local mechanics have bought the equipment needed to service them, so you don’t have to go to a Toyota store.
I thought the objection might be that their construction and battery is bad for the environment. What we see in the article is just short sighted.
This already exists in Israel, Denmark and Australia.
But I doubt if it will be successful in the long run. A hybrid ( electric motor with gasoline engine backup) seems more practical and easier to sell..
I keep seeing the word “charging” in relation to electric cars. Nothing is free - charging requires that electricity be generated somewhere, and in our current infrastructure, that means that power plant in the next county, which probably uses fossil fuels to make electricity. Some of these cars have a little sticker on them that says “Zero Emission Vehicle” or somesuch. Yeah, zero emissions AT THE CAR. Are they really that green?
Electric cars can work in the current system only because they are so rare, today. If everyone had one, like one could imagine, where would all the electriciy to power them come from? We’d have to build more power plants to provide for our transportation alone. The only way these become green is if we build power plants that do not use fossil fuels, and that typically goes over like a lead balloon.
My Volt didn’t cost me 3 to 4 times the cost of a conventional vehicle. I also find it has all the utility I need. It’s not for everyone. But few cars are.
It depends on your criteria for evaluating them. I’d measure alternative technology of this kind by looking at it’s ability to reduce the need for imported oil.
While it’s true that a much larger electric vehicle population would noticably increase our power generation needs, static fossil-to-electric generation is more efficient than ICE. Think about hybrid vehicles: they are “greener” (at least in their actual running) because they use less fuel because their motors are more efficient (among other things). Power stations are even more efficient than that.
They’re a million times less bust-y than supplementing gasoline with corn ethanol (which as we discovered last month, actually requires more energy input to produce than it generates).
Even fossil-fuel fired ones. If we can get over our pants-wetting over nuclear power, or generate significant renewable energy, electric cars are effectively zero-emission even outside the car.
There are other factors to consider like as more solar and wind power comes online so does the issue of stable power on the grid and that means among other things grid power storage systems.
Electric cars can be part of that solution in at least 2 ways. The first is they can be made to back feed power back into the grid at those critical times, second their battery pack when it outlives it’s capacity for auto travel can still be used for stationary reserve power banks, having a robust electric car fleet would provide a cheeper source for these battery banks and allow more use of irregular power sources.
So it’s not just a question if the cars are OK on their own, but also how the fit into society as a whole.
Not necessarily true. A good chunk of the inefficiency of conventional gasoline vehicles is due to the fact that the engine is providing both the energy (by burning the gasoline) and the motion (by rotating). The fact that the engine speed is determined (up to a gear shift) by the speed of the car means that it is almost never running at the speed where it is most efficient for extracting energy from gasoline.
If the “extract energy” and “provide rotation” functions are separated out (and transmission losses are small enough) then significant efficiency gains can be made even if the energy is still extracted from hydrocarbons. This is how diesel-electric train engines operate already.
Add in regular economies of scale, and the possibility of getting non-fossil-fuel electricity as well, and it’s nothing to sneeze at.
I’d say it’s too early to tell if it’s a bust or not, but based on the (half remembered) fact that Chevy is losing over $10k per unit sold of their Volt, I’d say that it’s probably not an economic reality right now outside of a very niche market. The technology just isn’t ready for prime time, and it might not ever be. I think that the market should basically decide, without interference or spin by the government. If electronic cars ARE economically feasible then they will slowly gain market penetration, and if not…well, not.