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Check this: http://www.greencarreports.com...

Indeed. There was an article floating around a few months ago with a hypothetical review of a gasoline-powered car if electric cars dominated. A lot of the downsides of ICEs that we take for granted would be really aggravating if we hadn't grown up with them.

Gasoline Car Test Drive: Noisy, Wasteful, Polluting, Fast But Pricey Refueling

funny, here's the first google'd article on the cost of leaf battery http://www.greencarreports.com... and it's $5500 TODAY. When Tesla battery production gets into gear and other manufacturing follows, the price of a replacement battery will be cheaper and the range will likely be more. I don't expect my current leaf battery will be dying anytime soon, so i suspect TCO actually is cheaper than an efficient ICE economy car.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/...

Fome the greencar site:

"While Tesla has a showroom in the fancy Tysons Corners Mall, employees are forbidden to discuss sales of the electric car. Virginia forbids any carmaker to sell cars directly to paying customers."

This about making country independent energy-wise too.

Yeah, yeah — and reduce Global Warming, right.

Except electric cars still need energy — so, instead of burning something inside the vehicle, we now have to burn something somewhere else — often enough losing overall. And instead of depending on our own oil, we now need the Chinese to make those wonder-batteries — so our dependence on the potential military rival only grows with each Tesla sold.

But a great idea otherwise — as great as any to come up from the so-called "progressives"... Keep at it.

About 3% US market share of similarly-priced vehicles ($25K+) in just 4 years, despite many models being unavailable outside a handful of key states.

That's a far cry from "utter shit" for market penetration of a product that's significantly out of the norm and facing strong opposition.
=Smidge=

Or you could just get a battery trailer, and only need to add a trailer hitch.

This has been debunked numerous times. EVs have less CO2 emission than gasoline cars even when the electricity comes from dirty coal.
Here's one good article with references:
http://www.greencarreports.com...

Most of the links I was able to find stated that event the NHTSA felt that their were major weaknesses in their study. First, it was done in only 12 states. Second, it is only since 2000 so that sample set is drastically reduced compared to other accident studies which can typically go back much farther. Though you can start to use this sort of data to think ahead, you can't use it to make broad statements and force change in the automotive industry. It also doesn't use the more tried and true method of accident studies which is based on distances traveled. It's more of a "wow, something to think about and consider" versus a "hey, this is a fact, shut up and get used to it" kind of study.

On a side note, for pedestrian accidents the increased rate is primarily due to backing up, something you can easily attribute more to noise but I thought we were going to solve with backup camera mandates?

But overall, those looking at the study and performing it agree that the data set is too small to make large scale conclusions. And unless we want to just be alarmist, it's probably not a good idea to take this and run with it. Instead, use it to commission some larger and more detailed studies. Who knows, maybe the people who drive hybrids tend to not pay as close attention to what they are doing? I could make a latte sipping, enjoying the smell of their own farts joke here, but I'll refrain. Oops, I guess I already did. ;-)

http://www.greencarreports.com...
http://www.treehugger.com/cars...

Being able to sleep soundly at night knowing that your car is really pre-owned is well worth the money you pay for it being Certified!

Well at least you know you won't end up like this guy...

Gov Jerry Brown signs 6 bills in favor of EVs

http://www.greencarreports.com...

2) Dealers will definitely try to sell more gas cars as they break down more frequently and the $$$ for dealers is the service dept.
 
Really? Maybe I'm atypical but I've spent less on ICE-only repairs and maintenance to my 8 year old/125k mile car than the replacement cost of a battery pack in a Nissan Leaf or the cost of Tesla's recommended maintenance plan*.
 
  Tesla has a specific idea on how to do customer experience. Dealers are the worst in this category. Tesla wants to avoid this.
 
They're fools in that case. You're asking someone to pay a premium price for a car that they can't easily go out and kick the tires on? If I get an itch or a need to find a new car this weekend I can got to dozens of places within 20 miles of my home. I can haggle and test drive. I can decide to go down the street to another dealer if I feel I'm being mistreated. For me to get a Tesla today in a state that is friendly to Tesla would take what exactly? From the consumer aspect I have a website that recommends a Tesla "Store" (sounds like a dealership to me, Vern!) that is nearly 300 miles away and I can't expect delivery until November if I place my order today. So even if I show up with cash in hand I'm still SOL when it comes right down to it.

* If you didn't pay attention to the small print on Tesla's page; The cost of an eight year service plan is 5700USD. Not subscribing to this plan may well void your warranty. I'm wondering if I need to take another 300 mile trip out to the Tesla "Store" just to have this service done every 12.5k miles... Fantastic!

Don't be ridiculous. The lights are still on in Germany. It's true they have made massive efficiency gains in the last decade, but it's not like there is a shortage. Apparently, Germany loves electric cars, so I don't know where you got your misinformation.

Lithium won't be a prime target for grid storage for quite some time (if ever). There are dozens of interesting energy storage techs actually coming to market that have much lower cost/KWh and longer lifetimes. Some are batteries like this or flow batteries and some are not, like the 'icebear'. Even used lithium batteries taken from cars will probably get more of the storage business than new lithium batteries; for now, its just more cost effective and efficient.

The idea of using electric cars themselves as grid storage is an elegant one, but don't hold your breath waiting for it to become a big thing.

Ford recently admitted their EPA estimates were crap: http://www.greencarreports.com/news/1092703_ford-cuts-gas-mileage-on-6-models-what-you-need-to-know-and-open-questions

And that, my friends, is why CAFE[1] standards are a stupid way of reducing emissions.

Except this isn't about CAFE at all, but a specific ZEV mandate in CARB standards for the 6 largest automakers.

These rules gave us the GM EV1, Nissan Leaf, the Toyota Prius, the Chevy Volt, and more. I'd say those vehicles are indications that the regulations are highly effective. You're free to disagree (once you get onto the correct subject), but I think the above list stands on its own.

While there are a number of other "compliance cars" that aren't as noteworthy, they're still helping support ZEV R&D, and amortization of the costs.

A web search for "compliance car" turns up numerous insightful write-ups:

http://www.greencarreports.com...

http://www.autoguide.com/auto-...

http://www.usatoday.com/story/...

The amount of power electric cars use is not that much. We might need to build a few more power plants and the current distribution grid can handle it with reasonable upkeep.

Check my math:
0.4 kwh/mile This is what we get with our Tesla. Most people get better mileage but I live in a climate that causes poor economy.
0.470588235 kwh/mile Adjusted 85% for charging loss
2.125 miles per kwh This is much cheaper than gas by the way
24.8 average new car mpg average fuel economy http://www.greencarreports.com...
365 million gallons of gas per day consumed in the US http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/...
14717741.94 miles driven per day in US
613239.2473 miles driven per hour in US
1635304.659 kwh per hour electric car equivalent

14.3 billion kwh per year electric car equivalent - this is an estimate of how much electricity we would use if all cars were Teslas

11.8 billion kwh per year - average nuclear power plant generates this http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/...

All the Tesla owners I know say the only maintenance they have had to do in the last year is rotate the tires, which Tesla did either for free or for a reasonable fee. I'd like to see where you got that $600 number.

Can't find the original article I saw, but this explains it:
http://www.greencarreports.com...

Includes stuff like tyres, but still seems slightly on the high side to me.

> The Leaf's battery is warrantied for 10 years. Most people don't own a car for 10 years.

Yes they do.

> The overall maintenance schedule is ridiculously light. No $600/year checkup. No oil changes. It's pretty much just cabin air filters and brakes.

Which makes the Tesla's mandatory $600/yr service contract ridiculous. Sure the people buying tesla's can probably afford it, but that still doesn't make it any less bullshit.

It's interesting to watch the different arguments from pro-nuclear and anti-nuclear forces. The pro-nuclear forces point out that building all new power plants as 100% renewable in the near future is not practical but a mixture of renewables and nuclear is. They go on to point out the relatively high rate of deaths from coal power (such as direct deaths in coal mines, and indirect deaths from air pollution) per unit of power generated, compared to the few deaths from nuclear. They may even then point out that petroleum power in general has a poor safety record compared to nuclear worldwide.

The anti-nuclear crowd, meanwhile, either focuses on a tiny number of accidents like Chernobyl and a couple of problematic, but non-lethal, old reactor designs (like the 1970 pebble-bed reactor mentioned by the parent), as if costly problems are unique to the nuclear industry. After all, why pay any attention to accidents, deaths or cost overruns in fossil-fuel power when we can simply make every single new power plant a renewable power plant? Never mind that not every place in the world has plentiful sunlight or wind. They then move on to the only argument about nuclear that is actually fair--that it often costs more than renewables.

Nuclear faces political and popular opposition, often due to outdated opinions based on a few unsafe reactors from the 60s and 70s (did you know that Fukushima reactor 1 was built before Chernobyl? Or that there is another nearby reactor run by a more safety-conscious company that survived the tsunami?). This opposition and regulatory uncertainty increases costs, plus reactors are traditionally built with the "craftsman" approach where every reactor is large, somewhat unique, and built on-site. It seems to me that costs could be reduced greatly if nuclear reactors were mass-produced like trucks (small reactors seem to work great for nuclear subs!) and distributed around the country from factories, and if they used passive failsafes to make uncontrolled meltdowns "impossible" so that outer containment chambers could be less costly.

But the public opposition is no small barrier to overcome. Remember how a Tesla car makes nationwide news whenever a single battery pack is damaged and catches fire, even though there are 150,000 vehicle fires reported every year in the U.S.? You can expect the same thing with small modular reactors--barring some terrible disaster, all sorts of problems with petroleum power plants will be scarcely noticed, while a single minor nuclear incident will make nationwide headlines. Surely this makes potential nuclear investors nervous.

Interesting notion, but the devil is in the details.

And the details have been largely worked out. Studies have found that even on the dirtiest grid in the US modern electric cars match the emissions of a 34mpg car. Since this worst case scenario so rarely happens (the US grid is much cleaner than just coal, and getting cleaner all the time, and many EV owners install solar panels on their homes), Mazda will essentially have to race against the electric grid in trying to clean up their vehicles.

This MYTH has been debunked:

"A study by M.A. Weiss et al., published in a 2000 report from the MIT Energy Laboratory, On the Road in 2020: A Lifecycle Analysis of New Automotive Technologies, calculated that fully 75 percent of a vehicle’s lifetime carbon emissions come from the fuel it burns, and another 19 percent was due to the extraction and refining of that fuel. The raw materials making up the vehicle added another 4 percent, and just 2 percent of lifetime carbon was due to manufacturing and assembly. In other words, you'll save a lot more energy if you junk your old car and buy a much more efficient new one."

And as everyone in this thread knows, energy == emissions for all practical purposes...

In a nutshell make the batteries themselves removable and generic, but what do I know.

They are removable. The battery pack is roughly like an armored skateboard bolted to the bottom of the car. A mechanical swap takes 90 seconds.

As for generic, Tesla uses more or less standard 18650 cells from panasonic, basically the AA of LiIon rechargable batteries. The pack itself is propriatory at the moment, but what can you do? From what I understand the 'same' pack with generational improvements are going to be used with the Model X.

Thank you and it is good to see some people actually using their brains for a change. A method to save solar power and transport it is the key to the energy problems of this planet. Oil is only a very dirty and slow way of doing the job. No difference except that the sun shines mostly on deserts and methods of transmission must be addressed adequately. By covering a small part of the deserts some reversals of the CO2 caused changes in Ocean PH and the current thaw in your polar regions can also be addressed before the actions of corporate greed and wars cause another mass extinction.

In a nutshell make the batteries themselves removable and generic, but what do I know.

They are removable. The battery pack is roughly like an armored skateboard bolted to the bottom of the car. A mechanical swap takes 90 seconds.

As for generic, Tesla uses more or less standard 18650 cells from panasonic, basically the AA of LiIon rechargable batteries. The pack itself is propriatory at the moment, but what can you do? From what I understand the 'same' pack with generational improvements are going to be used with the Model X.

The battery tech is coming ...
energy density / recharge cycles - http://www.greencarreports.com...
fast charging - http://www.extremetech.com/ext...
not here yet ... but definitely on the way and not far off.

There have only been maybe 5000 of them made and the development is at what now over 5 years?

25k as of December, actually.

25k@$100k per gives you $2.5B in sales. Plus I just read an article about Tesla selling ZEV credits to the other manufacturers...

I can remember them licensing Honda for the batteries and Lotus for their Elise design both of which basically weren't good enough for their requirements.

The Elise frame was a deliberate design decision - it allowed them to release a car without having to design a body, allowing them to concentrate on the drive train, battery packs, etc... Also, I thought it was the opposite way round on the batteries?

Step 1: motor, battery pack, controller, interior (Roadster)
Step 2: As step 1 but the frame too, spread of charging stations/support infrastructure (Model S)
Step 3? Build a battery factory...

Sure thing El-ron.

http://www.greencarreports.com/news/1087815_tesla-underground-texas-franchise-rules-make-model-s-owners-skirt-the-law

Texas law dictates that only franchised dealers can sell cars in the state.

Tesla, of course, has no dealers. It markets its cars through company-owned stores or galleries (think: Apple Store) and buyers complete the sale online through company headquarters in California."

The current iron-clad Texas franchise law is the result of years of lobbying by the powerful and well-connected Texas Auto Dealers Association (TADA), founded and run for 30 years by legendary Texas lobbyist Gene Fondren.

In 2012, dealership interests "invested" more than $2.5 million in the Texas legislative elections, according to the the watchdog group Texans For Public Justice. Sixty percent of Texas lawmakers received checks from TADA in 2012.

Two elderly billionaire car dealers, Tom Friedkin and Red McCombs--the latter is also chairman of the former Blackwater security firm--kicked in more than a million dollars between them.

Tesla, meanwhile, made no direct political contributions.

http://www.bizjournals.com/dallas/news/2013/11/06/tesla-left-out-of-texas-new-electric.html

Texas will start offering $2,500 rebates for electric or compressed natural gas vehicles, according to the Houston Chronicle.

Except, of course, if you're buying a Tesla.
Tesla Motors Inc. (Nasdaq: TSLA), based in Palo Alto, Calif., makes high performance, 100-percent electric cars. Because the cars are sold directly from the manufacturer, rather than from a franchise dealership, they don't qualify for the Texas incentive.

It's the latest blow in the Texas versus Tesla war thatâ(TM)s been brewing ever since the car-maker charged onto the scene with its two-seat roadster in 2008.

Dealerships lobbied hard during the legislative session to prevent Tesla-friendly laws from passing and were successful. The state's franchise laws limit what Tesla salespeople and technicians can do in the state, leaving it up to Tesla owners themselves to offer test drives and spread the word about the car.

Here is the actual article, not the article about the article... http://www.greencarreports.com/news/1089292_tesla-updates-software-to-cut-charging-if-wiring-may-be-bad

Sales of the Chevy Volt don't look too shabby. http://www.greencarreports.com/news/1088113_plug-in-electric-car-sales-for-oct-volt-leaf-hold-steady This is a move that carried quite a lot R&D investment and promises to get a battery industry going in the US. Intervention also seems to have brought about movement on CAFE standards. Possibly, we are getting a good deal on this.

"According to Tesla, the car needs a constant flow of power to keep its computers and systems switched on 24/7, ready to boot up instantly when the driver gets into the car. (It's a popular myth among Model S owners that much of the vampire power goes to keep the battery warm during cold nights. This is simply not true.) According to Tesla, there is no thermal management of the Model S battery when the car is turned off and not charging--no matter how cold it gets."

"Ironically, the Model S had very little vampire drain when it was first introduced. My owner's manual is based on the original software in the car. "When you're not driving Model S, the Battery discharges very slowly to power the onboard electronics," it purrs reassuringly. "On average the battery discharges at a rate of 1 percent per day. Unfortunately, the "sleep mode" software in those early cars triggered all sorts of glitches in the car's other systems. Eventually, the problems became so persistent that Tesla simply disabled the sleep mode. With sleep taken away, the vampires came out to play. And instead of draining 1 percent every 24 hours, the Model S battery suddenly began losing 5 or 6 percent of its charge every day. (In the case of 60-kWh cars like mine, it's closer to 7 or 8 percent.)"

"So far I've run three overnight tests with the kWh meter. For each test, I charged the car up in the evening to its usual selected level (In my case, about 80 percent). Then I removed the charge plug. I allowed the car to sit unplugged overnight and on into the next day, until I needed to drive it. (Typically a span of 12 to 24 hours.) Before driving it, I plugged it back in to top off the vampire-depleted battery back to its original level. Then I checked the kWh-meter. Test results: The three tests showed vampire losses of 2.3 kWh in 17 hours, 1.9 kWh in 23 hours, and 4.2 kWh in 18 hours. Total vampire power lost was 8.4 kWh in 58 hours. That's an average of 3.5 kWh per day--roughly 25 percent lower than the losses I measured previously. I can't explain the wide variation in the vampire draw over the three tests. Clearly, more than three tests will be required to come up with an accurate figure. But it's clear to me that the new vampire-slayer software is pretty weak stuff. It's better than nothing, I suppose. A 25-percent improvement means that the 20,000 Model S cars now on the road will only waste about 70 megawatt-hours of power a day, down from 90 MWh. And it means that Musk's anti-vampire prediction has turned out to be one-quarter true in twice the time. Update 6.0, anyone?"

http://www.greencarreports.com/news/1088648_life-with-tesla-model-s-even-after-update-vampire-draw-remains

Did you actually bother to click on the second link, written yesterday, which is all about how the problem is still there even after the supposed fixes? Be sure to read the second page too.

How low? In October 3,733 battery powered EVs were sold in the US. Total car sales in the US in October? Over 1 million.

Sure, it's still small numbers. But they are doing better than hybrids did in their early days. And I see Priuses driving around most days.
http://www.greencarreports.com/news/1085724_electric-cars-sell-faster-than-hybrids-did-at-same-point

It may become more in the future

There is no "may". It does become more each month, and technology and fossil fuel trends will only make them a better prospect as time moves on.

"oh, EVs don't cost so much when you consider TCO"

But its a fact. TCO difference in price is less than sticker price difference.

Which is interesting since Chevy seemed concerned enough about their Volt catching fire to do a recall. Recalls from these folks only happen when they're scarred litigation costs will exceed the cost of the recall.

Where would you put this set of battery cells? [...] So do German's have a extra space in their garage for something that may take up the floor space of a water heater or furnace?

Well, the obvious thing to do would be to put it in the garage, and put an electric motor, wheels, seats, etc around it so that you could also use it for transportation.

In fact, I think Germany already has some companies selling batteries like that, they just need to standardize on a bi-directional electrical interface to the home's electrical system. :^)

http://www.greencarreports.com/news/1082007_tesla-ceo-musk-boeing-787-batteries-inherently-unsafe

And what about the manufacturing "price" of those heavy metal batteries? What impact does that have on the environment? What about the disposal of those heavy metal batteries? My guess is that some child in china is going to have cancer from those things just like they get it now from our electronics waste.

Interestingly Weiss's article damning the Tesla includes the carbon 'cost' of battery production, but interestingly omits the carbon 'cost' of building a petrol engine.

He also includes the carbon 'cost' of electricity production, but omits the carbon 'cost' of petrol production.

"According to a 2000 report from the MIT Energy Lab, gasoline production accounts for 19 percent of the total lifetime CO2 emissions of a typical car. Actually driving the car accounts for about 75 percent of its lifetime carbon output.

Thus the carbon footprint of fuel production adds about 25 percent to a gas car's nominal CO2 emissions number."

http://www.greencarreports.com/news/1084440_does-the-tesla-model-s-electric-car-pollute-more-than-an-suv/page-4

This seems about established corporate interests trying to drive Tesla and Space X out of business. What garbage... http://www.greencarreports.com/news/1080611_injunction-to-shut-tesla-store-denied-in-ma-dealers-to-fight-on Local selectmen had approved the store's license, but the dealers first claimed that Tesla had no plans for service facilities on site, which is required for dealerships. The Massachusetts dealers are far from giving up, however. Robert O'Koniewski, the state group's executive vice president, told Automotive News that "dropping the lawsuit is not an option at this point." While the group hasn't yet decided how to proceed, he added, it still feels that Tesla is illegally operating a factory store outside the state's franchise and license laws. Tesla CEO Elon Musk weighed in with a conciliatory statement last month. Musk argued that company stores were necessary because existing dealers earn the bulk of their profits from gasoline cars--and hence would not be able to educate consumers on the benefits of electric cars. Boeing, Lockheed http://walmartcommunityvotes.com/news/view/43675

There are trying to change the law in texas. In North Carolina it is something different. And in Virginia it is something different still. Autosales are regulated at the state level. So each state is different. The point is that there is little evidence that any of these states are afraid of electric cars. It is only going to effect the luxury end of the business. It is about protectionism.

You used to be able to get an Excursion with a 7.3L V8 diesel. At 8 mpg, you could help stave off the winter cold and at 9200 lbs, you don't have to stop for gridlock - just roll on over those "smart" cars.

The best family car for these times is the Prius V with 7-passenger seating. It's only available in Japan and Europe, but gets around 40 mpg. The price of that ride pre-tax would be around $32,000 - it really needs to come to the US.

Something like the Leaf, is a pure electric and not a hybrid, as such it has a bigger and more expensive battery, although still less not as expensive as the figure you gave, and I'm sure the price will come down a bit before most of them actually need replacing. For the Prius the replacement battery is much cheaper, for an older model it will cost somewhere in the region of $2500 - $4500 (figures sourced from here.)

Male motoring reporters don't like electric cars. Simple fact.

In the UK Top Gear program, the only presenter ever to make a grudging positive comment about an electric vehicle is James May, nicknamed Captain Slow by the others. I suspect there might be an agenda at work there.

Probably because electric cars are seen as a threat. Even as we speak, they are making inroads into the drag racing world, there is a Volkswagon Beetle that is turning th equarter mile in 9.51 seconds, and a Camaro doing 10.08

http://www.greencarreports.com/news/1065067_a-ten-second-camaro-promotes-electric-drag-racing

Big Daddy Don Garlits is at work on an electric dragster: http://www.nedra.com/

Why would these guys hate these electric vehicles? They have much invested in the tweaking and futzing with internal combustion vehicles. I was involved in Drag and motorcycle racing years ago, and we spent a lot of time - and money - on adding parts, modifying engines, experimenting with valve angles, or on my two stroke bikes modifying piston and port shapes and polish. THey have a mental investment in the sounds, smells, and activity around the internal combustion engine. They probably don't understand how much of this works, which breeds fear and hate.

And that can hate them as much as they like, it is not going to change anything. I read the report, the response by Musk, and the retort.

Dude wanted that Tesla to fail in the worst kind of way. And I consider his integrity to be completely lacking,

"In theory, a heatpump would be great, but you need to solve a few problems . . ."

It looks like Renault/Nissan has solved a few problems. The 2013 Nissan Leaf uses a hybrid resistive/heat pump system.

http://www.greencarreports.com/news/1078614_could-2013-nissan-leaf-use-renault-zoes-heat-pump-for-cold-weather

No, giant cells are NOT "better" in respect to what matters most. Safety concerns are paramount in a passenger vehicle. Especially not when packed too closely and without adequate provisions for cooling.

Specifically, Musk criticized the use of large-format lithium-ion cells "without enough space between them to isolate against the cell-to-cell thermal domino effect." He also noted that when thermal runaway occurs in the larger cells, more energy is released by the single cell than comes from a small-format "commodity" cell, of the type used by the thousands in Tesla battery packs. And he went on to highlight what he viewed as the dangers of batteries using those large-format cells, saying they have a "fundamental safety issue" because it's harder to keep the internal temperature of a large-format cell consistent from the center to the edges.

..." Musk, who has run Tesla Motors [NSDQ:TSLA] for several years, laid out his thoughts on battery design in a detailed e-mail to the website Flightglobal.

In it, he termed the architecture of the GS Yuasa battery packs supplied to Boeing "inherent unsafe," and predicted more fires from the same causes due to its design.

Specifically, Musk criticized the use of large-format lithium-ion cells "without enough space between them to isolate against the cell-to-cell thermal domino effect."

He also noted that when thermal runaway occurs in the larger cells, more energy is released by the single cell than comes from a small-format "commodity" cell, of the type used by the thousands in Tesla battery packs.

And he went on to highlight what he viewed as the dangers of batteries using those large-format cells, saying they have a "fundamental safety issue" because it's harder to keep the internal temperature of a large-format cell consistent from the center to the edges.

Not surprisingly, Mike Sinnett--Boeing's chief engineer for the 787 project--counters that the company designed the pack to cope with not only a single cell failure but to contain runaway thermal events as well."

http://www.greencarreports.com/news/1082007_tesla-ceo-musk-boeing-787-batteries-inherently-unsafe

Has Slashdot forgotten it has reported on Chrystler two years and a day ago? http://tech.slashdot.org/story/11/01/25/0019220/how-chryslers-battery-less-hybrid-minivan-works The Chrysler minivan compressed air hybrid is supposed to be arriving this year in the US: http://www.greencarreports.com/news/1053892_sergio-marchionne-hybrid-minivan-will-join-chrysler-300-hybrid-in-2013 And UPS has been running this for a while now (they started testing the vehicles 5 years ago!); it makes a lot of sense for heavy trucks. http://gas2.org/2008/10/28/ups-is-first-in-delivery-industry-to-test-hydraulic-hybrids/

Petition Toyota to bring their 7-passenger Prius v to the US market. How does 40 mpg sound?

Anyone who drives less than 30 miles to work every day (which is the majority of Americans) is a potential EV owner.

Don't you drive anywhere else?

Apparently not. In my almost perfect log of daily mileage starting in April, only once have I drive more than 100 miles in one day, and there was enough time in my schedule to charge enough to get home. I live 6 miles from work and 1 mile from school, so most days I drive less than 20 miles. My parents are 15 miles away, my friends are 30 miles away, and I usually carpool when going farther than that.

When you compare EVs to similarly-tricked-out gas cars, the prices are close

No, my VW Jetta TDI was considerably cheaper and is much less of a hassle.

and when you include fuel and maintenance savings the EV wins outright

No, how much gas and maintenance (are we including replacing the batteries here?) can you get for $50k?

I'm not sure I understand what you are trying to compare. If you are comparing buying a new electric car to keeping your old gas one, that is a totally different question from what I intended. I also cannot comment on the economics of buying a $50,000 car, ever, and limit my discussions of economy to the Nissan Leaf. My statement is based off the Edmunds.com 5-year True Cost to Own(tm) comparing the base model Nissan Leaf to the base model Toyota Corolla: $35,567 for the Leaf, versus $37,440 for the Corolla, in spite of the feature advantage the Leaf has.

The batteries are holding up remarkably well for the majority of Leaf owners, and are warranted to maintain 80% of their original range after 8 years or 100,000 miles. It is difficult to estimate how much reduced range will lower the value of the car, but expectations are that they will still hold their value better than gas cars because they will still run just fine on cheap, clean electricity.

I don't know about you, but my personal driving habits don't include spontaneous trips of more than 100 miles without at least stopping to trade cars with a relative for the weekend.

Really? Do you live in the future, or perhaps a parallel universe?

No, but I live in an urban area with two large cities within 50 miles, both with adequate transit systems, which is quite possibly the same thing from your perspective.

The marginally-reduced flexibility is totally worth the savings, moral satisfaction, and pedal-flooring fun of driving a clean electric vehicle.

I'm glad you like it. I can't afford it, though. Plus, I don't want one.

If your lifestyle doesn't fit the EVs currently on the market, then I don't blame you. I respect that you will make the right decision for your particular needs. But not everyone is exactly like you, there are plenty of people who can save money and enjoy owning an EV, so bashing them is arbitrary and rude. After all, the most popular vehicle model in America is the F-150 pickup with a measly 2% of market share, proving that a car can be successful without having to satisfy everyone and their uncle.

I'm talking about a model where the cars have easily-swapped batteries, which the driver leases, rather than owning.

It's actually one of the common proposals. Now that I'm thinking about it in economic terms, I think I know why it's not going to fly.
Benefit of the battery swap system:
1. Owner of EV doesn't have to pay for cost of battery up front(though they might require a deposit), which would be an estimated $18k(Leaf)-$32k(Roadster) up front savings.
2. No need to install chargers in a person's home.
3. "instant" recharge in a swap shop.

Downsides:
1. The car battery would have to be of a standard size(or set of). The Leaf uses a 24kwh battery, the Roadster a 53kwh one.
2. The battery, weighing between 660-992 pounds, is a significant factor to the handling of the vehicle - thus placement is fairly critical. A standardized size in a fast-swap position is a significant engineering challenge
3. The battery, at $18k-32k, is a significant (though steadily dropping) expense. Standardized sizes reduce the opportunity to 'right size' the battery to reduce capital cost.
4. While eliminating the need to charge at home reduces expense there, it increases expense that you now need a local swap point to 'refuel' your vehicle. Assuming it's as busy as a normal gas station, you're looking at needing a power hookup there sufficient to charge a several hundred batteries(assuming a gentle 24 hour charge cycle for highest efficiency/battery preservation)
5. While we're at it, we also need the SPACE to hold several hundred to a couple thousand charged/charging batteries.
6. Oh yeah, and those batteries are, say, $10k/pop, so you're looking at a battery station with upwards of a million in stock.
7. While fast charging and fancy EV stations can cost a lot of money, a basic charger only runs $800, plus install($3k typical; it's about the same as installing a dryer circuit) - Given that, it's cheaper to simply install a charger than to have a gas station buy another battery to swap with you.
8. At home charging means no time spent swapping batteries, and you might be able to get work to install a charger for you. Commercial chargers, needing security/billing features, are substantially more expensive, of course, but still less than another battery.

My figuring:
First, rich/upper class green types will buy these first; they'll generally have the latest home service, 200A, which is plenty(unless you're Al Gore). Even the 60A service at my old home(ancient) would work; I'd just have to be careful to not run the water heater, dryer, and car charger at the same time. They don't care about the install cost.
Then it'll trickle down to the home-owning middle class as an economical move. Eventually some apartment owners will start putting charging stations in their parking lots. At which point it'll become a selling point - an EV owner is(at least at first) likely to be a 'premium' renter unlikely to cause damage, plus the apartment owner can charge a rent premium(~$40/month?).

Oh right, just to clarify. That means that if one part of the country is using slightly more renewables, that just means, on average, there are others with worse performance.

Also, WRT engines dying, I was thinking specifically of the Tesla motors bricking.
http://www.greencarreports.com/news/1073289_tesla-battery-bricking-the-real-story-behind-the-post

The LEAF supposedly never reaching 0 discharge is a bit of an exaggeration. Leave your Nissan LEAF with a low battery for an extended period at your home in Phoenix while you spend the summer with the family at Cape Cod and I'm sure that battery could fully discharge and be ruined.

I agree with your standards war analysis. SAE had a "bake-off" between the Frankenplug and CHAdeMO for fast DC charging, but the standards process was dominated by companies that don't have a pure EV for sale. They have every incentive to pick a slightly better standard in defiance of the only DC fast charge system shipping in cars you can buy and charging stations on the ground (1154 in Japan, 207 in Europe, and 34 elsewhere according to http://chademo.com/).

The significance of this announcement is that the Europeans have gone for it. The existing SAE J1772 AC charging standard (up to 19 kW) benefited USA and Japan but didn't support Europe where much higher power three-phase 400V AC charging is simple thanks to its 240V supply; so the Europeans were off proposing the Mennekes plug for up to 43 kW.

Many companies announced CHAdeMO charging stations in the hope of making big $$$, I think all were blindsided by the relatively cheap charger Nissan introduced that they say they'll put in all their dealers. The best hope is that they all offer a charging station with two plugs during the transition.

The "best" plug is the Tesla SuperCharger (scroll down for a pic), slim, elegant, reuses the same pins for DC and AC, also goes to 90 kW. But it never had a serious chance at standardization.