Reluctant EV buyers

With zip incentives in NJ, good luck with that.

 

Well, the alternative is to ban conve tional automobiles because they're rolling toxic emitters.

Seriously, this is pragmatism.

 

maybe gassers should have warnings on the sides and back which cannot be removed, like cigarette packaging.

 

They're going about it wrong. They should tax gasoline at the real cost to society. At present, people are allowed to dump carbon and combustion emissions into the air for free, while society as a whole (including those who use little or no fossil fuel) must pay the environmental and health costs. Put those costs onto the price of gasoline, and more people will demand zero-emissions vehicles. This is pure Adam Smith. (Note: Smith was a strong advocate of government involvement in situations where transactions had damaging effects on persons not party to the transaction.)

 

Part of the problem with electric technology at this stage is the obvious:

1) There is no charging infrastructure combined with the reluctance to build infrastructure. I asked the townhouse complex that I live in to install a 240V charger, and they flat out refused. There's nothing in the rules and regulations I signed when moving here that said they couldn't do it, it was just a choice of management where I live, and I would have offered to pay for it. Perplexed, I started to realize how challenging it is to own an EV unless you have your own home, usually with a garage so you can install the equipment.

2) Battery technology has to come down in price. Tesla is already building the future of cars today, but who can afford $65k for a battery that gets you where you need to be? Only a small proportion of society can afford a car that is worth that much.

3) Mainstream auto makers (specifically Nissan) aren't building enough options into their cars, and I'm not talking about fluff like a "nicer steering wheel". They are building a budget Leaf with only 24 KWh battery pack, so why not have a model available with a 40 or 50KWh battery at $40k. With federal tax rebate you'd get the overall price near $30k plus taxes/fees, which is at the high end of that model's ability to sell I'd say.

I'm surprised Carlos Ghosn hasn't jumped at having the engineers stuff a battery pack somewhere else in the Leaf for a combined total of 40 or 50KWh (whatever the engineers could stuff in there for $10,000 more), which would effectively double the driving capacity.

If they put a 45KWh battery pack in the Leaf, it'd have real world driving of roughly 150 miles a charge (based on a rough estimate of the current battery to mileage ratio) with air conditioning or moderate heating use, even more if you're hypermiling.

Likewise, GM decided to rely mostly on gasoline for its Volt's range. 35-40 miles for range is quite frankly underwhelming for a car centered around an electric engine.

Why didn't GM have more options built into the Volt family? They could have had an electric and gas generator version as they built, and then another option with a series of larger battery packs at different price points. Removing the gas generator and gas tank would free up cost and space for more batteries.

They could have had several Volt models: the Volt with Range Extender as was released, the pure electric Volt with a 30KWh battery and near 100 mile range and then an upgraded model with 50KWh battery for 150+ miles range, for more money and custom build them.

Maybe GM was going through too much turmoil during development, but they certainly aren't now. They should consider enhancing the Volt's options since its an electric car, just remove the gas generation system and tank and devote that cost savings and space to increased battery presence.

These lack of options are hurting the comeback of the EV. While Tesla is on the EV community's mind, it isn't on most people's minds. And if the Leaf and Volt are considered failures it may be very well the lack of foresight of both manufacturers to offer more options at more varied price points.

 

Many (mostly blue) states are committing to large shifts to renewable energy in cars and power generation. I personally do not see how the states (except CA) can accomplish the goals unless the EPA basically mandates changes. To me, President Obama's recent climate change speech was basically trying to find a way to frame a regulatory mandate to support the states that want to move in that direction.

As far as the article comment about fines to auto companies for not selling EV, well Congress is planning to fine oil companies for lack of advanced renewable content in the gasoline. It turns out the renewable gasoline industry has not developed yet, so there is no advanced renewable gasoline to blend in yet.

 

I don't see pure electric vehicles taking off until at least one of the following happens:

1. Range improves, a lot.
2. Charging time/accessibility improves, a lot.
3. Batteries become a compact and easily swappable commodity, that you don't own, just quickly swap out at a station when your current one runs low.

 

I don't think you really get the whole long-tail issue of driving habits. The 35-50 That I get from my volt is enough for almost all my normal driving. Of my ~2950 miles on the ICE, ~2400 of them were on trips > 120miles. (and 1500 were on trips > 250miles so even a tesla would not have worked without charging on the road and there are still no superchargers anywhere I drive) Having a BEV with bit bigger battery range, like 150miles, would actually have increased my gas usage because on my longer trips I would have taken the wife's CUV (27MPG) vs my Volt (40-50 miles on the charge then 40mpg on ICE). Last time I estimated it, owning a Leaf I would have used ~30 gallons more of gas, which to me is a lot given my lifetime total for 23 months in the volt is < 80gallons.


Bigger batteries are nice, but the cost for true freedom from range issues is too high. The EREV model is definitely a good transition but may also be a better long-term solution than seem to think (though longer-term it will need to be flex fuel or biodiesel, or a smaller Fuel Cell as the range extender). I could see a 200mile BEV (+ QC/ supercharger) in my future but only as as second car and only if its AWD.

Offering different battery level/models is, at the current sales levels, probably just not cost effective.
But I do agree they should work toward more offerings, but I think things like a AWD/CUV would do more for sales than any battery variations. If there are any variations I would epect a PHEV cruze with smaller battery but 5 seats to be higher priority than a bigger battery voltec-- as they already have a BEV Sparc.

 

-> Cheaper Batteries ->
ICEV -> HEV -> PHEV -> EREV -> BEV

In comparison to a BEV an EREV adds:
- a more complex transmission (unless purely serial, which has questionable efficiency)
- an engine
- a fuel system
- exhaust system including catalytic converter

Also
- larger batteries allow faster charging
- larger batteries allow better performance.

For each $100/kWh battery cost, the incremental cost from 16.5kWh to 24kWh is $750.
For each $100/kWh battery cost, the incremental cost from 16.5kWh to 60kWh is $4,350; taking advantage for A/C charging adds inverter cost; taking advantage for performance adds motor and inverter cost.

I prefer the EREV approach over PHEV because it builds in a recognition of technological advance and allows flexibility in design of the range extender, which no longer needs to be an traction engine. But I think that it's slightly pessimistic in that for EREV to be dominant batteries and other EV technology will have to become cheap ... but not too cheap.

 

Its not an issue of understanding, its an issue of different preferences.

The Volt is a nice car, but many people want more electric range. If GM would have provided an option it would have been better for the Volt family.

More choice = better outcome for model popularity. I don't know how much it'd cost for GM to offer alternatives, but now that the company is back on its feet certainly they could offer more Volt options since they can invest a little R&D?

 

I'm surprised at this also, since he seems to be genuinely interested in establishing Nissan in the EV market.

My personal belief is that GM built the Volt as a reaction to bad publicity, in an effort to look like they were doing something, while designing and pricing it to assure that as few people as possible would buy it.

However, making a pure electric Volt would not be a trivial task, since the Volt is not merely an EV with a serial range-extending ICE/generator. The Volt has TWO clutches and several modes of operation, including a parallel-serial mode. Eliminating that would seriously degrade its freeway performance.

This calculation would be drastically different if your "other" car were a Prius. My 2004 Prius gets 50 mpg on the highway, which is the only time I drive it. And while the PiP has significantly less EV range than the Volt, it gets significantly better highway mileage than the Volt.

And before you point to the high cost of my Tesla, a Leaf and a Prius would be a better solution than a Volt and a CUV. (And the only reason I have a Tesla instead of a Leaf was that I couldn't get a Leaf, due to Nissan's colossal screw-up of the ordering process.

 

despite the fact that the Volt is the largest selling plugin hybrid by a wide margin and has excellent ratings from owners who subscribe to Consumer Reports.

As I've pointed out to you on this forum site previously, the Volt doesn't use or need the gas engine while the battery has usable charge so there would be no serious degrading of highway performance if the gas engine were removed.

Likewise, it would likely be a relatively modest software change to convert a gasless Volt to a BEV using the existing transmission. They just need to remove or inhibit the existing code in the ECUs that command the transmission to start the gas engine or clutch the gas engine to the small MG.

While this is true, it is easy enough to get the same gas HV mpg as the average 2004 Prius driver on fuelly.com. If you care about matching the mpg you just need to drive a bit slower. I got 48 HV mpg on my recent 1,000 mile road trip to TGB4 in Riverside. Plus, I was able to recharge my car when convenient on the way down and while I was there.

 

Well if my other car could be a prius that might be a meaningful statement, but if did not have to be a AWD CUV our garage would probably be a Volt + BEV not a prius + BEV. If they made a prius my wife would want, with a AWD and a trailer hitch for towing various things that might be an option. (She hauls lots of landscaping, material literally tons of rock, timbers and other landscaping supplies) and drives in CO winters where she feels AWD is a requirement. When we got her most recent car we downsized from a medium SUV to a awd wagon. We considere the HyHy, ford escape hybrids, and GM's two hybrids, but in the end she choose a subrau outback sport wagon which gets 27 mpg Hwy (average 25 overall for her) and was smaller and she liked the styling/driving better. We did test a Prius as well (for a week) but she rejected it in the end.

Since both of us do a modest amounts of of local (driving I do 10K/y she does ~8K/y) and we take 15-20 trips of 200-250 miles a year, a Volt+BEV would probably still use less gas than a prius+BEV.

I do envy your roadster.. I've seen some used ones now for 60K.. but cannot justify that purchase ;-(

 

When orders for the 40kWh pack were too low, Tesla opted to install a 60kWh pack with a 40kWh 'governor'. Engineering a 40kWH pack would have cost more than the extra 20kWh of battery for the cars sold.

 

Well my understanding is they already had the design done, but even the manufacturing/maintence costs were not justified. And even with just a software hack, they are still spending a lot extra for added 20kW just to offer the customer a lower prices. They "upgrade" path it offers is interesting as a potential.

 

How does that compare to the PPI or other plug in?

 

Actually, its surprising that it'd be cheaper to install 60KWh batteries and via software disable the 20KWh.

It tells me that Tesla is selling their cars at an extra, extra premium. They're literally installing 60KWh batteries and selling it at the price for 40KWh and can still sell it at profit under their projections. I imagine a less premium brand, like Nissan, would be able to make for more battery capacity at a far better price point.

How much would a 60KWh Leaf be, could they do it for $45,000? With tax credits that would at least get the car down to near $37k.