<p>Xiggi makes an important point: Energy use is subsidized in this country. The full cost of each gallon of gas, or kilowatt hour, or therm, is not being paid by the consumers - even at $4 a gallon. If we actually paid the full lifecycle cost of the energy we use to power our lifestyles our policies would be a lot different. To me, it’s just another example of the irresponsibility of our (not Xiggi’s) generation, another way in which we’re leaving a mess for our children’s generation to clean up, while at the same time saddling them with our debts.</p>
<p>Barrons and Razorsharp - it is actually very rare for an American (outside of rural areas, and even there to a great extent) to drive more than 100 miles in a single day, unless they are on a pre-planned trip of some sort, and 100 miles is within current technology. Hobbyists converting cars and trucks in their garages build vehicles that will go more than 30 miles a day using old-fashioned materials - golf cart batteries, fork lift motors and the like. I’ve done it myself. But OEM-level vehicles can easily hit the 100 mile mark - the GM-EV1 of desert-crushing fame did that with its first (lead-acid) batteries; with their better, second generation batteries they were good for up to 150 miles. And that was a decade ago. </p>
<p>Owning an electric vehicle for everyday use and renting a gas car (or van) for the limited number of times more range was needed would be a rational and practical response to a family’s driving needs - but yes, it would be different from the way we do things now, and that would require some adjustment of assumptions. What’s interesting is that people are used to the problems inherent in gas cars, to the point of being oblivious to them, while exaggerating the shortcoming of electric ones. I was stuck in traffic over the weekend; when the freeway queue got to the cause I saw a car which had burned down to bare metal. Gas will do that. And who among us has never had a gas car break down, ran out of gas, had to deal with a radiator leak, etc? The technology behind electric motors is simple, efficient and reliable. That’s what makes it intriguing.</p>
Not in a four door sedan with sufficient space and with the ameneties American drivers expect and at a price American’s can afford. Until there is a change in battery technogy, the electric car will stay with hobbiests and not the American consumer.</p>
<p>BTW, solar energy as it stands is a joke. Only thermal solar will be a viable source of solar energy. Thermal solar is developing too slowly. Several private companies have had success at thermal solar, but it is still five to ten years away from having a noticeable impact.</p>
<p>kluge, when evaluating the economic viability of electric cars, average or typical range per day is not the issue. Unless a family can look at its car usage and know that one of the cars will never be needed to go more than the 50 -100 mile range during its lifetime, the marketability of an all-electric car will be a non-starter. What’s wrong with plug-in hybrids as a very viable alternative? It gives you the pluses that you mentioned but eliminates the single biggest negative - range. All without requiring hardly any gas consumption.</p>
<p>Averages are not very useful for this analysis. Nearly everyone takes longer trips sometime in the month–be it to the beaches for sun or the mountains for cool air. Or like me having to drive over 75 miles each way often for business. Having a car with very limited range is just that–very limited.</p>
<p>Interestingly enough, there is something that could and should be done. While I believe that it might be different on both coasts, one only needs to look at the “cars” driven in our major cities. In many cities in Texas, it seems that each family members “needs” to own a family car, namely a very large SUV. Taking a quick look at the cars that are driven, one can see that the cars usually have only the driver at the wheel and … no passengers; the cost of picking up the dry cleaning and stopping at Starbucks will soon be swarfed by the cost of driving. Of course, that will not stop anyone to complain to the barista about how expensive gas truly is. </p>
<p>In the state where people routinely get ticketed for having an inflatable doll as a fake passenger to use the HOV lanes, this is hardly surprising. And, fwiw, people have the RIGHT to choose how they spend their own money. If money is no object, consumers CAN drive their Excursions and Lexus 470 (and buy their children “safe cars” that are equally massive.) However, those choices should come with a premium attached (in addition to the higher insurances and taxes.) To make things worse, several of those massive cars got tax breaks since they were assimilated to … trucks and industrial vehicles. </p>
<p>No matter how unpopular it would be and how much it would hurt Detroit, it would make sense to penalize the sale of non-efficient vehicles and offer substantial incentives to more efficient cars. Wanna drive a F-150 or an Escalade, good for you, but here is your $250 a month bill! Wanna buy an Excursion or Escalade, same thing. Wanna buy a Hybrid or Prius, here is your $250 “tax” break and $6,000 check for just buying it. </p>
<p>Would it be such a disaster for our cars and SUV to look at lot more like what they have in Europe or the rest of the world? Heck, for all we know, Detroit might even start making some money by selling products that make … common sense.</p>
<p>I think the market is already making those pricing adjustments for you. Just look at the lists of cars and trucks not being marked down with incentives. Also the value of used gas hogs is way down while the value of the old Geo Metro is up several 100%. We just had to reach a real breaking point. The only thing that has gone down faster in value than a Las Vegas condo is a big diesel RV.</p>
<p>“Detroit might even start making some money by selling products that make … common sense.”</p>
<p>From what I understand, this is not as simple as it sounds. Detroit is saddled with unions which have imposed a $1,500 extra cost per vehicle to cover various items that its non-union competitors don’t have to pay. This results in profit margins for smaller cars to be nil, leaving only large trucks and SUVs as a source of its profits. So, even if Detroit wanted to sell smaller cars, they may not be able to make any money on them. With demand for the large vehicles dropping, it is probably not going to be very pretty to be an employee or shareholder in one of the Big 3.</p>
<p>^^ An interesting point that I had not considered. But the Big Three have other causes for their high costs as well, which seemingly the Asian car makers do not have.</p>
<p>Anyway, on the issue of needing a car for longer trips, we rent a conventional car. We did that to move our S and his chums out of their dorm recently. Knowing exactly how much each trip costs in terms of rental fee has made us much more efficient even as we save a lot in excise tax, insurance and gas!</p>
<p>Averages are irrelevant. Sure on an average day I won’t drive more than 100 miles, but at least once or twice a month I will and I think most people will. </p>
<p>Having a second car that I would then use for longer trips isn’t practical, economical or environmentally friendly. Renting a car for such trips is not practical. </p>
<p>Bottom line… unless an electric car can approach the amount of miles between charges as a car gets on a tank of gas then it will never catch onto the mass market in the US. Will people buy them? Sure, but it will just be enthusiasts and niche markets. Selling cars is a volume business. If the product hasn’t gone mass market then you either stop selling it or you sell them as high end custom cars costing 2-3 times what a normal car costs.</p>
<p>Battery technology is the limiting factor both on their size, weight and of course cost. Until there is a major breakthrough in battery technology to allow for much longer charges (2-3 times what’s out there now) then it’s just not going to catch on.</p>
<p>And environmentally speaking driving an electric car is pointless if the electricity was made with fossil fuels (as most of ours is). I’ve seen some calculations that show that some of the more efficient hybrid cars currently on the market actually produce less CO2 than all electric cars when you factor in the CO2 emitted by the power plants for that electricity. </p>
<p>Electricity generated by burning fossil fuels accounts for about 3/4 of US electricity production at the moment so in terms of the environment purely electric cars is a case of failing to see the forest amongst the trees.</p>
<p>“Renting a car for such trips is not practical.”</p>
<p>Do you mean not practical, or not economical? It’s certainly a matter of opinion, but I think it’s both practical and economical. I can rent within a few miles of home (clearly not everyone can), and it’s much cheaper than buying and owning a second car (or third, if you have teenagers).</p>
<p>Well it depends where you live. Some people won’t mind, but the American public as a whole is not just going to start going and renting cars twice a month or more just to take what used to be routine trips to supplement their now plug-in car that won’t drive that far. In regards to the “why haven’t electric cars taken off?” issue that’s what matters.</p>
<p>The other issue that’s not been talked about too much yet is the issue of battery life and replacement (even the best modern batteries start experience significant performance loss after about 300 charge cycles… that’s less than a year if you drive every day). High-tech batteries are very very expensive… so a whole infrastructure would be required to recycle all these extra batteries (and not all types can even be recycled) that would be floating around. Hybrid cars have the advantage of constantly recharging the battery so they don’t get worked as hard. </p>
<p>I certainly see a strong future for hybrid-electric cars (just not plug-in cars)… and I’d like to see someone develop a CNG (compressed natural gas) hybrid-electric car in the short term (the US has lots of natural gas) and a bioethanol / biodiesel hybrid in the longer term (although with the next gen cellulose derived biofuels that don’t yet exist… the current corn ethanol stuff is nonsense).</p>
This is true but a car that’s actually a plugin capable hybrid with the hybrid biased towards the electric side (i.e. runs electric only for 40-75 miles before the fuel generator kicks in) can solve this and thet’s what GM is doing with the Volt and I suspect the direction more vehicles coming from other manufacturers will head.</p>
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I disagree with this and see no reason for it. If someone wants an escalade and is willing to buy the gas for it so beit. A friend of my W came over the other day in an Escalade but in addition to her out came each of her 5 children. It’d probably be tough to fit them all in a Prius. They also have horses so I suspect they have a horse trailer that also wouldn’t do well with a Prius. It’s also tough to haul a lot of sheets of drywall, dirt, or hay in the back of a Prius versus an F-150. One size doesn’t fit all. </p>
<p>Alternatively powered vehicles need to be economically viable on their own without any government subsidies to be successful. The Prius is largely there already and I think others will be as well. If they’re not economically viable on their own then they’re not ready for the mass market yet.</p>
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Are you including Toyota as one of the big 3 since they are now? This statement is false. Toyota, GM, and most other automakers are spending huge amounts of capital investment, engineering investment, and facilities to producing alternatively powered vehicles. They make their money selling cars - not gas. If they think people want to buy hybrid or electric vehicles, they’ll do what they can to produce them. However, these are new technologies that have a lot of hurdles to overcome. The hurdles are being jumped and there’s a lot of progress. And the SUV market has gone into the tank (so to speak) so the manufacturers aren’t making money hand over fist on them anymore. The manufacturers will follow the market and the money. If the money’s no longer in SUVs (as it has been) but is moving towards hybrid/electric, then that’s the direction they’ll head in. They simply want to make money.</p>
<p>I don’t think that one size can possibly fit all, and we should not try. I am aware that I can be car-less because I live near public transport, that I have access to zipcar and can easily rent conventional cars if necessary, can call up a taxi, etc… People who live in the country, have large families, need to transport heavy equipment need different modes of transportation.
But it is possible to reduce gas consumption by organizing trips to the mall, grocery store, etc… more efficiently; many families have multiple cars. Surely not all of them need to be gas-guzzlers?</p>
I can know that right now. Most of the people I know can, too. I don’t see my wife an I sharing a car anytime soon, which means we’ll always have 2 cars; I commute in one, a predictable distance each day. What are the odds of needing to have both cars drive more than 100 miles in one day? Why would that happen? Each of our kids has owned a car at one time or another - the ability to limit them to 50 miles a day would have been an advantage, as far as I’m concerned. I’m pretty sure my daughter has never driven her car farther than that in a day.
I’m not talking about average daily mileage over a year, I’m talking about the number of individuals who drive more than 100 miles in a single day more than very occasionally. I think your estimate of what “most people” do is skewed by your personal lifestyle. (Particularly with gas at $4 a gallon.) I think that if you looked at what most people actually do you’d find many who own a car which rarely if ever exceeds 100 miles traveled in a single day. Obviously, there are exceptions. People who go from place to place on business, such as realtors, sales reps, etc. or people who live in rural areas or extreme climates would not be good candidates. No question about that. But there’s still hundreds of millions of Americans left over after you eliminate those people. That’s a big enough market.
Forever? Is that an inherent mindset of the American public or just a current attitude formed by cheap gas? People used to ride trolleys. After the '89 earthquake here in the Bay Area people rode ferries to work. Americans are more adaptable than you seem to think. I rent cars all the time for one reason or another. It’s actually a pretty painless process. How much of a financial savings do you think it would take before people decided that they could get by with a 100 mile range “daily driver” and the occasional rental? I understand that Americans typically buy grossly impractical cars based on the analysis of what they might possible need for the 1% most severe demands they can fantasize - 4 wheel drive for people who never drive off road or in the snow, SUV’s for people who rarely if ever carry more than 2 or 3 people in the car, etc. Some people do need large SUV’s. Most people, including most SUV owners - don’t. The problem is, if you eliminate the subsidies for the cost of energy, can people really afford that mindset? Most Americans aren’t stupid - if the cost differential is high enough, people will change their expectations. Which brings us to:
See Xiggi’s comment above. You and me and our children are subsidizing the cost of the gas the Escalade driver uses. I’m all for individual freedom, but I’m non-plussed by the attitude that people who make “personal” decision which adversely affect other people are beyond question, since it’s “their” choice. </p>
<p>FF, I’ve got nothing against plug in hybrids, I just think they’re an overkill answer to the “problem.” We’re used to cars that can be refilled quickly, and have created a fueling infrastructure that makes reliance on gas cars feasible. But in fact, that particular “amenity” - the ability to drive over 100 miles, and for that matter, to keep refilling and keep driving, is a seldom-used feature of cars, which can be addressed more simply than by putting a gas engine in every electric car. For some people it might be a good answer, I just don’t think it’s the “best” answer for the most people. And:
I think if you looked into that a little deeper, FF, you’d find that the bulk of that cost is health care, including health care for retirees. Since most of the auto company’s competition is based in countries with national health care, and to the extent they are building cars in this country they are doing it with relatively new plants (fewer sick retirees) there’s a huge financial disincentive to international competition created by our industry-linked health care system. From a George Will column from 2005:
So, don’t blame the unions for Detroit’s woes. Blame “Harry and Louise.”</p>
<p>Re: having to rent a car for when a plug-in one won’t go far enough…
Maybe not forever, but certainly for the foreseeable future. All-electric cars have been around for a while (our local golf course has been using all-electric golf carts for probably 20 years) yet very few were ever interested in buying them. Then hybrid-electrics came out and BOOM they can’t make them fast enough. Why? This whole “you mean I can only drive it X miles before I have to plug it in again” issue is HUGE. The comment about American’s being unrealistic when buying cars (e.g. massive 4WD SUV for someone in warm weather climate who never goes off-road) but even if someone only drives 20 miles a day they’re always going to say “yeah, but what if I want to go further then this car won’t work”. </p>
<p>NBC Nightly News had a story about all this technology tonight and feature the new Chevy Volt that’s due to come out soon. That’s an all-electric but that can also take gas. Drive up to about 40 miles a day on just electric then after that a gas engine can kick in to take over. They predicted that overall fuel efficiency for the average driver would then be around 100 miles per gallon of gas used. That sort of car might stand a future (although the pricetag is likely going to be through the roof), but all-electrics only are going to be a really hard sell for quite some time yet.</p>
Proof is in the pudding. If it was profitable it would already be done.</p>
<p>I don’t need to “be told over and over” about anything. I’ve worked in the auto industry. I know how much things cost to build and I don’t maintain pipe dreams about how cheaply a new technology can come to market (especially a full rollout). The initial upfront capital costs are massive, especially considering other options available to manufacturers to increase market share. At this price of oil, I can easily see electric cars coming to market. Five years ago, no freaking way. You mention long lists of people attempting to buy cars? What do you consider a long list? 1K? 5K? 20K? 50K? Even at 50K it might not be an economic decision!</p>
<p>Toyota, Honda, Nissan, Ford, GM, DCX, VW, BMW, Hyundai. All these manufacturers passed on bring an EV to the market. Why? They did not think they could make $$$. That is their primary goal as companies.</p>
<p>Do you think that you know more than these guys? You think you know more about the auto industry than they do? As I said, the proof is in the pudding.</p>
<p>Mr Payne, I’d be inclined to agree with you. Companies are in business to make money. But… Why did GM take back all of the EV-1’s and crush them as soon as CARB let them off the hook? Why do they threaten any University which got one of the decommissioned ones (with key components removed) with litigation if they replace the missing parts and drive them? And if it’s true that
– are auto companies really that stupid and short-sighted? It’s not like increased cost of gas was something no one could anticipate. A five year head start on competitors would be huge. Yet no one but Toyota even seriously marketed a significantly engineered hybrid. (I assume you know the difference between Prius technology and the slapped on electric motors most other manufacturers tout as “hybrids.”)</p>
<p>So where does that fit into the “no consumer demand” equation? And I am aware that auto companies lobbied hard against all-electric cars when CARB was pushing them and definitely never “sold” them to the public. Stated bluntly, the auto companies acted like people who really, really didn’t want to build electric cars. And I’d disagree about electric being “new” technology. It really isn’t. The RAV-4 (which started this thread) is a standard car, modified to run on an electric motor powered by batteries. It’s not like you have to reinvent the wheel. Even the most “cutting edge” motors - AC drive, with regeneration charging the batteries when you hit the brakes, etc - are standard, old tech stuff. Battery chargers, regulators, maintenance, etc. are trickier - but hardly NASA level technology. I think an all-electric car would be technically easier to bring to market than a hybrid like the Prius. (And why can’t you plug a Prius in already, anyway? Private individuals have produced a hack which lets you add a battery pack, and plug in for extra electric “fuel” - but Toyota can’t? That’s an interesting question in itself.)</p>
<p>I don’t consider car manufacturer’s refusal to build electric cars as proof of anything other than their desire not to do so. I do consider lists of people begging to buy a well build battery powered car as “proof” of the existence of a market for same. (By the way - how long is the list of people who have put down five-figure deposits on Teslas?)</p>
If they knew what oil prices were going to do this simply should have bet on oil prices going up. The capital could be better used there.</p>
<p>And you fault the auto industry on being short sighted. If anyone would be as “far-sighted” as you claim, they would simply not be working right now. They would have millions and be on a beach in Tahiti.</p>
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Sorry, there was “some” consumer demand. That doesn’t mean anything though. Is there enough demand to make a profitable product. The answer then was no.</p>
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And? They didn’t. They didn’t think it would be profitable. If they thought it would be profitable - why wouldn’t they? The obvious vacuum in the segment would have let the first to market dominate it.</p>
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Actually, yes, it is like having to reinvent a wheel. In the previous paradigm an electric car was <em>always</em> compared to a gasoline vehicle. It would have to compete on virtually every aspect of a gasoline powered vehicle. <em>That</em> was new technology.</p>
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And you still think that is why it got nixed. Range. That one word is why EVs had trouble getting to the market (and continues to be the main reason they have trouble getting to market).</p>
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Because it’s about making profit. And i guarantee you that a vehicle with a 40 mile range 2 years ago would have flopped. Big time.</p>
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Because Toyota designs cars with a multitude of design constraints that individuals modding their cars don’t need to deal with. Individuals know what they want. Toyota is designing for the average. And hey, sometimes Toyota gets that wrong.</p>
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The question isn’t that the market is/isn’t there. The question is, is the market big enough to support the development of a new vehicle. I certainly don’t think that was proven with the EV1. </p>
<p>I think Mr. Payne’s point is valid and I made the same point - the automakers are in business to make money and if they think people are more inclined to purchase one type of vehicle versus another, they’ll build them if feasible on the mass market production level. They’ve done this time and time again when a manufacturer hits on a design that’s desirable and a moneymaker - Minivans then SUVs then Crossovers along with reprised retro muscle cars - Mustangs, Challengers, and soon to be Camaros. </p>
<p>Making a small number of anything isn’t all that difficult (converting some existing chassis) but making something on the mass market scale that’s inexpensive enough to produce and reliable enough to be profitable is a different story. Look at how successful the Prius appears yet without past government subsidies on the price and Toyota’s willingness to possibly lose money on the product (it’s been purported - don’t know if it’s true) it wouldn’t have made it this far.</p>
<p>Given that, the manufacturers are getting there. They’re putting in tremendous resources at the moment and the vehicles will arrive and people will buy them. There’ll be some bumps along the way with technical issues but the vehicles will get better over time.</p>