I agree with Dr. Strangelove’s points. Add to that the Volt only seats four, which reduces flexibility for some people who sometimes need to cram 5 in a car, which is easy in a Prius. It’s also a bit pricey, although not shockingly so. There was some bad press when they first came out (fire risk).
I wasn’t planning on getting one myself, and was headed to to the dealership to check out the Leaf. I decided to test drive the Volt on the way and was sold immediately. So, ironically, it was my initial interest in an all-electric vehicle that led me to the Volt. I never even got to the Nissan dealership.
I think Terr maybe right 10-20 years down the line. More immediately I can see truck stops like Pilot Flying J’s offering the service. They are made for people taking extended breaks and would love people to come in, eat a Subway sandwich, buy tacky souveniers, supplies for the road, etc. As for the Volt, I think that hybrids rightfully or wrongfully are a different market than the Tesla. What it offers me is a gas car for commute/long trips and electric for short errands. Cool idea to be sure but just not revolutionary as full time electric would be. Certainly doesn’t scream second/third car for me.
Perhaps there will be significant advances in membraneless redox flow batteries – there seems to be one design that has ten times the volumetric output capacity of plain lithium batteries and can be replenished either by replacing the fluid or with simple electric recharging. If they can be made to work, that looks like the ideal compromise. The only downside is that one of the fluids in the battery is hydrogen, which is a royal pain to handle.
Hey, and I never drove the volt. My husband and I were specifically in the market for a hybrid-electric, and were confused and didn’t realize the volt was one of the options. I’m quite happy with my c-max, which is probably a better fit for us. But we just got lucky.
So, one of the reasons the volt hasn’t sold well is low market visibility. A problem the Tesla won’t have.
I don’t think every restaurant in America is going to go tear up the sidewalks and install chargers tomorrow.
But as restaurants plan renovations or open new locations, I could see chargers becoming an attractive option. In urban areas, this is already happening. There are 700 public chargers in the DC/Baltimore area. People are already doing this.
I imagine we will see cities first, then the most heavily travelled corridors, and then the more remote highways.
It would be nice if electric cars had more range already. But they don’t, and some people aren’t going to wait for that when the current technology is fine for their needs.
I did say “roadside” restaurants. Highway roadside restaurants. I think that’s where you will see it first.
A $20K investment in the chargers and a couple of billboards and you will get a significant increase in people coming in and having dinner while their cars charge. With the slow charging speeds, people would actually have an incentive to spend more time in your restaurant.
And even if the range increases, you will still have people coming in. ICE cars have the range, and roadside restaurants next to gas stations still make a lot of $.
I’m glad you have a C-Max. Thank you. But I’m genuinely curious about why you didn’t realize the Volt was an option? It had been in press a great deal before its initial release, and I don’t just mean the auto press. Ironically, it’s the C-Max that I never hear anything about, and, uh, it’s somewhat important to my livelihood.
Ultimately, I think commercial charging stations will go the way of the Pager. During a specific point in the maturity of the technology, they make sense, and are very useful, but as the technology improves, the need for that specific service goes away.
When ranges get long enough, plugging in whenever your car is stopped will cease to be a need for EV owners, they have plenty of range to get home and recharge overnight. Why bother with the rigamarole of plugging in at a restaurant, just to get $1 of free electricity? When ranges are short, it satisfies a need for additional range, but short ranges aren’t the future of EVs.
I think it’s because it has a range extender instead of being a real hybrid. Or at least, it was advertised that way. And we didn’t understand what that meant. And we aren’t really car people. I’d completely missed that it was in the press. My husband had heard of it but ruled it out.
That being said, I am really happy with the C-Max I have a friend with a Volt, and he says it drives a lot better before the engine has to kick in. We mostly do short trips or long trips. The Volt is only so-so for long trips. The C-Max isn’t as much fun in hybrid mode as in electric, but it’s still a fun car to drive. And for short trips, we can drive on the battery. So it really did work out fine for us.
We’re getting about 80mpg, if you pretend the electricity is free. (Which the car, annoyingly, does.) It helps that there are power sources a lot of the places we drive to.
? Free publicity? Is advertising on the Super Bowl free nowadays? You can tell pretty much at a glance what brands are on Americans minds by seeing what’s advertised at the super bowl, and the Volt isn’t it. In fact there’s hardly any advertisement for it on tv or the Internet. The day the Chevy volt appears on SDMB spam banners you’ll be correct in saying that the Chevy volt has “free publicity” since the SD gets like .00001 cents every time one of us mistakenly clicks on a way to find out how a local mom made $7373 a day spamming Anna Kournikova nudie pics working from home…
“Hahaha”
Some of them do, some don’t. The quantity of them that do have it is a factor of economics, which is ruled by the actual quantity of people using them as a matter of need based on their cost/benefit analysis implicitly made. The swap stations will gradually spread as economic factors allow. Which is the exact same principle by which other utilities spread in popularity such as the electric grid, natural gas piping, telephone wiring, Internet cabling, cell phone towers, etc. This concept is really something that should have been explained to you in High School economics class to you, btw.
I don’t know what model you have seen, but the model I looked at was $100,000 dollars.
In reply to your question… there have been MANY previous, similar attempts to do what Tesla is doing. Having to stop twice as much to “re-fuel” the car is only tolerable if your plans are to make stops where the car is going to need to be charged. So for the obsessive road-trip taker/sight seer I would say you could argue that you made a good investment. However, if you want to talk revolution then figure out a way the gas/oil industry can bounce back as we enter a global economy. Electric cars are NOT revolutionary nor are they conservative of resources (especially if you are talking in terms of electricity/energy).
I will say they are cute cars, but the obsession with this already-made-over trend is just that… a trend.