Why Electric Vehicles Aren't More Popular 688
An anonymous reader writes: Ars takes a look at a recent report from the National Academy of Sciences into the reasons why more people aren't driving electric vehicles. Of course infrastructure issues are a part of it — until charging stations are ubiquitous, the convenience factor for using a gas-powered car will weigh heavily on consumers's minds. (This despite the prevalence of outlets at home and work, where the vast majority of charging will be done even with better infrastructure.) But other reasons are much more tractable. Simply giving somebody experience with an EV tends to make the fog of mystery surrounding them dissipate, and the design of the car counts for a lot, too. It turns out car buyers don't want their EVs to look different from regular cars.
The reason is more simple (Score:5, Insightful)
Electric vehicles are expensive and most people only buy a new vehicle every X years while electric vehicles have only been (easily) available for the last few years.
Re:The reason is more simple (Score:4, Informative)
Electric vehicles are very cheap, if only because the federal government subsidizes $7,500, and the CA state government subsidizes $2500. Additionally, some local governments fund home charging stations.
I leased an egolf for $200/month, versus my old car where I was spending $150/month on fuel. Googling that, leasing a standard golf is the same price, but with the higher fuel/maintenance costs.
There are good reasons not to get an electric car, which basically boil down to range issues - my wife has a normal fuel car, or I wouldn't have even considered an electric car. It's great/cheap as a commuter car, but the (very common) L2 chargers take four hours to fully charge, and even the (uncommon) L3 chargers take an hour. Imagine going on a road trip where every hour and a half you stopped for an hour to charge your car.
Re:The reason is more simple (Score:5, Insightful)
A lof of things differ from country to country: subsidies, availability of electric cars, cost of fuel. And not everyone spends the same amount of cash on fuel per month because not everyone drives the same distance every month.
And not everyone buys new cars, so until there's a lot of used electric cars available, they're only going to be a fraction of percentage of all the cars on the road.
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When they get there I'll happily buy one.
Re:The reason is more simple (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe cheap compared to new cars, but a lot of people can't afford to pay that much. Most people I know buy used, and there aren't very many used electrics (or hybrids) for sale that don't have expensive battery problems.
Re:The reason is more simple (Score:5, Insightful)
Battery life and cost are big factors only following range anxiety.
Often the 10 year + life is cited for many of the hybrids such as the Prius. The long life is only obtained through battery maintenance. The state of charge is kept between 50 and 80% most of the time.
In an electric, that would severely limit range to preserve battery life.
To get maximum range, EV's often top off the battery (100% charge) which shortens the life and deep cycles them, also shortening the life. Think about other devices you deep cycle on a regular basis with the same battery technology. How long does your cell phone, laptop, tablet, etc last on a charge the first year and after 3 years of use. Do you expect an EV to get the same distance after 3 years of daily commute? Give me an EV with a guarantee of >80% capacity after 8 years or 100,000 miles and I am so on it. Making it only 60% of the way to work after 3 years is not going to cut it.
Re:The reason is more simple (Score:5, Informative)
Re:The reason is more simple (Score:4, Informative)
Re: The reason is more simple (Score:3)
Re:The reason is more simple (Score:5, Interesting)
Right now I feel the problem is a range/cost issue. You can lease an egolf for $200/month because your wife has a regular gas car. As a single person who makes 100+ mile trips with some frequency, I wouldn't be able to lease an egolf. I'd have to go with a higher range car, and even, for example, the cheapest Tesla model S is $600+/month to lease. And even then, I don't have a convenient place to charge it. At an apartment complex without a garage. Sometimes I have to park quite a ways away from my apartment, too far for an extension cord from the 240V outlet inside my apartment. Also, I'd have to run the cord out my apartment door and leave my place unlocked to charge my car.
My situation isn't all that uncommon either. An analogous situation applies to pretty much every single person who can't afford a nice house in the suburbs, both rural and urban.
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There certainly needs to be a lot more on-street charging in residential areas. Ideally the system would allow anyone to use any charger and have the cost billed to their home electricity bill. There would be posts with simple 230v/13A charging at regular intervals.
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My wife's commute is longer, and her tastes are different, so an electric might be more appealing to her and make more sense for range and reliabili
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Yep, I'm currently leasing an eGolf for less than $120 a month. That's less than I pay for my petrol car. That and I get the electricity free from work makes it an awesome deal.
Re:The reason is more simple (Score:4, Insightful)
I leased an egolf for $200/month
No, you didn't.
You leased an eGolf for $440 a month, the taxpayers are paying $220 a month of your payment, leaving you with $200 left.
Clearly that can't happen for anything but a very small fraction of the new car buyers or that tax incentive will go away in a big hurry.
The next question is, would you have leased it if you actually had to pay the real payment of $440 a month?
Re:The reason is more simple (Score:5, Informative)
Well, more like $280 a month, with $80 subsidized by the government.
So it's true that if everybody was getting electric cars, the subsidy would be untenable. However, if everybody was getting electric cars, the unit price would go down as well (which is a big part of the motivation behind the subsidies).
Re:The reason is more simple (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd call you a troll, but that would overstating the case, and it's possible you're something stupider, like a republican.
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How about we also remove all those oil subsidies
Sure, I'd be happy to remove them all... except, there aren't any...
The oil companies get the same tax breaks for capital investment everyone else gets, nothing new there...
Oh, and also the cost to the environment from burning fossil fuels
That is another conversation... Perhaps there should be a cost for that, however if the money goes into the general fund, then it just gets wasted...
If the money from the tax could be tagged to only going to environmental cleanup, you'd get more support for it, but it never works out that way.
let's see, how much will it cost to move everyone out of Florida?
Now who is the troll? If all the ice in th
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Since you can't control the offer's existence, I understand. If you like it and want to do it, more power to you. Personally I don't like paying for other people's cars, but that's just me.
I'm simply pointing out why EVs aren't taking off. They are expensive, limited in range, and generally not very appealing to most buyers.
Sure, they'll sell a few, and they are, but that is all they'll sell. The uptake rate won't go anywhere until the price comes down $10K and the range triples.
When will that happen?
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Electric cars aren't for everyone, yet. As your only car it might not make sense if you make more than the occasional road trip, but for a couple it might make perfect sense to have one electric, and use your gas car for your road trips. Some city folks rarely leave the city, so an electric makes sense for them. It really boils down to how you use your vehicle. For some they make total sense. For others, not so much.
I don't have an electric because it doesn't fit my lifestyle at all. I travel a lot, a
Re:The reason is more simple (Score:5, Informative)
2.28 cars per 2.58 people. One of those cars is typically dedicated to primary breadwinner commuting. So the "expense of the 2nd car" is already there.
sPh
Re:The reason is more simple (Score:5, Interesting)
The reason you haven't heard of the eGolf is two fold:
1) It's very new. VW only started selling them about 4 months ago
2) VW deliberately went out of their way to not make it look electric - there was no fan fare about this new fancy electric thingamabob, because it looks exactly like any other Golf.
Re:The reason is more simple (Score:5, Interesting)
First, the current price is actually about $27.5k, because the gvmnt gives you $7.5k cash in hand. Second, as someone who just leased an eGolf, you can get the base price down to about $26k before you even apply the gvmnt incentives if you're half good at arguing.
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Why on earth wouldn't you just consider it your own money that you gave the government in the past? You have to be pretty obtuse to turn down your own money in order to make a point about the evils of market incentives.
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They're going to stick it to you anyway. If you don't take every opportunity to get all of it back you can you are just a sucker. It's the way the system is designed.
Preening Progressive Prius Pricks (Score:2, Insightful)
Verbally hurl stones & sticks
But my old diesel's paid & plucky
Does the job while economy sucky
Guess they'll have to pass a law
Prying key from cold, dead paw
Don't need green overlords smug
Bossing about as the fascist thug
Re:Preening Progressive Prius Pricks (Score:4, Insightful)
No law needed, once the government stop subsidizing oil diesel and gas vehicles will be as expensive to drive as they are in other countries and electric will start to look a lot more attractive.
Re:Preening Progressive Prius Pricks (Score:5, Informative)
No law needed, once the government stop subsidizing oil diesel and gas vehicles will be as expensive to drive as they are in other countries and electric will start to look a lot more attractive.
Without government granting bullshit patents we'd have carbon-negative biofuels for our diesels by now. They'd still make acid rain, of course, but they wouldn't be contributing to carbon release. And you'd fill them up with bio-based crankcase lube, too — it's better when you run biofuels, because of the compatibility of the blow-by gases.
Biofuels? Hmm (Score:3, Insightful)
The problem with biofuels is you need to grow them somewhere and if they're normal plants (as opposed to algae) then this is going to be either on farmland so reducing the amount of food that can be grown in whatever area it is, or by clearing some sort of virgin enviroment which will probably be rainforest.
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The Nissan leaf is available for 20K. The average price of a new car in America is $32,500. As such, the leaf is cheap.
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Talk to me when that price point is less than $15,000 and there are charging stations in rural WV.
Re:The reason is more simple (Score:5, Insightful)
So until electric or combination electric-ICE vehicles meet 101% of the needs of 100.0% of the population of the US - including the very small minority who live in isolated rural areas - they should not be popular (or even sold!) anywhere in the US including the metro areas where 85% of the population lives and commutes. Got it.
sPh
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Re:The reason is more simple (Score:5, Insightful)
According to a responder here, the Leaf's price is closer to $30k. And the Leaf is butt-ugly, and looks and drives like an econobox. A comparable gas car is probably about $15k, if not less. Crappy suspension and handling, cheap interior materials, lack of features; you're not getting much for your money that way.
That's the problem with EVs now; they're much more expensive than comparable gas cars. I've driven a Tesla Model S, and it's a great car, but it also cost $108,000. I just picked up a Mazda3 that has most of the features (including things like blind-spot warnings, lane-departure warnings, collision warning and automatic emergency braking, navigation, etc.) for under $30k, less than your Leaf, plus it gets over 35mpg (39mpg EPA hwy rating) and it has great power and excellent handling, maybe not quite sports-car level, but far better than a typical econobox.
When (if) Tesla comes out with their Model 3 in the mid-$30k price range, and if it has similar range to the Model S and still has good appointments compared to gas cars in that range, then we're going to see some real changes in the auto market. Electric cars are coming, it's just taking a while because of the battery cost.
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The Leaf isn't really $20k, and that is for the base model with nothing in it.
That $32,500 "average" car is larger and nicer inside than a Leaf is as well, and has no range issues.
For under $20k, you can buy very nice new cars about the same size and equipment as the Leaf, with no issues or funny tax dollars trying to make it work.
I know, you're a fan, more power to you, but the reality doesn't match the fantasy.
You want proof? EVs were 0.7% of new vehicle sales in the US in 2014. The fanboys are buying t
Re:The reason is more simple (Score:5, Informative)
I have an honest question for you.
Why is it when you do these calculations you seem to assume electricity is free?
My neighbor has a Nissan Leaf. He claims that it's okay for going to work, and back and doing the bit of driving around town, but really only has a 40-50 mile range, which he pretty much uses every day. Per day, the electricity costs him about $2.50 to keep charged. He also says he had to install a 240V socket it in his garage because apparently though you can charge it on 120V in a pinch, apparently it can cause damage to the batteries. That's according to Nissan.
Re:The reason is more simple (Score:4, Interesting)
He also says he had to install a 240V socket it in his garage because apparently though you can charge it on 120V in a pinch, apparently it can cause damage to the batteries. That's according to Nissan.
This is incorrect. Charging on 120V doesn't do any damage to the batteries, in fact it's probably a little bit better for them. The problem with level 1 charging is that it's slow. Assuming the LEAF's battery is empty it takes about 21 hours to charge it to full on the 120V adapter included with the car.
I actually charged my car regularly on 120V and it wasn't as bad as you might think -- as long as I only needed to make one trip into town per day (from my house to the city is about a 40-mile round trip). The car was almost always fully-charged by morning, but if I went somewhere in the morning and came back home, there was no possibility of making a second trip in the afternoon or evening. Not without stopping off at the level 3 charger in town, anyway. Which I did from time to time -- it's free, and recharges the car from empty in about an hour, but it means having to kill an hour, and there isn't much of interest within walking distance of the charger.
So, I installed a 220V "level 2" charger. With it, the car recharges from empty in a little under four hours. In practice, that means that when I pull into the garage and plug in, it's generally full again in a couple of hours. Most of the time the flexibility that provides doesn't matter, but sometimes it's very handy. The level 2 charger cost me about $400. Was it worth it? Maybe, maybe not.
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I am not poor and I am no longer a student. So I don't have to drive a cheap crappy car. Thus, this car gets judged based on what I already have and have had for decades already.
It's a premium priced econobox which likely explains adoption rates.
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I would love to buy an electric, if I could afford one like the hot little tart the Mastermind drove off in at the end of the second episode of Leverage.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Look and style does matter, yaknow.
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Price. Range. Recharge time. Recharge stations!
Next dumb question, please!
It is laughable when an article discussing why people do or don't buy EVs completely ignores the cost factors.
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As t
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Dude, per the original article [arstechnica.com]:
The array of options can be bewildering, says the National Academy of Sciences' report. Commissioned by Congress, it examines the hurdles to adopting plug-in electric vehicles (PEVs). The Academy splits PEVs into four classes: Long-range battery EV (BEV)s like the Tesla Model S, short-range BEVs like Nissan Leaf, range-extended plug-in hybrid EV (PHEV)s like the Chevrolet Volt (which drive on electric power most of the time), and minimal PHEVs like the plug-in BMW i8 (which can perform short trips on battery power alone).
I think the National Academy of Science is a pretty good source for an appeal to authority, don't you?
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Nah. The average time it takes the owner to recharge is about 15 seconds, you plug it in, walk away. When you come back- it's fully charged.
Slightly less cynically, most users average 30 miles per day. On a ~3kW 240 volt charger (which is available in most places) that will only take about 3 hours to top up; but you don't really care, because almost certainly you won't be waiting for it, and you may well not need to recharge every day; it's like a cell phone. And most home chargers can do it faster than tha
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Averages are tricky: on average, my car is sitting still and empty, yet what I care about is when its moving and not empty. Same with ranges: what happens the handful of times per month I need more range ? Do I need to double travel time because of recharges ? To budget hiring another car ? To stop traveling ?
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HOME ownership is key (Score:5, Insightful)
But then consider homeowners: They are strapped with debts and many of them cannot afford luxuries because they bought homes at inflated prices due to speculation in the housing market.
Re:HOME ownership is key (Score:5, Insightful)
In other words, perfect as a second car for upper-middle-class suburbanites who don't drive far.
That's a small population.
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A leaf goes for $20K. That is affordable by anybody in the middle class.
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The cheapest Leaf here in Germany costs EUR 29690. And homes are very expensive as well - the majority of Germans rents flats.
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They go for $29K. I dont know where you keep coming up with this massively low number. Not one Nissan dealer I can find has them listed at $20K.
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You have to be able to float that much money to wait for the rebate, correct? (I was pretty sure that car maker doesn't apply on your behalf.) Plus paperwork, and the uncertainty of a car type you are unfamiliar with.
With all that, I would choose a known quantity like a used gas car as well. It's rational to minimize expected variance of outcome when buying a potentially necessary item like a car.
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You're a fan, we all get it... that's fine, enjoy it if you like it...
The sales numbers do not lie, people don't want EVs today, at least not beyond the most dedicated fanboys...
That day may come, and that is fine. The price has to come way down and the range has to go way up for that to happen however. When the Leaf is $20k without rebates and has a 200 mile range, they'll start moving in more volume.
That, and when they aren't butt ugly of course. :)
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But that's just it... it is a terrible car for a second vehicle...
For half the price you can get a perfectly nice second car. Yes the Leaf saves on gas to drive, but power isn't free and the payback period is still way longer than most people will keep it.
Sure, using other people's money, it appears cheaper, but it really isn't and until it is, it is a terrible option.
Re:HOME ownership is key (Score:5, Insightful)
Design Counts (Score:5, Insightful)
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Actually the reason the Leaf looks a bit odd, is the headlights.
They're not a statement.
The headlights look like that for a good reason- it makes the car a lot quieter for the user; it deflects the air away from the side mirrors.
Because it's an electric car, it can actually be quiet, and then you actually notice these things.
Re:Design Counts (Score:5, Informative)
My BMW X3 is quieter than a Leaf at highway speeds. and it has a 3 Liter V6.
Yes I know this is a fact. Rode in a friends leaf, they are not quiet unless they are sitting still.
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Why is it that Elon Musk and Tesla seem to be the only car maker that can produce appealing electric vehicles? even though they are overpriced, I think that problem will go away as Tesla continues to get more established etc.
Probably because they're the only car maker that is fully committed, and doesn't have any other competing product lines. It is in their best interest to make the most desirable EVs they possibly can, and to do anything less would be bad for their business.
EVs are a PITA (Score:5, Informative)
The problem is that the overall experience [youtube.com] is more of a PITA than just shoving fuel in the tank. Obviously this assumes you ignore externalities, but that's the norm so it's a safe assumption. Once more of these issues are ironed out then there will be less anxiety and more purchases.
It seems like 2016 is the year of EVs with more than 200 miles of range (more than one or two of them anyway) so perhaps this will be a big uptake year, but more infrastructure will more or less "always" be required.
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and yet, everybody that owns EVs (real EVs, not hybrids like the volt or the I3),
You can buy the i3 as an EV. It's got piss-poor range, though.
Why? Because they are far less hassles than ICE cars.
Look, the average age of the American fleet is currently at a record high of 11 years. That means that of the people with money for new cars, most of them have still got warranties. So what are they going to buy? They're going to buy what's familiar. If you have a warranty and a decent dealer then it's not a big deal if your ICE fails. You get a loaner and they replace your motor, or whatever. Who cares?
I have argued frequently and passionately t
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Because the population of people that own EVs is drastically smaller than the population of people that don't own EVs. Current EV owners represent the self-selected group of people for which owning an EV is a better choice (and can afford to purchase a new car). That the vast majority of people haven't walked away from ICE cars should be an indicator that they are not an appropriate choice for most people. (And I say this as a satisfied EV owner. It works for me, but not for everybody.)
Your statement makes
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That's not an electric car, it's a hybrid.
That pretty much sums it up (Score:5, Interesting)
Why are their cars in such demand even though they do not waste money on advertisement:
1) It is a luxury car with extreme performance.
2) the constant update and electric dashboard captivates everybody that drives it.
3) the ownership issue is finally being realized and ppl are learning that the costs of the tesla is much lower on the backend.
4) the fastest superchargers are being built all over Europe, America, and parts of Asia. These allow for free charging with 150 MPC done within 20 minues and 220 MPC done within 60 minutes.
5) all of the innovation is in this car, as opposed to having little innovation.
6) most of all, ppl like the 250 MPC. The idea of only getting less than 100 MPC and not having a super fast charger around DOES bother a lot of ppl. And it should.
Chevy volt, nissan leaf, i3, etc are all pure POS in which the car sales have been going down, not up as expected. In general the leaf and i3 are too weird looking and offer equal or less performance to ICE cars BY DESIGN. Interestingly, all of the electric cars could EASILY blow away ICE cars. Why do they not? Because it would gut the sales of ICE so, none of the car companies want that. However, all can see where Tesla is headed. Basically, they will be a major car maker (as in top 5) within 10 years.
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I leased an egolf, it's like $23k to purchase and just looks like a normal golf, if it didn't say "egolf" you wouldn't know. Fiat 500e is same as a 500. Nissan Leafs don't really look any weirder than other Nissans.
Chademo charging stations aren't free (L2 stations often are, but take longer to charge. Tesla stations are as well).
Bay Area has a million charging stations.
Everything single thing in your post was wrong, why are you talking about something you clearly know nothing about?
winter (Score:2)
Re:winter (Score:5, Interesting)
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My next car will be an e-Golf. (Score:2)
Lots of reasons (Score:2)
Price. They are too expensive.
If the batteries need to be replaced you might as well buy a new car. Too expensive to replace. Some people keep their cars for more than 8 years.
I don't know where you work but the place I work at doesn't have electric outlets in the park. If I have an office park to begin with. This is Europe we don't have a lot of space.
Gas, CO2, and heat pumps (Score:3)
That being said, I'm not sure the battery technology is good enough. It sounds as if in 3-5 years we would see significantly better batteries. Outside of that, an EV would fit my life (and 10 mile commute) fairly well.
I'm currently looking into replacing my gas furnace with a heat pump, powered by a combination of solar-, wind-, and hydro-generated electricity. This will cost less than half the price of a Volt/Prius/etc and will probably reduce my CO2 emissions by 3 tons, as opposed to the 2 tons I would save if I bought an EV. Other benefits: no battery and less CO2 released during manufacturing. The negative is that my winter heating costs will double.
My concerns (Score:2, Interesting)
1) In an area which gets most of its electricity from fossil fuels, like DC Metro [bge.com], the energy is still being mostly obtained from fossil fuels - including coal. So instead of directly using a fossil fuel, I'm using it with one degree of separation via electricity.
2) How long it lasts: Every X number of years, the battery has to be replaced at very significant cost.
3) How gracefully does the battery degrade: When the battery starts degrading, what does that do to performance?
4) Environmental impact of build
Re:My concerns (Score:5, Informative)
The first point has been addressed many times already - even if you're powering your electric car on 100% fossil-fuel electricity you're still doing better than burning gasoline.
A centralised generating station is much more efficient than lots of gas engines that are about 30% efficient. Obviously it would be ideal to move to renewable generation, but that will also be happening as those sources get cheaper and more effective. You also have to factor in transmission losses and charging losses, but even with these included you're still ahead.
Cost... and charging... (Score:3)
The big thing is cost (which will go down over time with improvements in battery technology), but you also have to figure out charging as well.
The Tesla Model S has a 85 kWh battery bank. The average price for power is 10 cents per kWH in Maryland (even solar). So that's $1.20 to "fill up the tank" in raw power alone. Plus, it's not a quick fill-up.
That's not economical for a gas station. A rest stop or a restaurant (even a Royal Farm)? Drop in the bucket. So you'll have to dot rest stops with charging stations, seating and a lunch counter all over the place.... instead of gas stations. Well, that's a shift in thinking. And something the gas/oil companies aren't ready for.
Turns out (Score:2)
No, t turns out most people don't want an EV to be FUNCTIONALLY DIFFERENT than the cars they know. Plugging it in every night is fine- until the night you forget, or the kids knock the plug out. Then you have no car the next day.
A car, for most people, is not something that you can realistically be only one day away from not having the use of, which there is some risk of with an EV, much greater at any rate than a normal car. That's why hybrids sell OK while real EV cars generally have not.
I'll put a sid
Use case (Score:2)
Outlets at work? Not yet. (Score:4, Informative)
This despite the prevalence of outlets at home and work, ...
I've never worked anywhere, in my 30 years in the workforce, that had any outlets (free or pay) in or even near the parking lot. Perhaps that will change over time as EVs become more prevalent, but I don't see any evidence of that now around where I live and work in Virginia Beach. (inb4: YMMV)
Carbon Footprint (Score:2)
http://www.eia.gov/state/?sid=GA
I suspect that switching from my petrol-powered car to an electric vehicle would actually increase the amount of greenhouse gas emissions I generate.
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I suspect that switching from my petrol-powered car to an electric vehicle would actually increase the amount of greenhouse gas emissions I generate.
you would be wrong, even if 100% of your power comes from coal you'd still reduce your greenhouse gas emissions. you do however increase your radioactive isotope emissions...
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No, it would reduce them.
Your gas engine is 30% efficient. Your generating station is not.
Centralised energy generation is much better than lots of smaller gas engines effectively doing the same job.
As others have said, range & cost (Score:2)
Road trips. (Score:2)
That, and plenty of folks live 50 or more miles out of the nearest urban center, or in other areas where a 100+ mile round trip is quite common. Current-model LEAFs won't even get you there and back again, unless you can be certain of a charging station in the urban area for the return trip. With that sort of hass
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That's one of those cherished American myths that turns out not to be the case. US population went from below 50% urban to above 50% urban around 1895 (between the 1880 and 1890 censuses) and today around 85% of all USians live and work within urban/suburban/exurban agglomerations. Not dense central cities but sufficiently dense and interlocked that they aren't really tooling through the countryside they way the
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Sure. And you are an outlier:
http://www.statisticbrain.com/... [statisticbrain.com]
15 miles one way, 30 miles round trip is the 70th percentile. That's well within the range of a Leaf not to mention a Volt.
And there are some extreme outliers out there, but that shouldn't set either perceptions or policy:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/... [washingtonpost.com]
sPh
Infrastructure or the lack thereof (Score:5, Informative)
A middle-of-the-road EV like a Nissan Leaf would cover 98% of my driving. I can afford one easily. I could afford a Model S if I put my mind to it. I've even looked in to buying an old banger and converting it myself.
The problem is I have nowhere to plug one in. I live in an apartment building and there is no wiring in the parkade. Nor is there any requirement (or incentive) to retrofit the building. I've talked to the building management, but we've never come up with any answers.
New buildings must have EV support. Old ones don't.
...laura
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This. Exactly.
And now Seattle is going on a war against vehicles by eliminating required parking in new apartments and condos. So everyone must revert to on street parking. Good luck plugging your vehicle into an outlet if you are 200 feet down the street. It's back to gasoline for everyone.
They aren't economical. (Score:5, Insightful)
Sadly, gas is cheaper than electricity in CA (Score:4, Interesting)
I just bought a Ford C-Max Energi; but I bought it strictly for the green carpool-lane sticker.
In California, if you live in a big house, your marginal cost of electricity is shockingly high. For me, it's $0.33/kilowatt-hour.
My Energi goes 20 miles with a 8 kWh charge. That's $2.64 On gas, it gets about 35 mpg. If gas is $3.50 (current price) that's $2.20.
Now, during mid-day on a sunny day, I can charge it much cheaper on our solar panels (currently we are selling power back to PG&E, but at $0.11/kWh) and I do that. I also charge it at work, where it's 'free'; but I live 50 miles from work so I can't keep the car charged just at work. The 'free' power at work won't last forever, either.
You may ask "why not get a Tesla?" Good question. It turns out that there are (at my company) 3x the number of electric-ish cars as there are charging stations, so we have to swap them out after just a few hours. The Tesla would take all day to charge. Also, the Tesla is such a lumbering overpowered beast that it gets substantially less miles-per-kilowatt-hour.
Thad
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1) Range - short range compared to 250 or 300 miles of ICE cars.
My new Mazda has a range of over 400 miles. However, the Tesla Model S has a 200-250 mile range, so it's really not that far off. Of course, the Model S also costs over $100k for the one with that range.
2) Price - Why do EVs cost 2x or more compared to ICE cars when EVs have fewer amount of hardware components?
It's mostly in the batteries, and partly in the lack of competition. Tesla's the only really serious EV builder, and the other entrie
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No, the transmission needs no modification; EVs don't need a transmission at all. The Model S only has a single-speed gearbox.
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"Don't need" is highly debatable since even bicycles have gears for the sake of efficiency.
Bicycles are not powered by electric motors, and human legs do not resemble electric motors in any way at all. Human legs have a very limited speed range, just like gasoline engines; that's why transmissions exist.
Imagine driving your ICE car on the freeway in the 3rd gear -- that's going to cause a lot of engine wear and tear due to high engine RPM and drastically reduce mileage.
Electric motors are not like ICEs. Electric motors generate peak torque at stall (that's 0 rpm in case you didn't know). ICEs produce zero torque at stall, and don't even run that way, which is why they have clutches or torque converters, to allow them to idle. ICEs produce peak torque near the top of their speed range, completely the opposite of electric motors.
How many other applications can you think of where electric motors drive something through a transmission (I mean one with multiple gears, not a single-speed gearbox)? There are none. Train locomotives don't, ships don't, they all have direct-drive from their electric motors.
And if you're worried about speed, EVs don't run their motors slower, they run them faster than road speed, using a reduction gear. Go read your own link where that's mentioned. The Roadster only used a 2-speed transmission so they could get away with a smaller (lower torque, lower current) motor, but that really isn't a great idea because the complexity and weight of the transmission negates any cost, efficiency, or space gains you get from using a smaller motor. Higher speeds in an ICE are a problem because there's so many moving parts, and a bunch of them aren't rotating, they're reciprocating (think of the con-rods). This isn't the case in an electric motor, where there's only 1 moving part (aside from the balls in the bearings) and it rotates; higher speeds aren't much of a problem here, within reason.
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What sort of an idiot makes a car where the battery cannot be changed at a service station?
What sort of idiot thinks it'd be a great idea for someone to exchange their brand-new but discharged $20,000 battery for an old, worn-down battery that's been recharged at that station, and is now worth about $5,000 because it's near the end of its life, or worse, has bad cells and is on the brink of outright failure?
Whose bright idea was it to force consumers to plug their cars in for charging?
Maybe someone who real