We’ll have to disagree about whether 10,000 in 2 years is ambitious or not as an introduction. I think it likely compares favorably to Project Better Place’s roll-outs.
We have no disagreement that electricity capacity and reliability across China is far from perfect. Yup, they will continue to invest in building new capacity for quite a while, while also building a car industry.
As to your question - methinks you were being whooshed. I’ve not had any problem leaving my hybrid unused for a two week vacation (and I’ve owned it going on 6 years), nor have I ever heard of any one having an issue as you describe. Nor does it make any sense. Maybe some battery drain would mean that your first ride would depend more on the ICE and be less efficient, but the car would work just fine. (Of course a PHEV or EREV left plugged in would be fully charged when you got home. How fast it would drain just sitting there unplugged, I do not know.)
I wouldn’t say I was whooshed, since I didn’t subscribe to it as fact, merely something I’d heard (filed in the same part of the brain that I keep ravenings from folks like Rush Limbaugh in). It is not totally unreasonable, however, as many electronic devices have problems if they’re allowed to sit unused for a period of time as it screws up the batteries. I do, however, have no problem taking your word on this matter.
Well my car is a “mild hybrid” - the first gen of the hybrid Honda Civic. Doing a little research there is a grain of truth to the account for the Prius. Toyota does recommend it for long periods of nonuse.
Hybrids as they are now would suffice for 75 % of the commutes. Many people need trucks or vans for work. Making them green will come later. People with long commutes will not be able to use the first generation of electric vehicles. In time the electric car with evolve into something for everybody but that will come later. We need to start as soon as possible. It is much about pollution after all.
Yup, tough times to be in the car business. It would be foolish to think that a company whose future is completely tied to the adoption of an emerging technology and that as of yet is not cost competiive would not be at grave risk during a global economic downturn and with credit and venture capital nearly nonexistent.
I hope they make it but their best bet might be if a big producer buys them up as a means of having an entry in the BEV market. Maybe Ford will buy them back!
As an aside, the form featured in the post seems derived from this Mercedes concept car, which was based off of the body form of a boxfish. I loved that design!
Bumping this as this article illustrates what I was envisioning as a spot for pure BEVs - high mileage fleet vehicles - in this case city buses designed to run on 24/7.
Expensive yes. But with the miles that those buses would run they’d be cost effective in a reasonable time frame at even moderately high gas prices. Not even counting a cost for carbon.
The energy figures I’ve seen for an electric car to have a recharge rate of about a minute require you to be able to pump 5.2 megawatts of power through a wire. If you had a 500 Volt supply, it would require 10,000 Amps. That’s a pretty big fat wiring harness. According to these guys, you can shove about 400 Amps through a single wire that is almost half an inch in diameter. So, you’d need 25 of these wires to run that much current, and if these wires are in a bundle, you’d need them to be cooled somehow to prevent overload. That’s a bundle of wires about 4 inches thick with some kind of water cooling system. I don’t know what an electric bus would use in terms of energy, but I’d be willing to bet that it’d be a whole lot more.
The alternative to having a single “power port” to recharge the bus would be multiple recharging points, but that adds to your expense: More wires, more access points, more voltage controls systems, more weight, more things to break, wear out, or kids to stick their fingers into when someone’s forgotten to secure the cover like they’re supposed to. Any guesses as to what happens when a kid manages to ground himself and send 400 Amps through their body? Think its nearly as dangerous as sticking your finger in a gas tank and licking the gas or diesel off it?