It’s not worth anything. That is a factual analysis of the movie, not an analysis of the claims they presented.
As opposed to your hypotheticals? Provide cites for your claims.
What claims have I made that necessitate citations?
You’ve claimed that electric cars cannot serve as a replacement for a significant number of motorists, that they require 8 hours of charge time (and will in the future), that they have a very short range, and that they have poor performance and are incredibly expensive.
In short, you’ve claimed they are not feasible.
However, none of those claims are true.
My brother is an electric car owner. He leased an EV-1 and owns a Ford pickup electric. It is difficult if not impossible to get new batteries for the Ford. It runs fine. The EV-1 was amazing and I got to drive it. It had a range of about 130 miles maximum. There were no problems at all with it of any sort before GM yanked it back and destroyed it. My brother views WKTEC as an accurate documentary. I have not yet viewed it. Don’t tell him that.
The range criticism is wrong. Over 80 percent of drivers drive less than 40 miles per day. If you have to drive over 100 a day, the electric will not suit your needs. That does not mean the electrics don’t fill a huge need. Most families have 2 cars. i would not take the electric one across the country.
Let’s address these one at a time, then.
I suppose that depends upon your definition of “significance”. There are around 250 million cars in the United States. If we take the proposed California law (mandating 10%) and apply it to electric cars, we come to approximately 25 million electric cars that need to directly replace ICE cars. That’s a bit pie-in-the-sky, so let’s stick to California. California has 33.2 million registered vehicles, requiring around 3 million electric vehicles to cover the proposed mandate.
At current production rates, Toyota (the world’s #1 automaker) made 8,547,000 vehicles of all types last year globally, including the much beloved and admired Prius.
Think about that for a minute. While you do, note that Tesla Motors has delivered 700 cars total as of September.
With that, we’ll address a later claim:
A Tesla Roadster costs $101,500. The median household income in the United States is $50,303. That is the very definition of expensive.
As far as range goes, Tesla claims a 244-mile range, with one test reporting 313 miles on one charge driving in Australia. I’ll accept both claims at face value, but note that they say nothing of terrain or rate of speed. Load changes will have a detrimental effect on battery life, just as turning up the volume on your iPod drains the battery faster. These have to be factored in in order to establish a real driving range, which will certainly be less than numbers derived under ideal conditions.
As for charging, let’s see what Car & Driver has to say about that:
The hidden costs bite with a vengeance, don’t they? And as was previously said, if you need the car right now for an emergency and it has no charge, you’re SOL.
All of this makes an electric car (and the 2-seat Tesla Roadster in particular) impractical for one-car households.
I did claim this. Amazingly, it’s a claim that stands up.
I did not claim this. However, I’ll believe it when I see it. Right now I am not seeing it.
I did not say this. I said that they are “not ready for prime time”, “…due to range and recharge limitations they would not under any circumstances be practical for a one-car household”, and “People do claim that they are to be a replacement. That is their raison d’être, a competing technology intended to replace a significant number of petroleum-fueled cars.”
Ironically, you took issue with this last statement before by saying “But, in all honesty, Electric cars are not the replacement for petroleum fueled cars,”, and then you proceed to castigate me with “You’ve claimed that electric cars cannot serve as a replacement for a significant number of motorists”. Those are your words.
I also said “I certainly have no issues with EVs. I think it’s fantastic technology. But recognizing their limitations for what they are is not, as you seem to think, dismissal of the whole concept.”
That last statement of mine has apparently not yet sunk in.
I have not said a single thing that is untrue. Not one.
You are cherry picking your claims to support your views. First, no one is going to bring their electric car home at the verge of running out of juice. Your 8 hours claim depends upon a completely uncharged battery.
Secondly, the cost issue. Well, how about Tesla’s $50k luxury sedan? Or what about the REVA, that costs about $13k. The Li-ion version can be charged to in just over an hour with three-phase power. The EV-1 itself was not terribly expensive. The Tesla is a sports car with performance on par with a Lamborghini. It’s not even close to being meant as a family car.
Third, your claims about how many cars can be built are ridiculous and misleading. You seem to have this idea that we will replace 10% of cars overnight. That’s simply silly. According to wiki, 60%+ of cars in the US are older than seven years.
And finally, there are plenty of circumstances where a one car family could get along with an electric vehicle. There are plenty of zero-car families out there – are these people stuck at home, unable to feed themselves? You are basing everyone’s driving habits on your own.
If you are saying “Electric cars have different drawbacks than normal cars”, well, that is pretty obvious. If you are saying that electric cars cannot replace every ICE car, that’s also pretty obvious. That is the point you might have been making, which is why I said it’s not a replacement for internal combustion.
If you are saying there is no market for any electric cars because the drawbacks are so significant, you’re wrong. Some people would be fine with, or do better with, an electric vehicle like the EV-1 or another similarly situated vehicle. Apparently, a lot of people who had EV-1s liked them, and many of those people were one car families. You also can’t seriously claim price is going to be an issue forever. The cost of batteries will eventually be offset by the simplicity of building electric motors compared to building a conventional engine. Are you counting replacing head gaskets or exhaust systems or getting emissions tests or oil changes or the higher cost of fuel as part of the hidden costs on the ICE side?
We can certainly build EVs with current technology that are as economical as conventional cars. The problem is not technology, it’s manufacturing and market and people scoffing at the idea because they can’t hop in the car and drive cross country, when most people drive less than 40 miles per day.
No, if you have to drive it over 100 once in a year, “the electric will not suit your needs.”
Yes, my commute is short, but I do a long drive once or twice a month.
OK, since you are determined to handwave it all away, I will post once more what I have said twice already and wash my hands of this nonsense:
I certainly have no issues with EVs. I think it’s fantastic technology. But recognizing their limitations for what they are is not, as you seem to think, dismissal of the whole concept.
Once a year can be fixed with a rental on long drives. I do that now with my gas cars because of the wear and tear. If I’m going to drive 1000 plus miles, I just get a major company car rental. That way if there is a breakdown, they come and get it and give you another car. (A smaller one, but that’s what they do.)
313 miles was at 55mph on long straight flat roads.
The previous record, also Tesla, of 241 was on the following and driven at fairly normal speeds:
“The rally course runs 390km (241 miles) from the town of Valance in France to the Principality of Monaco and covers a mixture of trunk roads, motorways and single-carriageway roads that wind through the mountains.”
Clearly the Tesla is too expensive for most people, but that’s a great range and only 3.5 hour re-charge, if price comes down that’s pretty darn good.
Great. But my current gas car has a 500 mile range and a 4 minute “recharge” time. Assuming the Tesla was the same price as a gasoline car, it still loses. Consumers don’t want something that is good enough when they have a better alternative.
Same here, and I don’t even have a car.
I do 100 miles one way every month or two. Rental is way, way to inconvienient as far as I’m concerned.
I wonder what running the heat or air conditioning does to those mileage figures?
Precisely, what would running a heater do to an EV’s range? If you live in the north you might like to run a heater 4+ months out of the year. An IC engine produces heat as a by-product, in the winter I start my car five minutes before I leave for work just so the interior of my car is above freezing for my commute. Perhaps EVs could be marketed with optional wool mittens for more seasonal climates.
Oh, never mind.:o
This is exactly what I am talking about when I say people apply their own desires to the rest of the market. I think I’d be fine with taking the train on the semi-monthly occasions I need to travel, when I am paying the equivalent of 60 cents a gallon for fuel. If you’re going to make comparisons, you need to include all the benefits as well, like the lower maintenance requirements.
It beats my car’s range.
You are correct that there has to be an advantage, but you are limiting the discussion to 2 variables of many. As ivn1188 points out, you need to compare fuel costs (not sure how much the re-charge costs, would be interested in knowing that) and maintenance costs. Also, I assume the electric car could tow a boat pretty easily with all of that torque, so now maybe their market is big gas guzzling pickups and suv’s (not really sure, just throwing that out).
A car cruising at 70mph requires roughly 25kw of power according to this.
An electric space heater for a car probably requires 2-3 kw. So using the heater will increase average electric consumption by 10%. Not a small amount but not enough to significantly reduce the car’s range.