Electric vehicle survey none too hopeful

Started by arpad, January 03, 2011, 08:31:21 AM

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arpad

A survey of potential car buyers about what it would take to get them to buy an electric vehicle reveals that cost and performance are important. Who woulda thunk, hey?

Anyhow, the survey doesn't make the future look too bright for the electric car. At least not at its current, you should pardon the expression, level of price/performance.

A snippet:

QuoteOf all the people surveyed, 31.1 percent said they would be willing to pay more for for an EV than for a conventional vehicle, with 12.6 percent saying that they would pay up to $5,000 more, and 5.2 percent stating they would pay $10,000 more.

Gizmag

Solar

The only way the electric car will ever get off the ground is when they get a minimum of two hundred miles per charge, 10 warranty on the battery and all wheel drive.
They've got the all wheel thing down, but aren't instituting it yet.

Personally, I'd love one, but at the current mileage, I would be stuck everywhere I went.
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arpad

I don't think it's as simple as a specific set of performance/price criteria.

There's a market for them today among wealthy people who are anxious to show off their enviro-chops but that's not a viable mass market. The manufacturer has to recoup their engineering and development costs and if you've got 500 million dollars in costs you're not going to recoup them if you can only sell a couple of thousand cars a year unless you're willing to eat most of the costs.

Eventually we may have viable electric cars but the politics of spoiled snots is what's driving the electric vehicle industry now, not commercial viability. But it looks like there aren't enough spoiled snots to support the electric car industry and it also looks like their grip on the political process is slipping.

My own guess for when EVs will be viable is something in excess of ten years.

That's dependent on how fast the technology's moving of course but even if tomorrow MIT were to announce a battery technology that absolutely, positively will do the job it would still take years to bootstrap up to commercial scale.

tbone0106

I haven't yet seen the thing that would be of prime importance to me if I was considering buying an EV. What does it cost, in real terms, on a repeating basis, to charge one? I know that the Volt, f'rinstance, contains a "battery of batteries" that causes the li'l bastard to weigh about as much as my half-ton pickup truck. What does it take at the electric meter to keep this battery rack on wheels moving?

Solar

You're right, it's not so simple, but if, and that is a big if, we discovered a batter technology tomorrow, the entire battery industry would gear up over night to meet new mkt. demands.

I sell literally tons of batteries a year, and most last between 7 to 10 years, and are at about 70% of capacity in their 4th year.
Most of these cost around $200.0 per battery and most systems require a minimum of 24 of these.

If...a battery could be developed that could meet the demands of a car and last 10+ years at 90% of it's life and have the AH capacity, the lead acid battery mkt would die like the buggy whip mkt.

But to be honest, I don't see any real breakthrough till the middle of the Century.
Lithium was a great leap, but were done leaping for the time being.
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tbone0106

I look at the concept of electric cars, and I see, right now, power in Washington driving the whole thing. There is no real-market incentive to buy an electric car. They're REALLY expensive, they weigh a LOT, their range is ridiculously short, they take forever to charge, and battery failure is so expensive to rectify that you might as well junk one at that point.

The current ('scuse the pun) administration is turning backflips to get these things into the user stream. At the same time, the current administration is turning itself inside out to hobble the energy sector of our economy with every form of regulation and cost it can think of. No more oil drilling, deep offshore, shallow offshore, onshore, doesn't matter. Coal production and coal-fired powerplants subject to crippling new rules and regulations. Nuclear power completely stagnant. Wind farms? Are we kidding ourselves?

What are we supposed to charge these little POS's with? Does each one come with a treadmill generator?