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Electric Mini Cooper Has Rough Start
TopSpin writes "BMW's limited roll out of the electric version of its Mini has met with complaints from early adopters including less than advertised range, cold weather charging problems, bulky batteries and connection issues. Richard Steinburg, BMW's manager of electric vehicle operations, assures everyone that the manufacturer is 'learning quite a bit as we go.' Drivers are paying $850/month for the privilege of helping BMW learn how to build EVs, while also helping BMW meet alternative fuel mandates so that other models can continue to be sold in select markets."
Am I the only one who doesn't understand the craze for electric vehilces? The problem is sloved. Just moved. Biodiesel, ethanol/switchgass, and plant based fuels make so much more sense.
They prefer the term "early adopters" and without them we wouldn't see half the new risky products that appear on the market.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Right, we are talking about new BMWs here. The original "green fashion" has already been adopted by the poor. It's called walking.
I am a v1ral sig. Plse c0py me and h3lp me spread. Thank y0u?
I'm still confused about this hybrid thing. Go to Europe, and you see the same Dodge minivan picking up kids in front of school, but with a turbodiesel. I know the market is manipulated there too, but I'd prefer the established 40- 45 mpg tech of a TD. The 335d is a great example. More Torque than the titans of Detroit of old. A Peugeot Diesel was my renta-car, and it feared no Berlin Taxi. I'd take a Jetta TDI over a Prius, etc.
One important problem of the electric car is the time you have to spend charging it.
However, this doesn't happen with an hydrogen car like the Honda FCX Clarity car.
And it is also cheaper than the electric Mini (600$ a month)
More info at:
http://automobiles.honda.com/fcx-clarity/
Whether I "try" my Accord or Lumina's acceleration or not, both will still get me from one end of my state to the other on one tank. No one is going to appreciate babying their electric to make it 50 miles to work and back like they have to baby their Accord after crossing Nebraska and entering Wyoming at 2 a.m. ...
Make it usable and make it cost effective without artificially boosting the price of gas to make the ripoff that is electric cars appear viable. And quit trying to dupe the masses.
But I don't drive fifty miles to work and back. Frankly, an electric car that got only twenty miles per charge would be fine with me-- we're a two car family, and if I want to drive a thousand miles cross country, that's fine, we've got a nice roomy car that can do that, we don't need two. I'd love a little electric runabout that I can use to commute with, drive to the grocery store and around town.
What's a "rip-off" to one person can be a perfectly fine car to one million other people. Not every car has to fill every niche.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Think again. They drove the Prius as fast as they could on that track ending up with 17 mpg. No one in their right mind would drive that way in the real world. Sure BMW can make a car that can beat the Prius at 100+ mph but that isn't what the Prius was designed for. It was designed to drive at speeds commonly used by commuters. Under those conditions it does very well averaging somewhere in the 40's.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
But there's a difference. Walking (or biking, public transit, etc) due to finances is not done for the sake of being "green." It's done because you can't afford anything else (or don't want to afford something else, i.e., you're saving it).
The "green fashion," or as I call it, the green fad, seems to be a thing going on with rich people who feel that they are better than others because they are saving the planet. Ok, so maybe not the self-righteous bit, but they certainly aren't doing it because they have to do it. If you can afford a $70k electric vehicle (or whatever Tesla things are going for nowadays), you qualify as being caught up in the "green fad" in my book... in more than one way, too. If you take mass transit, walk, or bike instead of driving your existing car AND tell me you do it "for the environment," then I'll believe you.
In other words, I have a hard time believing people when the only difference between them NOT "going green" and them "going green" is the fact that they have enough money to throw away that they don't care about the extra cost incurred to them. If they couldn't afford to live the way they want and have luxury cars (or whatever the item is) that were green and thus went "back" to non-green luxury cars/items...
But I'm kinda anti-fad, so whatever. I drive large cars/trucks AND bike/take mass transit to work. Primarily for cost, though. May as well not pay for gas if I don't have to. If I was able to get an electric car for cheap enough that it'd actually be worth it, I'd probably consider it as a commute vehicle... but there's other issues, too. I'd like to eventually do more outdoors type stuff, sorta quasi-ranch style. Pulling a horse trailer with two or four horses in it isn't exactly a job for a Prius.
Shouldn't a beta program be free?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
If you can afford a $70k electric vehicle (or whatever Tesla things are going for nowadays), you qualify as being caught up in the "green fad" in my book...
So what? Is it not better that the people who can afford to subsidize the development of more efficient vehicles choose to do so instead of spending it on old tech like the infamous hummer or that $100K mercedes G-class suv that 99% of the buyers will never take off-road? And if if makes them feel better about themselves, isn't it deserved since they really are helping the rest of us out by paying for the development of tech that will eventually be useful to a much larger group of people?
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
A lot of electric power plants sit idle most of the time. They exist only for peak power demands. If most of those cars recharge overnight, you might not have to build a single extra plant.
I don't know stats. It may be that some would be needed. It may be that the peak power plants are the most inefficient and dirtiest. But it's not nearly as bad as you imply.
Infuriate left and right