Until we have cold-fusion style infinite free energy, it will never be efficient for people, often on a one-by-one basis, to wrap themselves in 4,000 pounds of metal and move that whole thing around an average of 50 miles daily. The idea that we expect this to become an efficient activity in the near future is absurd.
We need inter and intra-city public transportation systems that work, and we need to rethink some of our values. Look at the poster above who dismissed ever getting an electric care because he goes on two 500 miles trips a year- did it ever occur to him that maybe he can rent a long-distance vehicle for his twice-yearly jaunts?
It’s more like 4 or 5, but if it’s a half hour, fine. I can stop at McDonalds, which I normally do anyway. My impression was a non-rapid charger would take overnight, which would be unacceptable.
It would be a practical piece of engineering if it had fast-charge batteries and it was a lot cheaper. From an engineering point of view it’s a re-worked Prius. It uses the same type of engine/transmission (reworked to favor extended battery mode) plus a lot more batteries. I wish people would stop referring to it as if anything new was invented. I don’t mean to insult the car but it is technically a conventional hybrid technology and should be viewed as such. It is not Og’s gift to mankind.
And that sums it up nicely. People buy Mustangs because they can get a damn good sports car for a fraction of the money of a Ferrari. The fact that we’re funding the car twice with tax payer money (once for production and again in rebates) makes no economic sense if the goal is to make an environmental difference. I think the other taxpayer rescued car company has the right idea. Chrysler abandoned the hybrid market because it didn’t make money and used their high mileage cars to fill the void profitably. A car that gets great mileage and sells well is more useful than a car that gets super mileage but doesn’t sell.
This isn’t a function of early adopter sales. It’s a function of cost. People don’t buy Apple computers for one major reason and that’s cost. They buy a $299 computer that gets the job done.
GM has a fiduciary duty to the taxpayer and it’s stockholders to pay back the loan and make money. They should have kept the car on the shelf until batteries caught up with it. It could easily be the next Malibu or Taurus.
So to summarize your point, there are already cars on the road that offer more bang for the buck and people are buying them and not the Volt. Ford Mustang versus Ferrari.
It’s not a difficult engineering problem at all. It’s a battery issue. The Volt would go from zero to profitability in 5 seconds with a cheap, fast-charge battery.
While I get your point, I question your premise. If government increases taxes, that’s the opposite of “letting the market decide.” It’s forcing the outcome by negating natural market forces.
Yes, 30 minutes is for a fast charger. But the technology isn’t theoretical; it already exists in CA along the I-5 route and some other places. For many Californians, the only long road trips they take with any frequency are between LA and Northern California, so this is enough (you can always rent on the rare occasions when you need more). They plan on building out over the whole country in the next few years.
The cost needs to come down. But that’s pretty much it. There are still compromises with electrics, but they are outweighed by massive other benefits.
Today we think of a car as being all purpose for long trips or short ones. I believe to be practical a car traveling no more than 1 hour one way could be designed much different than an over the road car. A transportation vehicle could possibly weigh under 1,000# if it were only traveling say 20 miles max one way. Also reducing speeds to say 40 mph might help.
Solar power has gone down 98% in price in the last 40 years or so. I think it was $50 a watt back in the 70s, now you can get it for less than $1 a watt.
Despite that massive price decrease, it is still only beginning to become competitive with fossil fuels, once you subtract the subsidies. With the subsidies it is competitive in sunny areas like the southwest.
But that doesn’t matter, the tech keeps getting better and cheaper. Same with wind energy, the price decline was massive and around 2005 wind installation started growing dramatically, going from 47MW to 239MW from 2004 to 2011.
So the fact that electric cars are currently a bust isn’t important, the tech keeps getting better and cheaper. It doesn’t mean electric will ever totally replace fossil fuel cars but they do have a function.
You don’t need cold fusion, or any kind of fusion for that matter. Several square meters of solar cells is enough to supply an average electric car. That’s a small corner of most roofs. It’s about $5k at current prices.
inter-city public transit is pretty rare, at least here in the midwest.
We have megabus now, and I sometimes use that to go from Indianapolis to Chicago. Those are good for trips, but not for a daily commute. As an example, in the times I’ve worked jobs I have always worked one job in one city and lived in a different one 20 miles a way. Since both cities were relatively small there was no transportation.
But I guess that is what carpools are for. Damn I’m lazy.
No, it’s just imposing the cost of the negative externalities involved in burning fossil fuels onto the people burning them. Smog and the depletion of finite oil reserves are an economic cost not priced into gasoline prices.
Liquid fuels might continue to get better too. Maybe we’ll find a better way to make ethanol? Even if it’s still a net loss in energy you’re still taking something that’s nonportable, coal/nuclear/wind whatever electricity, and making a portable product so a net energy loss might be acceptable.
I’m not sure what we’re arguing here anymore. If it’s that rapid-charge stations aren’t needed then I disagree since I don’t want to spend the night in Rockford when I drive to Chicage (and I don’t want to rent a car everytime I take a road trip). If it’s that electric cars will become practical if we get a couple of hundred miles of range plus stations to fill up on, then I’m in total agreement.
As to a 1000 lb 40mph car, can you imagine taking that on the capitol beltway or any other freeway? I don’t think there’s that much of a market for a car that can never drive on a freeway, even as a “second” car for someone that lives in San Francisco or DC or someother anti-freeway city.
I drive a Prius now. I drive twelve miles to work and twelve miles back - once in a while I stop by the grocery store and add another two miles. When we drive as a family, we use my husband’s larger gas guzzling sedan. A few times a year we need more than five passengers and rent or borrow a minivan.
A electric car will eventually be perfect for me - provided that my husband drives a gas car. Fits the profile for me about perfectly.
I love the concept of electric vehicles. I love the idea of never having to waste my time in a gas station again and am willing to pay some for that luxury. The issue is only how much extra I am willing to pay.
My daily commute is typically under 20 miles a day. Sometimes more. We have another car that could be used for the road trip.
But I was underwhelmed when I test drove the Nissan Leaf. It felt cheap.
The Volt’s four seats are not the utility I need and it is priced on the higher end of my price range.
The Ford Focus EV was nice, solid and peppy, but in comparison there is the (soon to be released) Ford Energi C-Max being released soon is less money with more utility. The vast majority of my miles will be gas free but when I need to drive long I can and without stopping very often either. Down side compared to all electric is that I still need oil changes (albeit somewhere between once every one or two years will likely suffice) and need to maintain an ICE (one that only runs for about 3 to 4K worth of miles a year for me but still). An all electric has no ICE to wear down, so much less to maintain. But the smaller batter will also cost less to replace than a big one (even though the cost will likely be much less by nine or ten years from now when it will likely happen). The Ford C-Max Energi is in my sweet spot and all electric will need to come down in price relative to the plug-in hybrid/range extended EV before it will win out. I have my local dealer calling me as soon as they get them in.
As to price analysis: the Ford C-Max Energi is decked out with the same features as the C-Max SEL. After the tax credit the price difference is about $2K. Even given the hybrid’s fantastic gas mileage the roughly 6,250 miles I’ll drive gas free (I figure 20 miles gas free a day 6 days a week … could be 7 but then again some days could be less than 20) will save me about 133 gallons of gas which cost over $4/gallon locally (and I only see than going up more over the coming years). That’s about $530 a year. Those 6,250 miles will cost me under $250 in electricity cost (likely significantly less given that I am using a $0.04/mile figure quoted with older EVs and using $0.11/kWh pricing and I would be using real time pricing for electricity, but use that). And it will save me an oil change a year at least, which for hybrids is the expensive synthetic stuff about $110/change. So I’ll be saving at least $390 a year. That’s a solid bottom base for my savings. If gas goes higher or my true electricity cost is less (which I think it is) then the savings is more. So as a base case my break even is 5 years and I tend to own cars for at least ten. Clearly for me worth it. Not even factoring in that I enjoy not contributing to our dependence of foreign oil and the decreased GHG emissions (even with 100% coal generation power much less and locally most is nuclear or natural gas).
The Volt will be the choice for someone whose commute is a bit longer and who does need seating for five on occasion or the 42.8 cubic ft cargo carrying capacity that the Energi offers. A true all electric EV for someone who is very confident that their need will not exceed the range (such as because they have a second family car that suffices for those needs) and who values the benefits of no oil change or ICE maintenance more than I do. Someone who travels 350 miles a day should get a diesel methinks.
The tech will get better and cheaper. BUt I do think Chronos is right: PHEVs are the transitional state. And the more of us who use those the better it is for those who use regular gas cars as we help decrease demand relative to supply. Win win.
The biggest downside to battery-electric cars is winter. Especially in the middle part of the country where sub-zero-F temps are not uncommon in February and March, battery power is all but useless in the bitter cold. You either need to have an ICE back-up for those days, or ultra-cap technology must become practical for energy storage. No one wants to be stuck in the middle of frozen Wisconsin dairyland with a car that simply will not run because it is too cold out. You might be able to borrow some body heat from the cows, but you will never get your dignity back.
Hell if I know, maybe distance. Maybe advances in making biofuels from algae will make the equivalent of a gallon of gasoline $0.50 (and since it is made from CO2 pulled from the atmosphere, it would be carbon neutral) and destroy the incentive to make electric cars.
because they will never be a full replacement for current transportation use (towing capacity issues for one). They will however become a substantial replacement for fossil fueled vehicles as they become competitive. It’s really a function of battery technology.
It takes 13,000 watts to charge a Volt which gets you 45 miles on a charge when it’s nice out. 4 square meters of solar cells would produce abut 700 watts an hour on average. It would take over 18 hrs to charge up the car. So unless the owner works at night (allowing for daytime charging) and only drives to the mailbox at the end of the driveway, I don’t see a couple of square meters of solar sells as doing much good.
