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- Battery technology just isn't there to make electric cars affordable. The consumer has to come up with close to $100,000 to get a car with a range that exceeds 250 miles, or settle for a 70 mile range yet still pay a price premium of $10,000 over a gasoline engined car. Plug-in hybrids like the Chevy Volt are the worst of both worlds.
The clean electricity infrastructure isn't there to support a huge increase in electric cars - right now in many places the additional electric power needed would have to come from coal - the most polluting source of energy on the planet.
The Obama administration didn't come close to thinking this one through. - Reply to this comment
- by rightbehind June 3, 2012 4:19 AM EDT
The target is this fall for my VOLT. Just spent a big bunch on solar panels. Still have the installation to pay for. I plan to charge my volt completely off grid when at home. My driving pleasure provided by the sun. Can't wait to pass those gas stations.
LOL!
I cant wait to pass you on the hyway in my GT 500 after I'm done voting for Walker on Tuesday.
We will both be laughing at you. - Reply to this comment
- Its good to be tough on the Obama's approach to stimulating the electric car industry. It was a disaster from the start. Obama's team decided to be as "savy and cool" as Wall Street in picking up "winners"; and obviously it was a disaster. They decided to create a monopole or oligopole before there was an industry, a process better left to market forces. That does not mean government should not have acted to stimulate or encourage the industry, they just did it the wrong way, and probably in a very corrupt way we will find out some years out. I am sorry you leave Tesla intact though, because they are at the core of the problem. Tesla is a luxury good maker. The idea of making silicon valley the heart of the electric car is a disaster, because silicon valley has become to complacent with its own comfort and vision. The only prediction that you don't challenge are for the Tesla S; that is kind of funny because they have not delivered a sinlge model yet and we know how they fell behind with their current model. You fail to also note that Tesla describes as sold, models that have a contract and a down payment, but not necessarily delivered. Since there can be 36 months between order and delivery, it is something you should have considered, because the Volt counts as sold models delivered.
The best hope in bringing an elctric car to the greater public lies with the Volt; it is the perfect transition vehicle but a complex technical architecture. The problem is with the price and that in turn comes from the batteries. And the battery industry has been deceitful in all aspects over the past five years. Estimated production price of battery packs are 3 times higher than in 2007 estimates, while by this time they should have been 3 times lower. The Volt should have had a 3000$ battery pack in 2010, when instead its a 9000$ one. And by 2015, the 2007 estimates believed they could have brought the price down to around 1000$ (when in fact GM now says the best we can hope is for the Volt to get that battery pack down to around 6000$). There is the disaster.
Denys Picard - Reply to this comment
- I cannot own an electric car--because I have no way to recharge its batteries.
I rent an apartment and I park my car in the street. How am I supposed to recharge the batteries--with a 500 foot long extension cord???
Proponents of electric cars seem to have forgotten about those of us who don't have garages for our cars. They have forgotten about those of us who drive for business or pleasure and have to stay for days in hotels and motels that typically lack charging stations.
Electric cars won't be practical unless a staggering investment is made in making charging stations ubiquitous all across the country. It took many decades to create our network of filling stations for gasoline-powered cars. President Obama, with his emphasis on building cars without building a national network of charging stations to recharge them, is going to fail. - Reply to this comment
- Our government is trying to create a market that doesn't yet exist in great numbers. People will purchase electric cars when: 1) They feel elrctric cars are a good value, 2) The price of purchasing an electric car is in line with non-electric cars. 3) When electric cars provide more miles per charge. The payback for the additional cost of an electric car is too high for most people. This is similar to solar panels on a home. Just when you reach the payback point, it is time to replace the old panels. Therefore, investing in solar power doesn't make sense to most people. And those willing to spend money just for the environment are few and far between.
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- I can't afford an electric car. Why? Because I pay so much in taxes to subsidize electric cars for rich people.
The rich get richer by taxing poor people to subsidize their lifestyles. - Reply to this comment
- The target is this fall for my VOLT. Just spent a big bunch on solar panels. Still have the installation to pay for. I plan to charge my volt completely off grid when at home. My driving pleasure provided by the sun. Can't wait to pass those gas stations.
- Reply to this comment
- If you drove a Nissan Leaf 12,000 mi, you would save well over $1,000 in energy costs over a Toyota Corolla for the same distance at the current national averages for ppKH and ppG. The problem is that the Leaf costs $31,000 after the subsidy; the Corollla, $17,000 with no subsidy. An eminent argument is that this disparity places all-electrics out of the reach of most Americans which is true in the current timeframe but short-sighted when one considers that nascent technologies are always expensive when introduced into the marketplace. For instance, blue-ray players were $800 and are now $50. You can see that govt is trying to kickstart and speed up this process both by subsidizing R&D for industry and incentivization at the consumer level. It was a good gambit at the time, and I would have done the same if I were at the helm.
Regardless of your political or environmental views, the $420 spent on electricity to power the Leaf over that 12,000 trek was all generated dometically, added directly to GDP, and contributed nothing to our trade deficit. Conversely, you spent $1,450 in E10 to power the Corolla. Consider that the US imports 50% of it's oil at a staggering annual expense of $460 billion. That's 3% of GDP in the form of a trade imbalance directly attributed to oil imports.
The US spent $6 billion last year in ethanol subsidies last year which ended at the turn of the year. However, the consumer is being forced to spend in excess of 11 cents more per gallon to use E10 because of a federal mandate requiring the use of bio fuels which increases prices at the supermarket. Where is the outrage? Certainly not from rich farmers. - Reply to this comment
- Mega bucks pissed away on military contractors cost over runs, and barely a peep out of the right.No bid contracts etc.
WAITING FOR A SPIN ON THIS - Reply to this comment
- The problem seems to be that people in the Govt. think there is still a huge, well paid middle class out there that can afford these kinds of cars.
Not really. Not anymore. - Reply to this comment
