Electric vehicles aren’t having much of a present; it’s hard to see how they have much of a future.
Climatewire reports:
The president of carmaker Mazda, Takashi Yamanouchi, said he’s confident his company will continue to grow without making electric vehicles. He claimed gas-powered vehicles would still dominate 80 to 90 percent of the car market in 20 years time…
Rival japanese car company Nissan Motor Co. has sold only 8,000 of its Leaf electric vehicles worldwide since they were released last December. But the company is still aiming to manufacture 250,000 electric cars per year by 2015, citing the growing concern over pollution and global warming.
CNN’s “Money” (of all places) has done an article on current EVs.
http://money.cnn.com/2010/12/02/autos/electric_car_fuel_economy/index.htm
Although the author failed to connect all the dots, anyone can easily do that. The Volt is basically a Chevy Cruze and the Leaf is basically a Nissan Versa. If you divide the cost differences between the EV and base models ($41,000 – $18,000 = $23,000/Volt; $33,000 – $15,000 = $18,000/Leaf) by the cost savings for fuel per year as outlined in the article you will find that payback is 20.45 years for the Leaf and 23.05 years for the Volt as compared to the base models, excluding costs of interest, maintenance, and new battery sets.
To buy one of these is to announce you are an economic moron or government entity, which is the same thing.
If you call any car with an electric motor an EV, EVs could have a future. It depends on the electric power source the car carries. Rechargeable batteries are not very efficient. The combination of an electric generator, a petrol engine and a petrol tank could do. Locomotives have used this principle for long.
The combination of electric generator and petrol engine could also be replaced by a fuel cell. But this fuel cell has to run not on hydrogen but on gasoline or on diesel or on another kind of refined petroleum. We don’t have efiicient fuel cells for now and probably not for the next few years. But farther into the future there could be.
Hard to believe Nissan is so out of touch with reality, claiming the ‘growing concern about pollution, and global warming’. They have the cart before the horse.
Nissan is in business to make money. Making 250K more vehicles that has a very limited market is not a wise business decision. Maybe they have liberal American green zealots advising them.
The June 24 article in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution by San
Antonio Express-News writer G. Chambers Williams III “Volt charging up for
nationwide release” makes the 2012 Chevrolet Volt performance available. Mr. Williams wrote it takes 12 to 14 hours to charge the battery on 110 volts
and four hours on 240 volts. Since you obtain 1.5 kilowatts from 110 volts or
5.5 kilowatts from 240 volts, the charge takes at least 20 kilowatt-hours.
Governments are pushing electric cars because of claims of high fuel
efficiencies and small carbon footprints. Under good conditions the Chevrolet Volt travels 35 miles on a 20 kilowatt-hour battery charge. However, you need to trace that charge back to the power plant where it originated. Two-thirds of the energy is lost by conversion at the power plant and transmission to the home or charging station. So it requires 60 kilowatt-hours of energy from the source to charge the Volt’s battery for a 35 mile or less trip. 60 kilowatt-hours of energy is equivalent to 1.6 gallons of gasoline. So your Volt is getting 22 miles per gallon as an electric car. Conventional cars of this size would get 40 mpg. If you lived in Hawaii or certain parts of Florida where electricity is produced from oil, the Volt would add to our consumption of oil compared to other small cars.
About half our electricity comes from coal, so it is an easy calculation to show a Volt has a larger carbon footprint than almost all other cars. On top of this performance is a waste of taxpayer’s money by a $7500 federal and $5000 Georgia subsidies.
James Rust
I’ll buy an ev when:
1) they can travel 250 miles on a single charge and recharge in less than 3 hours.
2) the price difference between an ev and regular gasoline vehicle doesn’t amount to a lifetimes amount of gasoline.
The Volt has a head start over the Leaf as well – US Governments (State, Local, Feds) are required to buy them. But there is no such requirement for the leaf.