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High Depreciation May Slow Electric Car Acceptance
Hugh Pickens writes "The New York Times reports that as cars like the Nissan LEAF and Coda Sedan become available, one question that may give electric car buyers cold feet is bubbling to the surface: How much will these next-gen vehicles be worth a few years down the road? According to a report from the UK's Glass Guide, unless manufacturers properly address customer concerns regarding battery life and performance, the new breed of electric vehicles (EV) soon to be launched will have residual values well below those of rival gasoline and diesel models, with a typical electric vehicle retaining only 10% of its value after five years of ownership, compared to gas and diesel-fueled counterparts retaining 25% of their value in that time period. According to Andy Carroll, managing director at Glass's, the alarming rate of depreciation is a function of customer recognition that the typical EV battery will have a useful life of up to eight years and will cost thousands of dollars to replace. Carroll added that manufacturers could address this problem by leasing the battery to users."
Seems like the article is a bit late...
Maybe in the future you should link sites that work correctly when visited by the paranoid. But this is pure fud: "Glass's has developed a proprietary methodology that has enabled it to forecast EV residual values, taking account of specific battery ownership and warranty details, as well as factors such as supply and anticipated patterns of demand. This new methodology is being used by manufacturers to assist in their launch planning and business modelling across Europe" Or in other words, we made up some shit on behalf of big oil that will be used to spread FUD to attempt to prevent EV uptake. It won't work; there are always more pre-orders than can be filled. If EVs fail, it won't be because of lies about their resale value. EVs are in fact likely to have HIGHER resale value because they eliminate so much that can go wrong with the typical auto.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
"Despite being browbeating car companies into making them, electric car dream still victim of market forces."
Wow, I'm continually underwhelmed by the average intelligence of my fellow countrymen. I actually thought about buying a hybrid vehicle 3-4 years ago, but I ran the numbers and decided that even if gas was $5 a gallon, I would STILL come out ahead by buying a fuel-efficient gas-powered car. In the end, I just decided to keep my "old" car, which only has about 105k miles and can probably go for another 150k+. I kinda like keeping that extra $500 a month in my pocket! A car is not an asset, folks. Buy Japanese, and you can drive that bitch around for 15+ years if you want to. I see the overpriced shit American manufacturers turn out, and then I understand why so many people buy a new car every few years. What a colossal waste of money. And if I had to replace a $3000+ battery every 8 years (even on the Japanese-model hybrids)? Fuck that! Get that battery life up to $300k miles, and get the price of the car within a few hundred of its gas-powered cousin, and then I'll buy it. But I'm not going to run up $35k of debt just to so I can tell myself what a fucking great person I am every time I get in my car.
These batteries don't like heat. Simply leaving them in a hot place for a year can rapidly degrade their performance. 8 years sounds like a stretch to me. Is this using once a week and storing at 55 degrees ( Fahrenheit )? What happens to the battery in a black car left in the Texas 100+ degree sun every afternoon?
Do any of you guys remember how much the first DVD players cost and how good the quality was compared to the ones available now?
Wh47 d1d j00 541, 31337 15n't t3h r0xor5 ne m0r3???
Carroll added that manufacturers could address this problem by leasing the battery to users
How about having a user-removable battery (or at least, machine removable, but able to be operated by users). Battery stations replacing — or augmenting — petrol stations would be a nice touch as well, as mentioned in a TED talk I viewed over a year ago.
Ask me about repetitive DNA
most people who will be getting these will do so because they want to make a statement or be trendy.
the 10% or so resale value will be based on market demand and will allow others to make the jump based on economics.
it's a good thing
I mean if you buy something you pay up front and get it cheaper. If you lease it you basically rent over time and end up paying more. I mean really are they saying the want them to hide the cost of the battery by making it "separate" and making you pay for it separately? (And making you pay more for it? You're going to pay for the battery one way or another.)
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
Toyota RAV4 EV's sell for more than their original MSRP 10 years ago right now on eBay. Residual value is a matter of supply and demand, this 'analyst' sounds like he wants to mess with the demand part.
http://www.think.no/ these lease the batteries to the customer.
It was my impression that they sold pretty well, despite the newfangled technology. Sure, it was a hybrid, but still . . . was deprecation a concern with buyers?
Anyway, I don't know, I'm just asking . . . ?
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
So in 2-3 years, I should be able to pick up a used Tesla Roadster for about $10K? I can't wait!
You get the feeling that 90% of these statistics are made up?
If anything, electric cars have much less breakable parts, they need less maintenance and have a real chance of lasting decades! Once battery technology improves, you swap out the batteries and the charging electronics - everything else stays the same. There is no more universal "fuel" than electric energy, which is agnostic to how it was produced, or where (i.e. you might have your own wind or solar plant at home, and the "product" will work just fine with the electric car).
Electric cars are, IMHO, truly future-proof.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
If batteries wear too fast, the cure should be a better technology, not another business plan.
Unless there's a subsidy somewhere, a short battery life should have as much impact on leasing costs as it has on devaluation.
It is truly difficult to conquer a technology that has been refined for 200 years. Electric cars have been all-but-abandoned for most of that time (British milk floats a fairly honourable exception). The amount of money and infrastructure behind petrol cars is staggering - consider the investment in roads, garages, cars themselves, mechanic training, vehicle design, the odd political manipulation (we won't mention any bribery to get "trolleys" off the road, now will we?)
So it will be tough. Petrol is a magnificently concentrated form of fuel. That's hard to beat. Can we get anything like that density of energy into anything else at the moment - er, no.
But really, can we continue pumping oil out of the ground (or into the gulf of Mexico, not to mention much of Africa) and burning it, generating CO2. Er, no.
So things have to be done. Changing over to using electricity generated in very efficient plants, using 1/10 the energy and possibly allowing CO2 capture (yes I know it's hard, but not as hard as on the tailpipes of a billion cars).
It's possible it will not be as convenient as petrol cars. It's possible we will have to go without the vroom, vroom of big V8s, It's possible people might even have to ride bicycles a bit. Oh dear. Maybe they'll get thinner and healthier - that'd be a bonus.
But it beats the heck out of everyone dying.
So let's get on with it.
Electric cars don't need to compete with every petrol car in existence - they don't have to be faster than a Ferrari, go further than a .. um, diesel Golf. Covering basic commuting would be fine - and that's 90% of what people do (lacking better public transport). You want to go skiing - rent an appropriate vehicle.
A good start would seem to be delivery vehicles - predictable loads, distances, always park at the same place. Sounds ideal. And indeed this is being done - I reckon they will be a huge success (there are some excellent hybrid diesel vans starting to appear already).
I'd be surprised if a great deal of people would not be pleased at the possibility of a small simple vehicle for commuting - quiet, quite fast, fairly small, easy to park, amazingly cheap to run. And very low polluting. What's not to like?
So let's get on with it. (Hang on, didn't I say that before?)
"Cats like plain crisps"
You can't charge a car fast enough to match gasoline. It's like a car full of DVDs in the trunk. It might be low tech, but it's higher bandwidth than anything we can run over fiber. Moving the storage medium, gasoline, is too fast. To recharge a car fast enough, you'd need refuel stations that provide as much power as a medium electrical plant. It just isn't practical.
But, if the makers agreed on a standard tech. Standard sizes. Then you'd not do a charge. You'd do a swap. And the batteries would be conditioned, tested, and recharged with every use. Charge them overnight or other low periods at lower cost. And, when the batteries are old and dying, they are retired at the charging station so that a portion of the charge cost goes to replacement, hiding/spreading the cost.
If the government wants to toss out subsidies, then getting the infrastructure in place for this, getting car makers to agree on quick-change layouts and compatible battery technologies (perhaps even a choice of regular or premium batteries at differing costs for "cheap" lead acid batteries vs whatever premium battery technology is adopted (NiMH, Li, or perhaps some mix of the popular ones so that no single resource is overstressed).
Aside from that, I don't see any way for there to be a 5 minute or less charge of a car with a 400+ mile range, like we do with gasoline. If anyone else has an idea, I'd like to hear it. And the plus of this plan, it eliminates the problem with depreciation and battery replacement people fear. Hide the cost (it really isn't that much per mile anyway, but writing big checks makes people cry) and make the replacements fast and safe (maybe even homogenizing the replacement procedure so much that it can be done in 30 seconds or less with robots), and electric will be much more interesting. People in the US hate it because they can't drive cross country. Not that they will, but for the same reason SUVs are popular. They don't go off road, but they could. So you have to make it appeal not to rational people, but to the actual people, who we recognize aren't always rational.
Learn to love Alaska
I know it isn't a popular opinion but electric cars just aren't here yet.
You here attempt to use a technique of propaganda: you paint yourself as an oppressed class when you are indeed in the mainstream. It is the popular opinion that EVs "just" aren't here yet.
The batteries hold too little power and age far too quickly
This is a logical fallacy, the unsupported comparison. Far too little power for what? Far too quickly for what? It's also the unsupported conclusion; we don't know how long they last. Finally, "age far too quickly"; are we now time travelers that the batteries will be moving faster through time T than the rest of us? The assertion should be that they "wear out" too quickly; then I could simply say [citation needed]. Which I do say.
there is no economical reason to drive electric.
[citation needed]
While hybrid cars do solve the distance issue and also mitigate the second issue by having far less batteries (which reduces its economic cost).
No, it doesn't. A hybrid costs more to build because it has to carry two powertrains. It has only one transmission, but it's twice as complex to support two motors. The LEAF is projected to be cheaper at launch than the Prius was.
I would love to drive electric but unless I am just burning money - I won't.
That's very evocative, but you have still failed to support any assertion.
Oh and please don't post a link to a research project and suggest electric cars are almost ready since they managed to make an insanely light car with batteries that cost $100,000 wholesale
We discuss the LEAF in the summary. You have reached a whole new level of deliberate disingenuousness.
The issue is that no company is making a road car that is economically justifiable.
Your FUD against EVs is noted. I can see that you are either a shill or a troll. Please include citations in your next comment, or don't bother.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
OK, so the car was more expensive originally; and, after a number of years its value drops to, or just below, the price range of a similarly aged gas powered car... So, it appears to have lost more value.
Early adopters of any technology often find this is the case. They spend more to reap the benefit earlier. The price will normallize after some time and those that follow will reap the benefit of the experience gained in manufacturing and using the initial versions.
Let also look back at cars in the past for a moment: How many of you remember 40 years ago? (or were driving 10 year old cars 25-30 years ago?) The engines weren't as reliable. It wasn't uncommon to have to re-power a car (replace / rebuild the engine) after 6 or 7 years. We've gotten used to having cars with engines that will last 10-15 years. We've been spoiled, really. This technology will catch up, in terms of longevity and utility, eventually.
> Toyota RAV4 EV's sell for more than their original MSRP 10 years ago right
> now on eBay.
They are also a rare novelty item. Not predictive of what will happen when EV's become commonplace.
> Residual value is a matter of supply and demand, this 'analyst' sounds like > he wants to mess with the demand part.
He's just being realistic.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Which is why conservation is still key. What I never get in this whole alternative energy hype is why more people aren't calling for conservation and why people are obsessed with better cars when a much simpler solution is to use the current cars less. The government really should be exempt (almost) all 2 wheel vehicles from sales taxes. Considering most trips are at most a couple of miles, bicycles are the obvious choice over cars, but even motorcycles get at least 3x as much per gallon as SUVs do, sometimes up to 5x as much(and motorized scooters, which are great for residential zones, get even better mileage). Plus making an electric motorcycle would require a much smaller, and thus cheaper, battery.
Now I know there are times where a car is more convenient, and most people, at least in the US, should keep their cars, but just because something isn't an panacea doesn't mean it is totally worthless.
Monstar L
is that people like fast cars and practical cars. Right now a family car to fit a family of 5 and get groceries and practical mileage per cost just isn't there. And it won't be there. Not to mention terrain. I live in North East region of Pennsylvania. Lots of mountain and hills here which is a knock against electric vehicles. Also farm country here. Farmers won't want drive their trucks hauling equipment and having to travel the rough terrain of the fields, nor will it probably never be practical for any electric farm equipment. And the truth is, despite what the gov't says, they don't want to give up their reliance on the oil companies either.
That which does not kill me only postpones the inevitable.
"I know it isn't a popular opinion but electric cars just aren't here yet. "
You are correct, sir. ( I speak from the perspective of having a grad degree in
ME, as well as having been a car nut for over 30 years ).
Of course this truth ( and their own lack of in-depth understanding ) won't
stop the hordes of self-proclaimed geniuses on Slashdot from wanting
electric cars because it's fashionable to want one.
The smart money is on a VW TDi. And yes, I own one ( from 1997; the older cars
are simpler, more reliable, and get better fuel economy than the newer TDis ).
Look at what people drive in Europe -- the future is already there, relative to the US
market. Of course, for some reason many EU-market diesels are not sold in the US.
This mystifies me, because they sell some pretty neat stuff over there in Europe.
I refuse to believe the notion that these cars wouldn't sell in the US. Honda, Subaru,
Ford : I'm looking at YOU.
EV car batteries are currently HEAVY. Very heavy.
Sane cars dont need to do 0-60 in 4.2 seconds. Only really silly or foolish people believe that a car is unsave because I cant accelerate fast... Honda Civic is a slow car, it's safer than any Mustang GT. It's more about uneducated drivers and really bad driving habits and far less about power and speed. Power and Speed only come into factor when you are pulling weight or racing. If an electric tops out at 70mph on the highway, it is perfectly safe you will NEVER need to overtake a car doing 70. It's all ego talking there... I'm important I deserve to do 75-85.....
In fact hybrids and electrics are NOT really for the united states in general. WE have more people that commute 30 miles on a highway to work daily than we have that live within 10 miles of work, have public transportation available or can walk there. So 30 miles 70mph means a car like a honda cvic wins for efficiency. My 2007 2dr coupe gets 44mpg on the highway regularly. This is better than most hybrids, and is very close to what the Civic hybrid gets. If I were to slow to 65mph I would get the same gas mileage as the Civic hybrid. and only add 2 minutes to my commute, if there was no traffic or slowdowns... Real world driving give me large time losses as the traffic congestion the last 10 miles would remove all time saved if I drove 90mph the whole way.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Hybrids are crap. Instead of an engine to maintain, or a battery to maintain, you now have both. Thats not only two engines to maintain, its also more weight, and more troubleshooting. Electric cars don't need a transmission, but a hybrid has to have one too, and a drive line, etc. I drive 25 miles each way to work each day, and an occasional jaunt across town. A leaf would be perfect to replace my vehicle. I have a Dodge Dakota, and spend about $300 a month on gas. (really don't need a pickup) My travelling costs would basically be free. For longer trips, we would use our family car (a minivan).
And by the way, the Leaf is going to sell in the mid $20k's, not the 100,000 wholesale you mentioned.
What are we going to do tonight Brain?
Yes, and taxis should be a good second step for electrics. They never drive too far from the base and run mostly on congested inner city traffic, where running idle becomes an appreciable percentage of fuel consumption for gas or diesel vehicles.
Slow speeds also benefit electric taxis since they can recover energy from regenerative braking. It's only when speed is high enough that wind resistance becomes appreciable that electrics start spending energy they cannot recover.
You can't charge a car fast enough to match gasoline.
But if you use Sony Batteries, you can match the burning ability of gasoline!
What are we going to do tonight Brain?
How would leasing the battery change the cost of replacement 10 years later? It'll still cost, no matter who owns the battery. I'm guessing the idea of leasing is to trick the buyer into not seeing that it costs the same either way, it's just spread out. Let's say the battery lasts for 10 years and costs $3000. That's a $30-$40 monthly lease payment, when you factor in overhead, on top of an already-expensive car.
Toyota RAV4 EV's sell for more than their original MSRP 10 years ago right now on eBay.
I don't want to hear about the auction of a curio on eBay. I want to hear about used car sales through local dealers.
It is truly difficult to conquer a technology that has been refined for 200 years
It's not like we haven't been refining batteries all that time. And indeed, we've even substantially refined flywheels to the point that they are useful for power storage in racing, improving the efficiency of regenerative braking substantially. Electric motors are already ~95% efficient in typical EV/Hybrid scenarios, and over 90% efficient as a generator as well.
Changing over to using electricity generated in very efficient plants, using 1/10 the energy and possibly allowing CO2 capture (yes I know it's hard, but not as hard as on the tailpipes of a billion cars).
The US DoE proved in the 1980s (at Sandia NREL) that they could capture up to 80% of the CO2 emissions of a coal- or oil-fired power plant by bubbling the exhaust gases through algae ponds, thus dramatically improving yields; thus, CO2 capture is already a solved problem in the short-term, if only the solution would be put into place. Obviously this only slows down the release rate of this CO2, but it can reduce the amount of oil we have to burn. In other words, we can at least use that carbon twice with extant and indeed readily available technology.
Electric cars don't need to compete with every petrol car in existence - they don't have to be faster than a Ferrari, go further than a .. um, diesel Golf.
Well, they can do the first thing, but not the second. (You might well compare to a 300SD, which has a ~20 gallon tank along with 30 mpg freeway, I have no trouble getting well over 400 miles on a tank in vigorous, mixed driving. Not that I ever run it dry... priming that thing is a PITA.)
Covering basic commuting would be fine - and that's 90% of what people do (lacking better public transport). You want to go skiing - rent an appropriate vehicle.
Indeed, many homes have multiple vehicles as it is. This is probably the easiest group to target.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
slashdot has really fallen off with what is real news and what is just posted garbage that some blogger has put up on their website.. Yea cars lose their value the longer you own it so do lot of other items you may own. This is something worth posting about because?????
And Linux isn't ready for the desktop. Yeah, sure.
The aging of the EV is Bullsh?t.
If anything, electric motors are far more durable than explosion ones (the explosion part really does not help). It's quite common that electric compressors, tools, refrigerators, train cars etc. reach 20+ years of use -- even more in rare traditional factories.
What ages is the battery -- but the battery is not the car! Nobody argues here that a common automobile is its fuel tank, so... spare me the bs, please.
Now, if an idiot maker ties the car to the battery, that's what both are, the maker and the buyer: idiots. Even if done by specialists, changing batteries should render an EV totally new (minus the need for painting). In fact this has happened in Brazil with trolleybuses... it was nice to see their retro looks...
Other factors come into play like general vehicle care, but this affects any vehicle -- not just electrical!
It is truly difficult to conquer a technology that has been refined for 200 years
Humm... not really. ICEs are a really crappy technology. "Refinement" in this case means "make it suck less"
. Electric cars have been all-but-abandoned for most of that time
90% politics 10% actual merit
Petrol is a magnificently concentrated form of fuel. That's hard to beat. Can we get anything like that density of energy into anything else at the moment - er, no.
100% true. But you can keep petrol and have a better power unit / drive train tech and double the efficiency. Also research on fuel cells means an electric car that runs on gas OR ethanol with better efficiency
how long until
The government really should be exempt (almost) all 2 wheel vehicles from sales taxes.
Oh, I can't wait to hear this.
Considering most trips are at most a couple of miles, bicycles are the obvious choice over cars, but even motorcycles get at least 3x as much per gallon as SUVs do, sometimes up to 5x as much(and motorized scooters, which are great for residential zones, get even better mileage).
So what? My car gets 30 mpg on the freeway, and it's a 3475lb land yacht from 1982. I can transport four adults in comfort with better mileage than a pair of motorcycles. Most motorcycles get real-world mileage under 30 mpg because of the irresistible urge to twist wrist. But it's very few motorcycles actually on the road that are rated at more than about 30 mpg. Most motorcycles are operated with a single rider most of the time, just like a car. But motorcycles produce four to ten times the emissions per mile traveled of the typical car, and more than twice those of the typical SUV. If we replaced half our auto miles with motorcycle miles, we'd be choking on fumes.
Now I know there are times where a car is more convenient, and most people, at least in the US, should keep their cars, but just because something isn't an panacea doesn't mean it is totally worthless.
Motorcycles have long been available to the public, and the public has overwhelmingly voted in favor of cars. Most people simply do not want to be on a vehicle which WILL be crashed; ask ANY motorcyclist smart enough to wear safety equipment (squids need not apply) and they WILL tell you it's not if, it's when you will lay down your motorcycle. Further, there is a great deal we could do in the area of making smaller, more efficient cars; the Smart ForTwo is a prime example. Its spaceframe is supposed to provide impact protection superior to a much larger vehicle. And finally, a simple solution to having too many large vehicles on the road is to require that people have a higher grade of license before they are permitted to drive a heavier class of vehicle. We do this already in most to all states when it comes to commercial licenses, with higher grades of license required for heavier classes of vehicle. Surely this could be applied to consumer vehicles?
Indeed, the problem is one of government collusion. California is the most populous state and has the most cars both per capita and in general. We the people of California attempted to institute new emissions standards to force automakers to sell us the cars we want to buy: those which do not pollute unnecessarily. Japanese and German automakers were prepared to go forward in this environment, but US automakers claimed that they could not meet these restrictions. This is of course pure nonsense. The truth is that they wanted to sell us ever-more-inefficient vehicles, because luxury vehicles come with a cachet and cachet comes with markup. Japanese automakers responded by offering the more-efficient, less-polluting vehicles anyway, and then offering a bloated, inefficient edition to compete with the American cachet-based entries.
In any case, motorcycles have terrible emissions and wouldn't have such great efficiency (which actually is not very great! 3475lb at 30mpg, or 425lb at 35 mpg, pathetic!!!) with emissions controls which would make them more efficient than cars, and they have been largely rejected by the market. They work, in fact, for even fewer people than EVs. In short, they are not the answer we're looking for, or even a significant part of it. I would love to see motorcycles replaced with electrics though, since they are far worse polluters per mile than cars.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Electric cars should be cheaper in the future than their fuel burning counterparts. This is because it is a simpler device. It doesn't have to generate the energy from the fuel, the electricity is generated elsewhere. We don't have to drive around with our tiny energy factories (from fuel) any longer. So currently they are vastly overpriced. Which is to be expected from an early adopter product. Personally I think the battery should be easily swappable, possible like fuel is now, you swap it at the battery station. This would solve all problems of battery life time and charging time issues. Of course the current generations of huge built-in batteries don't allow that. In any case, the value of what remains is just of the carriage. So this problem won't go away. The cars are just overpriced once you take out the motor, there is nothing wrong with the value after 5 years, especially when you realize the improvements the batteries will make over the next decades. You pay for innovation, and of course they are hoping the same old prices will stick. That game will stop once electric cars become more common and competition picks up.
This has been talked about for a while. Batteries replacement is not the only reason, it is the overall technology. Each years model brings about huge increases in technology so if you are purchasing a used hybrid car are you going to get the 6 year old technology or the 4 year old technology. It is the same as saying are you going to purchase a Pentium 4 or a dual core system
citation needed.
I mean, really? Funny how those batteries are guaranteed for 15 years and when replaced you get substantial credit for the old batteries (where the materials cost is a huge part of the cost of the original and with a much smaller energy need to recycle those materials, you can do this and remain ahead).
And even ignoring the laughable hyperbole of the "won't get to the end of the driveway", you will still manage 80-90% of the rated range. And on a long highway commute where 50% of the time is spent slowpoking in the last 10% of the trip, your electric is not wasting energy idling unlike your petrol engine.
You can't charge a car fast enough to match gasoline.
But if you use Sony Batteries, you can match the burning ability of gasoline!
Hey, careful with these matches!
Seriously, is this really a problem? As battery technology develops you'll be able to get newer, more reliable and higher capacity batteries for your electric car.
Cars like the Leaf do not have a single battery. https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/wiki/File:Nissan_Leaf_012.JPG shows a cutaway view of the Nissan Leaf with dozens of modular, removable battery packs visible underneath the floor.
So what happens if a battery fails? Buy a new one. What happens if new batteries come out? Buy a whole bunch of new ones and increase your car's range.
It is quite conceivable that after owning a Nissan Leaf for 10 years, new batteries may be pushing the vehicle's range beyond 300km (180 miles).
And that would have the effect of keeping the car's value over a longer period of time.
Good post
A good start would seem to be delivery vehicles - predictable loads, distances, always park at the same place. Sounds ideal. And indeed this is being done - I reckon they will be a huge success (there are some excellent hybrid diesel vans starting to appear already).
I think hybrids are an excellent place to start, and a good proving ground for lighter and more powerful batteries.
I have a hybrid (Ford Escape) and my previous vehicle was the non hybrid sister vehicle the Mazda Protege (V6). The hybrid uses about half the gas and has the identical feel of amount of power. There's no practical difference in power of my current hybrid and the older V6. But I'm probably saving about $100 in gas per year. That, combined with the green discounts I received upon purchase means I'm way ahead even if the batteries completely failed.
Batteries will get cheaper with mass production, and hybrids are a good way to get there while reducing the dependancy on oil.
The item I'm waiting on is electric motorcycles. For the days you don't need cargo space and are just getting from point a to b, you cant beat it.
Tesla was a genius. Edison however was a overrated hack who liked to torture puppies.
Only really silly or foolish people believe that a car is unsave because I cant accelerate fast
Only ignorant opinionated fools believe that. The cars that do accelerate fast are the safest on the road, they have uprated breaking, chassis and suspension. They hold the road better and the stop in less distance. Try doing some tests before voicing an incorrect opinion. A few minutes on a driving course using different vehicles will teach you the actual facts.
I'll agree with you that pure electric vehicles aren't there yet. However, that doesn't mean electric vehicles aren't there yet. The chevy volt and similar vehicles which include a gasoline powered generator to provide electricity are a good intermediary for the foreseeable future. The increased efficiency and ability to use gasoline when the battery is depleted are what will make them replace pure gasoline, provided the battery costs can come down. And yes, I do see that as an 'if', but a likely event to occur. If they can get the cost of the car to about $5000 over the cost of an equivalent gasoline car, the economics of it should be about break even. $5000 comes from the approximate savings in gasoline over a 5 year period from increased gasoline efficiency and recharging a moderately sized battery overnight and estimated at 20,000 miles per year.
we won't mention any bribery to get "trolleys" off the road, now will we?)
This is fantasy.
Trolley lines were in deep financial trouble before World War One.
The trolley was a commuter service.
There were tracks, cars and overheads to maintain but almost none of the twenty four hour a day freight traffic of heavy rail to help cover the cost.
The operating costs of the Ford car was pennies per mile.
Cheaper than the standard 5 cent fare.
It's possible people might even have to ride bicycles a bit. Oh dear. Maybe they'll get thinner and healthier
Weather permitting.
Past summers here have been hot and humid enough to be dangerous to a fit young adult on a bicycle.
My family and I went from Toronto to Ottawa in a 2010 Audi A3 TDI with an average fuel efficiency of 5.5 l / 100km with 2 adults, 2 kids, and a trunk full of luggage and Quebec beer. That's slightly better than a freakin' Yaris' posted numbers with FAR better performance and more cush per squarce inch.
And a solid resale value 5 years down the road with no need to dick around with batteries.
Further, electric cars are only as clean as the power grid you're attached to. If you're in Hillbilly, USA, that electricity is likely generated by inefficient, emission-spewing coal. At which point, a gas-fuelled SUV might be a /better/ choice than the electric. The equation changes, of course, if you're in a region with ample wind, hydro or, possibly, nuclear.
For once, I think the European solution is not bad: extremely high gas prices (about the same for 1 liter in France as you pay for 1 gallon in the US, except 1 gallon = 4.5 liters). That entices people to buy smaller cars, use them less, use public transport...
The income from those taxes is extremely mis-spent as always, but at least, they encourage the right behaviour.
The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
"If an electric tops out at 70mph on the highway, it is perfectly safe you will NEVER need to overtake a car doing 70."
Agreed. Because you will no longer be living, because the other non-cars on the highway will have crushed you.
If all the vehicles were cars, maybe you would be right. And how long are you talking about "tops out." My Dodge Neon tops out at 114mph. It gets up to 107 fairly easily, the last 7 mph will take over 20 seconds on flat highway. Does it take the electric car you are supposing as safe 10 seconds to go from 60-70mph? That's unsafe.
Cars are small and are not the only vehicles on the road. There are substantial larger, heavier, and less maneuverable vehicles on the road, namely large semis, concrete/asphalt haulers, oversize load, and logging vehicles. These vehicles, whose drivers as a whole drive better than the typical car drivers, don't always have good, aware drivers, and even if they did, drivers of such vehicles make unintentional mistakes too. So unless you have the horsepower to pass them and avoid every possible scenario, or to anticipate other cars moves that are around them and may force them to make a decision that impacts you literally, some decent horsepower is necessary.
I do a fair lot of driving. 4-6 hours a day in my vehicles on average. The times I've almost died/been in an accident on the highway, involved 3-4 large vehicles merging on a 2-4 lane highway. When a semi doesn't see you, or doesn't choose to see you, you want that acceleration. 70mph is, quite frankly, shit.
I agree that it doesn't have to be a lot like a lot of people suppose, but just being able to reach 70mph is not enough. As an example, last year, I was moving through a wolf pack in a highway zone doing 70mph. I was doing about 75mph. Not unsual where I live. Had a semi in a pack of 2 on my right. The on ramp had 2 logging haulers full (massive tree trunks) that had come down off the ramp and sped up. The rear semi merged over to the left lane to let the rear logging vehicle in, the 1st logging vehicle continued on a collision course with the 1st, which I didn't see (screened by the semis). Front semi simply pulled in to me. There was thankfully a small shoulder between the median barricade, or I would have been squashed in the last 20 feet. btw, the rear logging vehicle also then decided to make his merge a double, so even when the rear semi backed off (which he was smart enough to do, not all of them are that situationally aware), if I had braked, I would have been crushed there. In fact, it seemed he almost clipped the 1st semis corner (I think he made it only because of the angle of hthe logging vehicle during the lane changeis ).
4 years ago, I had 2 semis on my left, and 3 dump trucks come in off an on ramp. There we were doing 60mph in a 65, traffic was heavy, I was in the travel lane. The 3 came packed in. They merged as one. I accelerated and merged between the two semis in the passing lane. The semis saw what was happening and the front one accelerated, the rear one braked. The vehicle in front of me accelerated away but had to pull to the left of his lane. The vehicle behind me braked onto the shoulder it seemed (could see the stone dust from the shoulder, unless that was it being hit).
I'll agree with you that you don't need a lot of horsepower. You don't needa 500horsepower monster. But if you don't have a good gear system, and a good engine whether electric or gas or diesel or what have you, you're screwed, and your stupid, silly, and arbitrary 70mph number is just plain lacking if acceleration is not given any consideration. Quite frankly, I don't think you do a lot of driving, much less good driving.
Yes you can IF you use capacitors. Design it right and you can charge a capacitor bank in 30 seconds. it takes 5 minutes to fuel a car. if they designed it right, you could pull into a charging pad, swipe the card, it's charged and drive off. Gas station fillups would be faster than a toll booth.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I buy a car and run it into the ground. This won't affect me at all. It also won't affect people who buy a car with zero down and high interest and immediately owe more than it's worth, they don't concern themselves with these things. If you have to have the latest and greatest every few years, you're going to have problems.
Electric cars are a long term investment, paying for themselves over time as gas usage is less. It's not for the buy-and-sell crowd. When they are the most common type of car on the road, this will change.
Article is garbage and author is myopic or a shill, or both.
semi trucks have brakes. And the drivers tend to be better trained at driving than the car driver.
Note: europe is FULL of slow low power cars. They dont have this problem you imagine.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
This citation needed parroting of wikipedia has to fucking stop.
We aren't here writing research papers or even encyclopedias. This is a little niche web forum and most everything we write here is forgotten within 24 hours and will be viewed thereafter only by robots, or in some search engine's cache.
You, for instance, failed to include any citations for any of the assertions you made. I, for instance, rightly recognize, just as I did in the OP, that you are just some guy with some opinions you are stating based on your personal experience and beliefs and I would be capable of proceeding with the argument on those grounds, were I so inclined, without engaging in tangential games of demanding excessive investments of your time flitting through search results.
Also, you wrote a point by point rebuttal. Which is classic. HAND.
"Sacrifice for the good of The State" - The State
I know it isn't a popular opinion but electric cars just aren't here yet.
Even worse than unpopular, it is a wrong opinion. Electric cars are made and sold. That means they are "here" no matter what your opinion is.
The batteries hold too little power and age far too quickly - there is no economical reason to drive electric.
For your driving habits, maybe that is true. There are other people for which electric cars are adequate. As to whether electric cars are economic, you have yet to mention a reason. For example, the battery life is alleged in the article to be eight years. That's more than long enough, time-wise for someone who puts a lot of commuter miles on a vehicle.
The opposite is true. Teslas are still selling for close to retail. I'd snag one for $12 grand in a second....I haven't seen one sell for under $85,000 yet, regardless of mileage age or condition.
10% my ass
>>
>> "If an electric tops out at 70mph on the highway, it is perfectly safe you will NEVER need to overtake a car doing 70."
>
> Agreed. Because you will no longer be living, because the other non-cars on the highway will have crushed you.
>
Nonsense.
The road is already filled with crappy American subcompacts that already fail to meet this acceleration requirement.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
It's true that you shouldn't just idle the engine on the driveway, but it's also true that the mechanicals need warming up. You should drive gingerly until things read their normal operating temperature, avoiding high RPMs, high torque, and high speed. People who practically drag-race out of the garage and up a freeway on-ramp are killing their cars.
Unfortunately, since the transmission doesn't normally have a temperature gauge on the dash, we can only guess at that. With my manual transmission, I have developed a feel for how stiff the shift linkage feels when it is cold versus when it is running normally, and use that as a gauge for when I can really open it up. I cringe when I ride with friends and coworkers and see how they abuse their cars, because I realize most people do not know or do not care about treating them right. It's the biggest reason I hang onto my 11 year old car rather than selling it and getting something a little more fun from the used car market... mine is in better operating condition than most 4 year old cars.
Your FUD against EVs is noted. I can see that you are either a shill or a troll. Please include citations in your next comment, or don't bother.
When selling a radically new car for the mass consumer market the burden is on you to prove that it is practical and affordable.
If popular opinion says that EVs aren't there yet, it's an option that is likely to be shared by my bank or credit union when I hit them for an auto loan.
This nonsense and hyperbole keeps propping up every darn EV discussion there is.
IEC 62196 allows up to 298kW charging power (which is hardly "a medium electrical plant") , which could charge a 50kWh battery pack in 10 minutes, allowing approximately 300km of driving.
Not only is your claim wrong, there's already proposed standards that could fast-charge electric cars.
In the future, don't assume engineers can't do something just because you don't see how.
Did the article mention that people who buy second had gas cars worry about the transmission and whether the previous owner ran the engine in properly, always changed the oil on schedule and always warmed it up before screeching off down the street?
That's why people pay upscale used car dealers to do this worrying for them. These dealers offer services such as CARFAX reports and the manufacturer's used vehicle certification program.
I've never really understood this urge to trade cars in so quickly.... Even if a fully paid off ten-year-old car is costing you $1500 per year in maintenance (CV joints, timing belt etc.) you're still way further ahead compared to a $400 per month payment on a new car. Every time my friends say "I can't afford the upkeep on this car so I'm getting a new one" I roll my eyes...
I saw electric powered garbage trucks in Asmara Ethiopia (now Eritrea) back in the sixties.
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To be fair I suspect the GP means something like the 340mpg Supercub:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honda_Super_Cub
Looks like they are improving their emissions as well:
http://oscarapparel.blogspot.com/2010/01/honda-super-cub.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorcycle
"United States Environmental Protection Agency 2007 certification result reports for all vehicles versus on highway motorcycles (which also includes scooters),[72] the average certified emissions level for 12,327 vehicles tested was 0.734. The average "Nox+Co End-Of-Useful-Life-Emissions" for 3,863 motorcycles tested was 0.8531, for a difference of about 16%, not the claimed 10X factor. Likewise, if one looks at how many of the 2007 motorcycles tested were also catalytic equipped, 54% of them, 2,092, were equipped with a catalytic converter."
Unfortunately, most vehicle registration fees kill the economics of owning something like that. Those fees ought to be eliminated, along with the sales taxes. When compared to a car, every mile traveled in a Supercub is virtually indistinguishable from using a bicycle in terms of fuel consumption and CO2 production. I'd own one, but for the registration fees. With a bit of thought, the safety need not be any worse than a car - wear highly reflective clothing so that other motorists see you, and ride during daylight when it's dry. Otherwise use your car.
Who knows how many people would buy one if they were exempt from registration fees? If gas prices go up 10x, you can still get around. That's good insurance for a couple grand.
If I have seen further it is by stealing the Intellectual Property of giants.
Hybrids are crap. Instead of an engine to maintain, or a battery to maintain, you now have both.
I disagree. I have a hybrid SUV and its the best purchase I've ever made. I had the V6 equivalent sister vehicle before this one and I'm spending about half on gas and feel no difference in power (hybrid compared to a V6). In a year I guess I'm saving about $1000 in gas.
The gas engine is very simple which translates into easier to maintain. The electric is maintenance free. Hybrids are far better than their gasoline equivalents, especially for in town/city driving.
Tesla was a genius. Edison however was a overrated hack who liked to torture puppies.
You buy the latest wiz-bang computer today with all the extra gadgets and in five years your kids are laughing at your old computer.
Just look at how Apple runs their business. Every few months you are pressured to wait in line to buy the new model.
Electric cars are no different. The latest tech now will be stupid in five years. Charging interfaces will probably change a lot in the next 5 to ten years in addition to battery technology.
Standardized batteries keyed to the class of vehicle could save money and address the depreciation problem. Refueling would be unclipping the discharged and then clipping the charged battery into the car. Service stations would stock, recharge, and maintain the batteries, returning the batteries to the maker when they lose their ability to hold a charge. Such technology could be used in auto racing. Pit stops would have the normal tire changes along with a quick battery module change.
photosMy Photostream
Nothing much will change for acceptance of the electrical car until there is something that actually beats not only the electrical battery but also the gasoline and gasoline based engine, and the only thing that can do this is a personal nuclear power plant within the car.
So until there is a way to have a compact nuclear power-plant inside a car, something that uses nuclear material that cannot be used for weapons manufacturing and is constantly providing energy without a need to recharge (until obviously the nuclear material itself needs replenishing) there will be no significant movement in the electric car industry.
There IS another possibility - a system similar to the trolley buses. At least for city and major highway travel, if there was a system that provided constant electrical power and a way to connect to that power, then recharging of a few small batteries in the car could be constant, and that would be enough to power the car for the short periods of time where it cannot attach itself to the grid.
You can't handle the truth.
You aren't looking at all the costs of driving petroleum fueled vehicles. Trillion bucks to be heavy in the middle east for decades, health costs especially in major urban areas with smog pollution, and now the gulf oil disaster.
I would actually look forward to much cheaper electric vehicles being on the car lots used, that's the only way I could get one anyway. I'd love to have a small electric truck for use around here, and I only need a 30 mile range to go to town and back, I wouldn't need a 100-300 mile range. And for just driving around the farm, I could keep a smaller cheaper set of batts charged with my solar PV panels.
As to range in general, the generator trailer range extender eliminates that "need" for the 100-300 mile range on pure electric. You could rent one of those for the occasional long trip. These companies could offer a base model with just the 30 - 50 mile range, with more batteries and/or the generator trailer as options. That would reduce the price considerably to just get into an electric ride of some sort.
It's not exactly the same, but presently hybrid vehicles depreciate far more slowly than vehicles solely powered through internal combustion with the exception of the few diesel cars on the road.
Umpteen years of driver education and you still have uneducated driver and bad driving habbits.
So which is an easier fix: building an electric car with decent acceleration or a new fangled education method for 190,625,023 drivers?
Your move.
Personal nuclear power is the way to do this unless there is a ubiquitous grid accessible from almost everywhere. Nuclear power plant that is small enough to fit into an engine compartment, safe enough not to leak/blow somehow for any reason, including a catastrophic event like a car accident, something that cannot be used for weapons production, something that only needs to be 'recharged' once a month/year/few years, that would beat a current electrical or a current gasoline/diesel/natural gas car by economics alone, never mind the great reduction to pollution of air/water... This is what's needed.
You can't handle the truth.
Better Place (betterplace.com) addresses the battery issue by removing battery ownership from car ownership. I don't understand why this company isn't supported more.
A car should never be purchased for anything other than getting from point A to point B. Aside from the old classics and thinks like Ferraris, I don't see how anyone could value any car. Most affordable cars aren't even that nice to look at.
They're also constantly running for long periods of time, which means that you need a ton of battery capacity or you need to invent super-rapid charging. (Although I suppose a taxi base could have a battery charging station with a pool of batteries and just swap them out.) Something like a Leaf is really more designed for commuters who might do 50-60 miles in a day and spend no more than 3 hours driving -- lots of downtime that can be spent charging.
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You should read about it.
You imply that the friction losses of traveling uphill or downhill are higher than on level ground, with no explanation. The extra load of climbing is going into gravity-based potential energy (work equals force over distance, e.g. scales linearly with mass and elevation gain), and all of that potential energy is all available until you descend back to your starting elevation. For most drive-trains, the efficiency goes up with a higher load rather than down (until you exceed the peak), and with climbing you get the increased load without acceleration which means your aerodynamic and rolling friction do not increase.
I have repeatedly measured my mileage driving over a mountain range in California and noticed that I get better mileage when I climb the steeper grade and descend the less steep way, than the reverse. I believe this is partly because my car is more efficient converting gas into potential energy on the steep grade (higher load, shorter duration). On the gradual descent, it's practically coasting at 75 MPH as the potential energy seems to offset the aerodynamic forces, but the engine is still burning fuel to offset drive-train friction; an electric drive-train would be more efficient delivering the small, intermittent amounts of energy needed to maintain cruising speed there. On the steep descent, I usually have to do a bit of engine-braking or real braking, due to traffic and speed limit, so some of the potential energy is dumped as heat as well; a regenerative braking system would help there.
This is the thing I don't like about the Leaf; you can make the car even simpler if you put in four hub motors.
You're always going to need suspension and steering, but you can eliminate a lot of mechanical crap (and add redundancy, regenerative braking, ABS, traction control, etc as software upgrades) by putting the motors in the rims.
I really don't know why they didn't take the extra step.
Congratulations, you are officially a faux intellectual. You dissected someone else's opinion without once adding any useful opinion or information of your own. Oh, you quoted the article. But overall, you're just being a dick for the sake of being a dick.
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I do. It's because changing how things are designed reduces profits. If you can half-arse the job and simply replace the IC engine with an electric one you increase your profits far more than actually paying engineers and retooling to make the car right.
It's all about profit, doing it right is not even on the list. It's on the "we should do this" list.
The ONLY way to get a real electric car that is designed right is to either pass laws forcing the engineering change, or to finance the change.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
The charging rate issue has been addressed with concepts for interim transitions for Gas Stations: They would have batteries you can go by and pick up -- swap out with the ones you have. The one at your house could do likewise.
What an electric car infrastructure really needs -- as much as the next better battery, is a standard interface to plug in any battery and a "good enough" plugin battery that can handle lots of rough handling. Much like the Propane gas tank is only bought once and then swaps out an empty for a full one.
>>"ad space available -- low rates!!!"
If the car companies use an open standard it will remdy this early adopter issue:
1. Battery module to conform to standard so that when swap out stations are available your covered.
2. Car Management system open. So that owners dont get screwed finding a provider to service them later. The car companies would love to do this, but the franchise model prevents it because all those car showrooms make MORE money from the servicing contracts down the line than they do from the initial sale of the vehicle.
Tesla has completely fixed this model because they do not have franchise model. So they have an open servicing and parts model. And they can have an open vehicle software API model.
This is also why the cars are a bit more expensive, because they know they dont make a fortune off all the servicing as much.
The point i am highlighting above is the CRUX of the issue everyone !!
Once you understand the constraints then you can understand a way to work around the system.
Ford tried to change their franchise model 5 years ago to also fix this inherent problem, but they were sued by the franchise holders ( the retailers ). This is why Tesla thought ahead :)
So the only remedy now is to only buy from a car maker that has this model. The only one is Tesla and so you should vote with your wallet by waiting for the Tela models i think-
Sorry to sounds so fixed, but they other car companies have screwed it all up and are trapped in their franchise models.
So is gasoline, thats why you don't lift it with your manly arms, but with a pump. If only somebody would come up with a solution for swapping batteries, oh wait .
There is a perceived difference between the old situation where we didn't know if we were getting a car that would soon cost us more money and the new one where we *do* know that the car's battery is about to cost us a fortune. I guess its really not just a perceived difference. With the gas-car its at least possible you aren't getting screwed. If electric cars are going to be viable we need to drive down costs of battery recycling. Scale will help some with that, but cheap lithium from places like Bolivia, and now Afghanistan, will make recycling less desirable, and we will be back in the same situation we are in now, fighting wars for resources, and polluting (but with heavy metals). Seems like there is always some battery tech a couple years out that will replace these terrible lithium things, but I'll just stick with a small efficient gasoline engine until they do.
refactor the law, its bloated, confusing and unmaintainable.
An EV is going to have far fewer of the typical repair items just because it does not have an ICE system. No fuel pump, injectors, exhaust system, alternator, radiator or a large one, etc. Even brake pads are less of a repair item with regenerating braking. But yet some ORG came up with a 10% of cost resale valuation because there is one known cost, the battery pack. I wonder if this 10% number is using the same logic the US Auto Industry used in California to get CARB to end it's zero emission plans? Back then, they hired _experts_ who produced documentation which showed that not only would electric cars have to be _given_ away for free to the consumers, but they would also have to pay them _$15,000_ to take it. That is what they said, or something very close.
I remember when the hybrids where just hitting the market too. Back then, only a year after GM said they would be coming out with hybrids, GM started publishing press releases stating how bad for the consumers hybrid cars were. They ramped that up around the time when Toyota invited a few dozen reporters to see the Prius being manufactured on the same production line as their other cars, ie not custom made like they were the first few years. They also said they were not selling them at a loss.
So, can we really trust this 10% claim when the industry tends to make up this PR data to serve their own anti-innovation desires?
I don't believe it. We kept hearing about $5000 or more to replace our Prius battery when we bought it 10 years ago. But you know what? It only cost us ~$1500 to replace it thanks to after-market industries and innovations. No doubt they probably left this kind of information out of their 'research'. "Trust No One" IMO
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
Wait, depreciation to 10% is alarming but 25% isn't?
I do not think that it would be necessary to be able to recharge the batteries in an electric vehicle in five minutes or less. Think of how many things we do away from the house where we park our cars for an hour or more. You pull into a parking spot, plug in your car and swipe a card. Instead of recharging at a fuelling station we would recharge in a parking garage/lot, store or restaurant. Standardized battery sizes is a great idea as well.
Where I live home cooking is done with returnable 13Kg propane tanks. You buy the "blank" once, then go to a gas distributor (or gas station) and exchange it for a full tank. You only pay for the load.
Removable, swappable, exchangeable battery packs - that could easily be replaced at the gas station - could perform the same roll as the propane "blanks" do. You pay for the pack once. From then on, you only pay for the charge and replacement. A little extra could be charged and set aside to pay for blank replacement or updates without having to charge the client all at once.
Yeah. Battery pack bays and connectors would have to be standard. So what? That's what standards committees are for. Older cars can be retrofitted, get adaptors... Folks with enough money can and will pay to keep "up to date". Those that "rolled their own" will probably cobble up a new standard pack bay and connector.
Everyone will do it for the convenience of being able to go electrically anywhere there's gas stations. Cross-country. Plus, US standards usually influence world standards - if they get done first. Of course, the US seems to have forgone that ambition, that particular vanity - at least where it counts, for humanity's sake.
Anyway. Economy would continue to roll. The gas stations would still have a service to sell, work to do. Business as usual. Probably without major job loss. Not to mention the added boon of millions of battery packs needing maintenance, patching, minor repair, and just plain old cleaning and painting.
Whenever I bring up the subject of going on a long drive (a few hundred miles in a single shot) in an electric vehicle, which is typically beyond the range of a pure electric car. I always hear the argument about stations in which you'll be able to trade in your battery for one that is charged. Similar to how many supermarkets/gas stations allow you to trade in your bbq's propane tank for one that is full. No need to wait for it to be filled up (which can typically only be done at gas stations and not at supermarkets etc..) and you walk away in 2minutes with a full tank.
The problem with this is often you can walk in with a shiny, clean, rust free, dirt free, etc propane tank and walk away with one that is dirty, old, a bit rusty (but according to the supermarket/gas station is fully functional). While it would be trivializing the difference in technology between a propane tank and a car battery, I can see quite a few people (me included) believing that there's a good chance that you would trade in your brand new battery for one that is 2-3yrs old but according to the battery charging station, is "perfectly good".
You are a nihilistic dick
[citation needed]
And the batteries would be conditioned, tested, and recharged with every use. Charge them overnight or other low periods at lower cost.
My Tesla Roadster already gets charged overnight. In my own garage. And takes zero time out of my day to do so. The Roadster itself recalibrates and rebalances the battery and in the morning, every morning I have a full "tank".
Why should I complain that I can't refill my car within 10 minutes like my gas powered car? Instead I do complain when I drive a gas car where I have to take 10 minutes out of my day to stop at a gas station, and likely end up getting gas on my hands. Not to mention sending my cash to terrorist sponsoring petro-dictators.
Never a problem with my electric car because it is always "full" when I leave in the morning. There is never a day where I leave my house in the morning and I do not know I plan to drive more than 200 miles that day. I am never "surprised" by running out of fuel, and never need a 5 minute recharge.
you can find examples of naive Gen 1 Prius owners selling their hybrids far under value because the HV battery is dead. I'm sure someone will pull some of this out and show how this battery stuff effects even hybrids. The funny thing is, replacement batteries are less than $2,000 and should be good for another 10 years. As long as they took care of the oil and fluids in their ICE, that car should good for another 10 years and probably only needs tires and brakes.
I think the 10% figure is a crock and the motivation sinister. Likely funded by the likes of the Automotive Dealership Association of America or some other aspect of the current auto industry. These dinosaur industries have spent millions slowing and preventing innovation in the industry. It's about time these dinosaurs die of natural causes. They should not be kept alive by things like these fake 'research' articles spreading FUD and definitely not kept alive as in how the US government kept GM alive. IMO.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
You don't "own" the battery any more than you "own" the gas cylinder in your camper-van or holiday home: it just cycles into the supply chain for refilling.
This will only work if all batteries use a standard box and fitment. OK, if you drive some highly specialist boy-racer rig, you use and pay for some highly specialist non-standard battery. Your choice. Once we allow the auto companies to get away with individual proprietary boxes and fitments, the game is over and you, the driver, are screwed for ever.
Imagine if every manufacturer of lightbulbs had their own proprietary fitting. We'd still be using coal-gas to light our houses...
... and I knew this was going to happen. Going into it, I know that in 3-5 years the battery technology will be much better than the battery in my car, making my car virtually worthless.
Compared to a gas car, however, I'll be saving $150 a month ($1800 a year) on gas, so $5400 in 3 years. That's not bad for a car that, in California, will cost me $20k.
The real reason I'm buying it is to help end our dependence on foreign oil. Without people making a few sacrifices to push this technology (and other green technology) forward, we will never break the stranglehold that the Middle Eastern countries have on us. And that needs to end yesterday. I'm just trying to do my part for a better US for my children.
what the hell does any of what you said have to do with accelerating fast? you can put that stuff just as easily on a slowly accelerating car. you just intentionally misinterpreted what he said so you could rip on him. your a asshole.
electric engines have a larger torque range and more even torque over that range than ICEs so its top 10mph would most probably be better than your top 10mph.
Yeah, but if it gets a practical full EV on the road, I'm still going to be near the head of the line to buy one.
The government has decided that if you live in Ontario, you get $8500 back on the purchase of a Leaf.
That should drop it into the low 20K range. A bit extra on top for the charging station in the garage (and associated circuit run back to the mains), but still good for tooling around town most of the time...
by simply extending the warranty on the battery.
As of yet I suspect very few Prius cars have been scrapped. At some point however, Toyota is going to shut off the continual extensions and any Prius that falls off the edge is essentially worthless. I understand the battery in a Prius goes for around $8,000 if it isn't covered by the warranty.
The problem has nothing to do with "newer, better batteries" and everything to do with simple
battery life. When the battery wears out, the car is junk. This is especially true if any improvements whatsoever are made with respect to batteries, but even if battery technology is absolutely stagnent the value of the car without a battery is zero.
Unfortunately, what we are likely to see is a large number of different batteries that are unique to each car. This means there never will be any "economy of scale" with respect to electric car batteries - so they will likely all cost $8,000 or more.
Sure, an electric car would be interesting for a few years. But without major rework of the electric power supply in the US (like maybe building a few nuclear plants) it is unlikely to be practical to charge on in a few years. We are going to be seeing strict electricity rationing. For some folks in the Southwest, investing $30,000 in a solar array might be practical to keep the air conditioning and refrigerator running during the day.
No, you can't. First the capacitors are just too darn heavy. Second, there's too much power used. A 5 minute, 300 mile charge = 0.9 megawatts. In the future, the grid might be able to handle it, but not any time soon.
Responsibility is an addiction
Virtue is a temptation
Community is a cartel
And takes zero time out of my day to do so.
Ohh, come on. You have to unplug it and plug it in :)
Mod parent up.
Responsibility is an addiction
Virtue is a temptation
Community is a cartel
Taxi's can even solve the problem easier, by just having a fleet of vehicles, and having drivers come and swap out the entire car as the battery is drained.
Sewage Treatment Facilities - "Our duty is clear."
We need cold fusion under the hood!
Responsibility is an addiction
Virtue is a temptation
Community is a cartel
How do you want to measure public opinion? People want to buy more of these things than are available.
The prices depreciate because people value it less. They value it less because its a piece of shit. Its a piece of shit because... well, it's a piece of shit. So what, we're going to stand around boo-hooing about how EVs are pieces of shit? I have better things to do. "Stuff that's worthless isn't worth much, details at 11." Yawn.
Yeah, good luck finding a safe way to hold nuclear material in a car's form factor. Those nuclear plants have walls thicker than a car's length.
>> Aside from that, I don't see any way for there to be a 5 minute or less charge of a car with a 400+ mile range, like we do with gasoline. If anyone else has an idea, I'd like to hear it. hmm... if you have a filling station full of already charged batteries, and the cars can easily swap, it probably would take a few minutes.
They run for long periods, but in cities, a substantial amount of that time is spent not moving. They also do a lot of stopping, and some of that energy can be recaptured with regenerative braking.
It still may require regulatory changes. In some places, an individual cab can run literally 24 hours a day, swapping out drivers. It saves on parking; one of the problems with having to re-charge is that it needs to be somewhere while that happens. In downtown, that space can be at a premium. I know places where the parking space costs more than the apartment.
(Also, often the vehicles themselves are given licenses affixed permanently to the vehicle, which are very limited in number. A New York taxi medallion sells for tens of thousands of dollars.)
Better Place's battery swap plan might just do it, though. If they can run for an 8 hour (or, often, 12 hour) shift, and swap out battery and driver at the same time, it could be near optimal.
You don't have to use the most radioactive elements, the most active plutonium or uranium, I think you are overreacting there.
You can't handle the truth.
Why does every car have to go 400+ miles on a single tank? I rarely ever drive more than 50 miles in a single day. On those rare cases a few times a year when I have to drive much more than that, I could rent a gasoline powered vehicle for it.
"It is truly difficult to conquer a technology that has been refined for 200 years."
the only cars around 200 years ago (1810) were steam powered. I think the first ICE cars came out in the 1880's
Europe is also a lot smaller than the USA.
The state of Texas is bigger than the entire country of France!!!
You get more like 21.6 mpg, thats only assuming a 28% difference between old MPG standard and the new one
Motorcycles also pollute 3x times as much as SUVs.
Wow -- apparently being a ME and a car nut makes you qualified to assess the viability of electric cars! So would a CS grad who likes to play video games be an expert on assessing the business plan of EA Sports?
Hint: you just *agreed* with someone whose post was based around an error -- that automotive li-ions (at least outside Tesla) have the same properties as cobalt-based laptop cells. It's not even close. They sacrifice bout 50% of their energy density to boost longevity by an order of magnitude.
"99 dead duelists of Dios on the wall. 99 dead duelists of Dios! Take one's ring, pass it around..."
With the Prius (and other hybrids) that's taken care of for you. Even when the battery's capacity graphic says the battery is near empty (and the ICE starts up automatically to recharge it), the battery actually has more than half of its capacity remaining. Most of the capacity of the Prius battery is never used, just for this reason. No matter the habits of the previous owner, the battery is never deeply discharged (or otherwise abused -- the software controlling the state of charge of the battery is incredibly sophisticated).
No, in general cars do not need to do 0-60 in 4sec, but they do need to do it faster than 9~10sec.
Where I live, a car that takes longer than 10 sec to get to 60 is dangerously slow, and even floored can't merge onto the freeway safely. Power and speed also come into play climbing the Grapevine and other mountain passes around here.
Also solves organ donor scarcity!
Just remember. If the Delorean was an electric car then Marty and Doc would not have had to use the train to push the car up to 88MPH. Doc could have easily built an electric generator with 1800's technology to charge up the batteries.
The myth here is that people think that because the infrastructure is in place for easily accessible gasoline that gasoline is more practical than batteries. You know the saying: "If I ran out of gas on the side of the road all I have to do is walk to the nearest gas station with a gas can and fill it up. You can't do that with batteries can you!". Well, Marty and Doc couldn't do that either. It all comes down to infrastructure.
But it beats the heck out of everyone dying.
A good start would seem to be delivery vehicles
Why would everyone die?
If the USPS is not jumping all over electric mailtrucks, then there they are not practical yet. Mail delivery is ideally suited to electric vehicles with the short start/stop cycles.
I'd be surprised if a great deal of people would not be pleased at the possibility of a small simple vehicle for commuting - quiet, quite fast, fairly small, easy to park, amazingly cheap to run. And very low polluting. What's not to like?
The $20k+ for batteries that last 3 years is what is not to like. Plus the lack of proper RWD and AWD layouts. I drove the GM EV1 -- that car was fun despite being FWD, but the novelty probably helped there. I've also driven the Prius -- that car was gutless and downright scary to drive in local traffic. Parallel hybrids are the worst of both worlds.
Anyways, I'd love to have an electric car that meets my specs (including cost), but nothing out there comes close without building my own.
Yeah, and your car can't fuel itself by grazing on the brush and weeds at the side of the road, like a horse... Cars just aren't practical. I'm sticking with my horse and buggy.
You don't need to. The very existence of gas stations is a not a boon, but a drawback we've learned to live with. It's an inherent limitation of the fuel, due to the danger of fire and contamination, that we have to stop at a gas station to recharge our vehicles.
Any idiot can tell you what an electric future will look like, because it was already put in place 15 years ago in California.
#1) 99% of the time, you plug-in your electric car when you get home at night, and the next morning, it's fully charged... Dirt cheap, and extremely convenient. No more watching the fuel gauge, driving around to find a gas station, pulling in, powering down, fueling-up, and then driving a ways to get back where you were going.
#2) When you are on longer trips, you simply drive to the airport, the mall, or wherever you were going. When you get there, you park in a plain old parking space, then walk up to the device that looks like a parking meter, swipe your credit card, plug it into your vehicle, and let it charge as you go on with your life. It doesn't need to take an extra 15 minutes out of your day, just a few extra seconds here and there.
Sure, electric vehicles don't charge up as fast as is possible with gasoline, but who cares? Humans don't fuel-up as fast as cars, anyhow. While you're eating, shopping, taking a pit stop, etc., your car can be charging up, too, without you having to go out of your way, or stand around and babysit the whole time.
That's a horrid idea. Anyone who knows anything about batteries knows that even testing them thoroughly is very difficult. And it only takes one in a pack to kill your power source. I sure as hell wouldn't trust anyone to take my batteries and give me another set that's supposedly just as good.
Tell me, since you're swapping-out 3/4ths of your vehicle at the "gas station" now, why don't you just drop off your car, and pick up the keys to a new one, and go driving off? That's pretty close to the scenario you're describing... I'm betting next to nobody is going to buy in to that idea.
And that's not even bothering to point out the extreme difficulty in swapping all the batteries in your vehicle. There's a lot of weight, and an obscene amount of power there. The mechanical portion of it is simply going to require a forklift operator to carefully remove an ultra-massive battery tray. And the electrical connections are going to require quite a bit of time as well. So at best, you're wasting a ridiculous amount on man-hours for every battery swap. You can't just hook-up a hose and poor the battery out.
I don't see any way for there to be an exhaust system in an electric vehicle either. Just because that's the way it's done with gasoline cars, doesn't mean it's a good thing. It's a logical fallacy, that you're trying to fit a electric peg into a gasoline hole...
No, it doesn't. It replaces the problem of your battery capacity shrinking after several years, with the problem of your battery capacity being replaced by a defective unit 6 hours after you buy the thing, stranding you in the middle of nowhere, and necessitating a court case, with expert witnesses and lots of documentation to prove your case.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Regenerative breaking is only 31% efficient. That means that 69% of the energy used to get the vehicle to speed is lost no matter what the speed.
Even at low speeds there is some wind resistance which uses energy. Wind resistance is not the only waster of power in a vehicle; there is rolling resistance, drive train friction, lights, radio, heaters, etc.
There is no free ride
The opposite is true. Teslas are still selling for close to retail.
There are only about 1,000 Teslas you could buy:
In the first quarter of [this] year, Tesla sold a total of 126 cars ... 9.7 cars a week.
A few qualifications: First, the company currently only sells the Tesla Roadster, which retails for $109,000. Only so many buyers for cars like that exist in the world. The company also continues to have a long waiting list. An estimated 2,200 customers have put $5,000 deposits down on the Model S, the all-electric sedan coming in 2012.
Tesla Sales Down on Eve of IPO
[June 23]
The Model S has an estimated base price around $60,000.
Tesla is regarded with some suspicion in the financial press.
The company will stop producing the vehicle it became known for, the Roadster sports car, and focus on a premium sedan called the Model-S. This car's selling point: According to Tesla, it will go up to 300 miles per charge, far further than other manufacturers claim for their electric cars. Tesla says it hasn't based its range forecast on a working prototype but chiefly on computer models. And, its IPO filing says, potential new government standards could result in a 30% cut to Tesla's advertised ranges.
The government also needs to ensure private investors don't cash out on the back of its largesse. It has tried that with Tesla, saying the loan will go into default if big shareholders, including Chief Executive Elon Musk, fail to hold at least 65% of their stock for at least a year after the Model-S project is complete. Guaranteed Risks in America's Green Loans [June 24]
Elon Musk is widely regarded as a big-time spender who always seems to be skating on the edge of disaster. Elon Musk, Head of Tesla Motors, Is Broke
More realistic, I think, is nuclear (or desert solar) powered hydrocarbon synthesis on a massive scale. Carbon neutral because it pulls its CO2 from the air, requires only localised investment and no need whatsoever to change infrastructure or any of the other apparatus of cars. Plus we aren't forced to abandon all old vehicles and drive shitty whining electric econoboxes.
Replacing or supplementing drilled oil on a meaningful scale would be incredibly expensive, yeah. But I can't imagine it would be significantly more expensive than buying electric cars for everyone, mining all the materials for all those millions of kilograms of new batteries, building all those power stations to power the cars, and constructing an entire charging infrastructure.
Plus, when we inevitably run out of oil, we won't have to abandon plastics. Plastics alone, I think, make hydrocarbon synthesis something hugely important, and I'm pretty worried by how little attention it seems to get.
The vast majority of motorcycles are sold to people who own cars as grown up toys. Those are exactly the opposite of environmentally friendly sales, since those motorcycles serve no useful purpose other than enjoyment (which isn't wrong, but still isn't helping the environment).
This citation needed parroting of wikipedia has to fucking stop.
[citation needed]
We aren't here writing research papers or even encyclopedias. This is a little niche web forum and most everything we write here is forgotten within 24 hours and will be viewed thereafter only by robots, or in some search engine's cache.
That's a bunch of shit. I refer back to slashdot posts when I can find them on a regular basis. I have many bookmarked for later reference.
You, for instance, failed to include any citations for any of the assertions you made.
Anyone who is familiar with the subject is familar with the relevant citations. They're googled by name so often that they floated to the top of the results if you use a handful of words from the title as they predictably should. For example "a look back renewable" first result is http://www.nrel.gov/docs/legosti/fy98/24190.pdf, the link I want. There's places you can find it in other formats but that's what we want for most of what I had to say. Much of the rest is common knowledge. But I can provide citations if needed. So far I see no evidence that there is any (but chew on that one for a minute.)
I, for instance, rightly recognize, just as I did in the OP, that you are just some guy with some opinions you are stating based on your personal experience and beliefs and I would be capable of proceeding with the argument on those grounds, were I so inclined, without engaging in tangential games of demanding excessive investments of your time flitting through search results.
I am here to educate and be educated as well as entertain and be entertained. I often use citations, where they are necessary, i.e. when I am having a conversation and not simply engaging in enumeration of faults.
Also, you wrote a point by point rebuttal. Which is classic. HAND.
I'm a fucking classy kind of guy.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Anyone who knows anything about batteries knows that even testing them thoroughly is very difficult.
In a battery-swap system you would lease the battery, not own it. So you wouldn't need to worry about a bad battery, as its not yours either way. If the worst case happens, you just drive to the next swap station and swap it out.
The whole swap process is also a solved issue, takes less then two minutes and is fully automatic, watch this little demo video.
It replaces the problem of your battery capacity shrinking after several years, with the problem of your battery capacity being replaced by a defective unit 6 hours after you buy the thing,
The chance of a swapped out battery failing is just as high as your personal battery failing. There really is no added risk.
The price of Gasoline in France is not 14.5 dollars a gallon.
Its currently around 7 dollars a gallon.
So basically you are comfortable being confined to within a 100 mile radius from your home with no option for taking your Tesla Roadster any farther than that.
No, in general cars do not need to do 0-60 in 4sec, but they do need to do it faster than 9~10sec.
No they don't, I had no trouble safely driving a Ford Escort with a 16 second 0-60 time. Frustrating, but safe. Are the drivers where you are really so terrible they can't make room for cars joining a road? If so, better training and a tougher driving test would seem appropriate.
You do know a clean CARFAX report doesn't mean shit, right?
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Problem with taxis is that they run continuously for long periods of time, longer than any currently available battery technology is going to last. However, taxis are an ideal situation for hybrids.
"Prius battery pack will last 10 years": http://www.newsoxy.com/toyota-prius/battery-pack-will-last-10-years.html
A Prius battery pack could last as much as 400,000 miles with minimal maintenance issues, according to an independent study conducted by Toyota Motor Company. The study also found that many of the first-generation Toyota Prius hybrids are still running with more than 200,000 miles with their original battery packs. This study quite interesting and it does squash any rumors that the Toyota hybrid will need its batteries replaced every five years, as most critics speculate.
The study also found a few cars in Victoria, B.C., that are still used as a taxi service. These vehicles have between 300,000 to 400,000 miles on them and are still using the same batteries installed since 2001. These findings are remarkable.
[...]
IEC 62196 allows up to 298kW charging power (which is hardly "a medium electrical plant") , which could charge a 50kWh battery pack in 10 minutes, allowing approximately 300km of driving.
A 50kWh battery pack is less than two gallons of gas. Tanks hold 10 gallons or so (usually more) and take less than 5 minutes to fuel. To get the same energy across, you'd either need to bump up the power by 10 times, or lengthen the charge time to about an hour. Stop comparing the most efficient electrics with crap petrol cars. Keep it in terms of energy, and it's obvious that people won't like an hour recharge every 200 miles, when they get 400+ miles at highway cruising with 5 minute "recharges". A 1000 mile day (about the most I can do comfortably in a day) would be hours longer, and thus undoable if I had to use an electric with 10 times the recharge time.
In the future, don't assume engineers can't do something just because you don't see how.
So, what's the engineering solution to delivering 16 MW? That's what a single pump delivers, and there are lots of stations with 10+ pumps, for a 160 MW capacity. What's the engineering solution for having 100,000+ stations with 160 MW capacity? I'm not sure, but that seems to be about the same as the entire electrical power of the entire planet combined, just to be able to deliver a replacement for petrol stations in the USA. I guess there's an "engineering" solution:
Step 1. Increase electrical output tenfold.
2. Redo the power grid from scratch to be able to handle it.
3. ???
4. Profit.
I think your problem is that if the engineers solution is adopted, then the USA will have to give up SUVs and such. Since the "engineering" solution isn't marketable, it's useless. Rather than solving a problem we don't have (how do we charge a nation of microcars), why not try solving the actual problem? We have a nation of trucks and SUVs. They are inefficient, heavy, and have poor aerodynamics. Real engineering is solving the hard problem, not the easy one. Working out the charge time for a two seater mini car with a range half of what people have now in a car with more than twice the weight is not an "engineering" solution, but an exercise in futility. Solve the actual problem and get back to me. Currently, the "solution" is off by a factor of 10 on a micro scale, and approaching impossible on a macro scale.
Learn to love Alaska
Any idiot can tell you what an electric future will look like, because it was already put in place 15 years ago in California.
You are right. An idiot is telling me what the future will look like. Well, everything except for the cross-country trip.
It's a logical fallacy, that you're trying to fit a electric peg into a gasoline hole...
You are missing the point. It's not me you have to convince, but a few hundred million Americans, and they think you are an idiot. They don't want a reduction in features and functionality. That's not progress. Since they don't want that, your "obvious" solution will be rejected. Unless required by law, places won't put them in. How do I know? Because my work refused to do something similar as "impossible" (when the real answer is that it would have taken about $40k that isn't in and never will be in the budget because the person that makes the budget for the facilities doesn't want it). And plenty of places will be like that, or the places of work with no parking spaces. How do you park on the street (no meters, no lines, just on a regular side-street in front of someone's house) and get charged? Break into their house and run an extension cord?
It replaces the problem of your battery capacity shrinking after several years, with the problem of your battery capacity being replaced by a defective unit 6 hours after you buy the thing, stranding you in the middle of nowhere, and necessitating a court case, with expert witnesses and lots of documentation to prove your case.
Prove what case? You have an onboard computer that will give you readings. If it's bad, you, at worst, get a tow to the nearest station and get another swap. I don't understand why you'd need witnesses and documentation for. Perhaps the issue is you are too stupid to understand what I'm saying, and thus it sounds silly. I agree, if you don't understand what I say, then what I say doesn't make any sense.
Learn to love Alaska
Why should I complain that I can't refill my car within 10 minutes like my gas powered car?
Because that means you can't hop in the car, drive to Colorado for the weekend for skiiing, stopping three times for fuel at a total of 15 minutes (30 if you stop to pee). With the highest international specification for electrical charging (which, as far as I know, hasn't even been implemented anywhere), you'd still need over two hours of charging (even more for a real car, like yours) so that the one-day trip (drive up Friday, ski Sat and Sun, back Monday) takes two days up and back, meaning you have to take two more days off work, or have no time to ski.
Not that you'd complain about that, but plenty of people would. The cross-country trip is something that many Americans hold dear. I know that, as a child, I saw more than half the states before I was 10 from the backseat of a car. And many others with similar memories want that ability, even if it isn't necessarily rational.
Learn to love Alaska
Because that means you can't hop in the car, drive to Colorado for the weekend for skiiing, stopping three times for fuel at a total of 15 minutes (30 if you stop to pee).
Right - but there is no way I would take my Tesla Roadster skiing (or on any road trip which requires a trunk large enough for luggage. Any more than I would take a Ferrari or a Lamborghini there. It doesn't mean I can't take a road trip - it just means for a trip greater than 200 miles, we take a different vehicle.
The point being that just because my Telsa Roadster is not the perfect car for all situations. (trips to the Home Depot for instance, or helping a friend move) does not mean that electric cars are not really really fantastic for most situations - far superior to gas powered transit. And the occasions where it is not the ideal transportation, it is trivial to work around.
The OP's complaint was that charging can't work as fast as refilling gas so we better stick with gas. But for the majority of the driving you do it is far better and more convenient to have an electric than a gas car. And for the times where it isn't (going to Hawaii, picking up a new washing machine, and yes... the Colorado ski trip) I go via a different vehicle. And I am not any more put out than when I could not drive my previous gas powered 2-seater to Hawaii. I didn't drive that one to Colorado either.
Aside from that, I don't see any way for there to be a 5 minute or less charge of a car with a 400+ mile range, like we do with gasoline. If anyone else has an idea, I'd like to hear it.
My idea is that...particular requirement isn't needed for most people. How many people drive a few minutes to work, and then leave their car sitting for a few hours before they get off work and go home? Maybe they stop somewhere to shop or something, but do they need to travel even a hundred miles in the average day?
Possibly not.
Got to get people past their way of thinking of their needs, and thinking about what they really can use.
If anything, just get some Electric cars for 10% of the population and cut the pollution by that much, it'll pay off.
Your gas is 25% efficient so that "half a tank" is actually a tank and a refill in effect.
There is no reduction in features. YOU just keep trying to spin it that way. All the cons you list are actually pros. Complaining that you can't fuel-up in 15 minutes at a gas station misses the point, in fact the reality is that you don't ever need to stop at a gas station again. End of story. You might as well be complaining that you can't go get your smog checked in an electric car, and try to design a system that requires you to do so... It makes no sense.
Even for those who somehow like the current model... Gasoline/diesel prices are a big motivator. Add in the typical oil change, trans. fluid change, filters for both, brake pad changes, and numerous others, and an all-electric vehicle is immensely more convenient no matter how you look at it.
You know nothing about batteries. The only reading that is easy to perform is a quick voltage test, and that will tell you next to nothing about the health of a battery. I can give you a car battery that reads 14V, and yet will do nothing when you turn the key in the ignition.
Why are you driving 400 miles cross-country (about 6 hours of driving), and then parking in-front of the house of someone you don't know? Presumably you're getting food, drinks, and the use of a restroom, somewhere. Wherever that happens to be, is where you get a charge.
If you're talking about just driving across town to visit someone, then you're just making an idiot of yourself, because the range of current electric vehicles is more than enough for the daily driving of 80%+ of the population. So how do you get a charge??? You drive home, and plug-in like usual.
And it's really only right now that there aren't charging stations everywhere. Even outside of major urban areas, there are street lights and power lines everywhere, almost always run along roads. It's fairly cheap to run a line down to the street, and set up an EV charging station.
And also of note, the Leaf has a small solar panel on it, so if the sun is up at all, you'll get a bit of power just parking in the middle of nowhere. While it won't charge you up from empty in a sane amount of time, it will help extend your range a bit. Point me to any gasoline vehicle that will (slowly) drip fuel into my tank, wherever I am.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
you cant easly re-fill your car at night, whilst sleeping and pay a lower gas rate for the privlage etiher.. easy come easy go.
You have 5 Moderator Points!
Which Helpless Linux zealot/MS basher do you want to mod down today?
Look into unsprung weight or mass as they call it on Wikipedia. Then think about the pounding those electric motors in the hubs would take, since they are unsprung. Then there is gyroscopic effect, which increases with weight, trying to tear your wheel bearings apart. Four times as many motors to fail (of course this does have the benefit of adding redundancy). Motorized hubs seem to create at least as many headaches as they might cure.
Except they're already in use in test markets in Europe and not having those issues.
As for gyroscopic effect - well, the main part of the motor doesn't spin. We already have many, many examples of bearings carring the mass of a rim and tires spinning at highway speeds without failing.
The point being that just because my Telsa Roadster is not the perfect car for all situations. (trips to the Home Depot for instance, or helping a friend move) does not mean that electric cars are not really really fantastic for most situations - far superior to gas powered transit. And the occasions where it is not the ideal transportation, it is trivial to work around.
I don't understand your point. Are you arguing that it shouldn't be an issue, or that it isn't an issue. I agree you are 100% right, it shouldn't be an issue. I disagree 100% that it isn't an issue. And anyone that states it isn't an issue is an idiot. Do you honestly not look at what people are driving? They are non-optimal for 99% of their driving. And they don't care. To hint about "ideal" situations is absolutely silly. People don't care about that. They want to be able to do things they will never do. They pay for it every day in mileage penalties, inconvenience, and increased cost. And they like it. To argue they shouldn't is silly. I don't care what people "should" or "shouldn't" do. If the solution doesn't fit what they will do, then it isn't a solution, but a practice in mental masturbation.
The OP's complaint was that charging can't work as fast as refilling gas so we better stick with gas. But for the majority of the driving you do it is far better and more convenient to have an electric than a gas car.
Ah, then that's why I was confused, as there is absolutely no relation between what's "convenient" and what sells. I was talking about reality, not some idealized fantasy land in which case the people who buy Ford F350s only, even though they've never hauled something larger than a piece of plywood or heavier than a bag of soil or concrete, which would both fit in a wagon at half the cost and half the weight decide they will abandon their large cars and all run out and buy Teslas.
And I am not any more put out than when I could not drive my previous gas powered 2-seater to Hawaii. I didn't drive that one to Colorado either.
Again, completely irrelevant. I, too, lived multiple years with a 2-seater as my only car. But, I wasn't so delusional as to think that my experience would or should be enforced against the rest of the nation. They wouldn't do it, so expecting them to is insane (an actual neurosis, not just a run of the mill silliness) and enforcing them to will result in a revolution. So I have no idea what you think you bring to the conversation with "I did it" comments. Are you saying that everyone *could* do it? If so, yes, they could, but they won't, so your comments are irrelevant. If you are saying they *should* do it, then you are either so disconnected from reality that your opinion is irrelevant, or you are advocating restrictive laws to tell people what they can and can't buy based solely on your personal opinion, in which case you have more in common with al Qaeda than you have in common with most Americans.
Learn to love Alaska
1) If the battery really is fully functional per the test stand at the battery swap out place, I don't really care what it looks like. It's not like I'm going to be looking at it all that much.
2) The battery swap-out model is usually discussed in the context where you lease rather than own the battery. So you turn in a brand new one and get one that's two years old (and presumably has less remaining life). Who cares? You're going to be turning it in pretty soon anyway for a replacement, fully charged one.
I really don't see this as a serious objection to the battery swap plan.
Um... so what?
Instead of putting a nozzle in and dumping hydrocarbons, you open the flap, roll the empty cart up so that the fork slides into the slots for that very purpose and pull the release lever so the battery drops onto the fork. Then you roll it off, and roll the fresh battery on, doing everything in reverse.
Or perhaps bottom mount makes more sense, and the hardware will be under the car instead, or an even more streamlined process can be developed.
The GP didn't state a solution, but that doesn't mean that there isn't one.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Complaining that you can't fuel-up in 15 minutes at a gas station misses the point, in fact the reality is that you don't ever need to stop at a gas station again. End of story.
I've driven from Washington D.C to Anchorage, AK, and I've driven from Dallas to Anchorage in winter. Please explain how I can make those trips in an electric car. For the Dallas trip, I did it in 5 days. Since electrics don't do much more than 200 at best (and often worse in winter, heater going batteries cold and such), would I stretch that 5 day trip into 3 weeks or so with 200 or fewer miles scheduled per day, and charged overnight?
Why are you driving 400 miles cross-country (about 6 hours of driving), and then parking in-front of the house of someone you don't know? Presumably you're getting food, drinks, and the use of a restroom, somewhere. Wherever that happens to be, is where you get a charge.
That example is because many places of work don't have facilities for the parking, and they are in areas that don't have meters, so you have no place to plug in there. But you still didn't address the cross country trip, other than questioning my example. Go ahead and address my new ones. The examples of the two trips to AK. Or the numerous times I've driven from Dallas to Chicago in one day. With having three 30 minute charges in there, I think my safety would be decreased because of the extended length of the day, or I'd have to greatly increase the cost of the trip by adding a night on the road (and making sure I find a place with charging).
There is no reduction in features.
The ability to have two drivers trade shifts to drive coast-to-coast in under 48 hours would be eliminated. Evidently you don't think that a feature. But that's why your opinion will do more to hold up electric cars than encourage them. Quit bitching that people pointing out obvious shortcoming are wrong. Quit pointing to people complaining about obviously missing features and claiming that they suffer some deficiency. Either match features of gasoline, or accept that the features won't match and work on convincing them that the features aren't necessary. But to argue that the features aren't there is just silly.
Point me to any gasoline vehicle that will (slowly) drip fuel into my tank, wherever I am.
Arguing that you don't have features missing because new features are added is an irrelevant distraction. Just stick to my statements if you are going to disagree with me. Describe how I drive from Dallas to Chicago (about 900 miles) in 15 hours with two quick refuel (and pee) stops included in an electric. If it can't be done, then the feature of fast refuel doesn't exist, and thus there's a deficiency in electric over petrol currently. Tell me how to do the same over the vast mostly-deserted areas of north western Canada to make it 4000+ miles in 5 days from Dallas to Anchorage. Explain how and why I'm wrong, rather than just asserting I am because people probably wouldn't try that.
You know nothing about batteries. The only reading that is easy to perform is a quick voltage test, and that will tell you next to nothing about the health of a battery. I can give you a car battery that reads 14V, and yet will do nothing when you turn the key in the ignition.
Bah, I take it all back. You are a useless idiot that isn't worth talking to. You are telling me that a voltage test of a "dead" battery, followed by an amp measure of that same battery, followed by charging it to full and measuring the voltage and amperage during that process, then a voltage and amperage test when full (followed by a trickle charge until needed) would tell nothing? How much would that add to a charge time of a battery pack? You are either a lying schemer that purposefully picks "weak spots" by inventing them and attacking them, pretending they are related to what the other person said, or you are an idiot that can't conceive of the right way of doing anything and assumes everyone else on the plant is as stupid as you are. So, either grossly incompetent or a manipulative liar, either way, not worth my time arguing with, other than just to point out to others that your statements are full of shit.
Learn to love Alaska
The CEO of Electric Vehicle company "Better Place" explains that he sells you the car but maintains ownership of the battery. This enables their Battery Swap station program. Most of the time these cars are charged at home, at work, and when you park at the shops. (In some countries you may even get priority parking spots as an honoured EV driver!) But when you're driving down the highway and need a 'refuel' the SatNav tells you where the closest station is, you drive in, and the battery is automatically swapped out faster than you can fill up a conventional petroleum vehicle.
They begin rolling out around the world over the next few years, hitting Canberra Australia next year. The cost of swapping the battery out is about half what we're all paying for gasoline right now, and of course means the car doesn't 'depreciate' simply because the battery it is carrying might be aging: it can't! (Older batteries are automatically withdrawn from Better Place circulation the moment they fail testing standards). Check it out people, the future is now.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Better_Place
While the part about unsprung weight is true, each electric motor would only need to have a quarter of the weight of a single motor. Also, standard electric motors are built to a condensed size for convenience purposes. Specialty hub motors can have greater torque when they fit into a space inside of a rim because the distance from the axle that the torque is applied to is increased, which means they don't have to have as much copper and iron to get the same amount of power as a standard condensed electric motor, which means they can be lighter.
Plus, that would effectively be an all-wheel drive car - most cars are only two-wheel drive...
They're charging buses in Oakland with overhead carbon sticks, using ultracapacitors. Bus pulls into the bus stop, zap. Ready to go in the time it takes to load passengers. Only need enough to get to the next stop where there's more electricity? Basically, you're just eliminating the ugliness and maintenance costs of wires, and the bus CAN detour around idiots. It doesn't overload the grid because it's spread out over time. Here's how: There's a big ultracapacitor, non-mobile, at each bus stop charging station, which is charging all the time. It averages out to the amount necessary to run the buses. The two capacitors, mobile and stationary, equalize very quickly. Passes mucho amperes, but over a very short distance. Duh.
Please don't feed the trolls.
Chris Mesterharm
I'm going to buy me an electric car!
This is where I get my recommended daily allowance of "Foot in Mouth."
Actually, I think - no, wait, nix that - I BELIEVE it's most important that we change this aspect of American culture. If you look at the grand scheme of things, the cross-country trip you talk about was only made possible by the cheap cost of gasoline and the growing number of vehicles in the post-war boom. The levels of excess shown in the 50s and 60s are reflected in the vehicles from that era, from the size of the cars to the amount of chrome used on them, and the "summer vacation" was one of those excesses. Changing that culture is important, and it's easy to do now, because it's only been around for a generation or two. As far as actual transportation needs are concerned, it has already been superseded by the affordability of airline travel. It used to take weeks or months to get across this country with previous methods of transportation, but with added convenience, there's always a cost, and in this case it's a cost to the environment. You can visually see that cost as it accumulates in the Gulf of Mexico, and as you overlook Los Angeles. (Hell, simply sustaining human life in the numbers we have is a cost to the environment.)
For the "here and now, one size fits all" types, they will always have the choice of a gasoline car. For the "I'm trying to make this country habitable for my children" types, they now have a choice of an electric car. It's truly a choice, because no one is forcing anyone to buy anything. Governments use rebates and tax breaks as a means to motivate or persuade a population, but you could call it coercion if you like. Personally, I realize the oil supply is finite, and while I most likely will not see the end of that supply in my lifetime, I recognize that there is one, and I'm one of the "children" types. I'm ecstatic that I now have a choice.
Either way, plowing into a vehicle traveling 60 mph on a 75 mph freeway is sign of that individual needing to be taken off the road permanently. This the reason that America has multiple lanes, usually segmented into fast, slow, and cruise.
Let's not pull the whole "your not cool enough to be on the road" bullshit.
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Here in Phoenix AZ, Discount Cab has an entire fleet of Prius cabs. It's actually kinda cool to see.
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Motorcycles also pollute 3x times as much as SUVs.
I hear this a lot, but I have yearly test documentation that says otherwise... with both cruiser and sportbikes...
I swear, it's like people believe anything...
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I did, in my first post in this thread. Just one more detail that doesn't support your argument, so you want to pretend it doesn't exist.
No matter how many scenarios you come up with, you won't be able to find one where an electric car significantly slows you down, unless the driver is a robot, or otherwise wearing a diaper... 1) YOU SAVE A LOT OF TIME NOT STOPPING FOR GAS. 2) YOU ARE GOING TO HAVE TO STOP FOR OTHER REASONS.
Absolutely not. LA to NY is quite doable.
I did, you complete dumb fuck. You said "How do you park on the street (no meters, no lines, just on a regular side-street in front of someone's house) and get charged?" It's not an irrelevant "new feature", it's an answer to the question YOU ASKED. Now you want to pretend I'm going off the subject, because I directly addressed your scenario, which you contrived specifically to try and make electric cars look bad. Since it went the other way on you, you want to backpedal and disown that one now...
YOU WEREN'T TALKING ABOUT THE CHARGING PROCESS. YOU WERE TALKING ABOUT "an onboard computer that will give you readings." Explain how "an onboard computer" would now do an "amp measure" "followed by charging it to full" after a battery swap, while you are driving... Oh, that's right, you're just backpedaling again...
YOU suffer a deficiency. End of story. I'm tired of trying to nail jello to the wall, as you ignore my straightforward answers as if they don't exist, and backpedal out when the facts aren't supporting your baseless assertions.
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1) YOU SAVE A LOT OF TIME NOT STOPPING FOR GAS.
How is that a benefit? You can't stop for gas, you have to stop for the night. As far as I know, no electric car currently sold holds as much energy as an even small 10 gallon tank. So what do you do when the energy is expended? Magic some more in there?
2) YOU ARE GOING TO HAVE TO STOP FOR OTHER REASONS.
As a healthy male traveling alone, I take a couple bags of calories and enough fluids to get me through the trip. I stop for gasoline when the tank reaches 1/4, and stop for no other reasons. I usually pee when that happens, but I often don't even have to pee that often. You may have prostate cancer. I've traveled with an old guy and a pregnant woman (separate times) and I understand that sometimes I have to stop more often. But this isn't about that. This is about losing the ability to just drive. You have to stop and park the car for a long time to get enough energy back in it to continue. Regardless of any other reasons you manufacture, the loss of the ability to continue driving is the loss of a feature. The loss of the ability to quickly refuel is the loss of a feature.
It's not an irrelevant "new feature", it's an answer to the question YOU ASKED.
Parking for a couple weeks to continue driving isn't applicable to the question of cross country driving.
LA to NY is quite doable.
You are a liar. You tell me how you get from LA to NYC in 48 hours in any commercially available electric car. Assume catheters and colostomy bags, if you like. Go ahead and give me a timeline of someone doing that now. Since you claim it's "quite doable" lets hear it.
YOU WEREN'T TALKING ABOUT THE CHARGING PROCESS.
No, I was talking about charging. When you swap the batteries, they will be low. They will have to be charged. They will be tested, charged (which includes testing, as long as you monitor the correct things) and tested again. Then you assert, that after that process, the batteries will be bad. I won't deny that there will be some that will fail in a manner that test better than they actually perform. And in that case, you just get another battery swap and you are good.
YOU WERE TALKING ABOUT "an onboard computer that will give you readings." Explain how "an onboard computer" would now do an "amp measure" "followed by charging it to full" after a battery swap, while you are driving...
It wouldn't. You'd test it as part of the charging process. I was stating what you'd do in the case that happened to you. Then I explored the separate and unrelated idea of checks during the charging process that would help reduce that from happening. Hopefully to a level below that of bad gas causing a problem.
You are so out to prove your point, you aren't even making it. Electric cars can't make cross country trips like gasoline powered cars can. If you want to prove me wrong, prove me wrong. Give a specific car and charging locations to get a car from LA to NYC in under 48 hours. If it can't be done, but you think it could be done shortly, then share what it would take. Compare the features of the car you choose with something like an Accord (the number one selling car, at least for the last month that popped up on my Google search).
Learn to love Alaska
There are fairly minor increments to the ICE system - most of the rapid depreciation of an ICE model comes when a new body style is brought out!
The first few years of electric and hybrid production cars had a lot of "problems" which were corrected or significantly improved in newer models. Until the technology reaches a plateau, the earlier vehicles will have real drawbacks compared to the most recent.
Of course, you're talking about a 15% difference in value (relative to your original investment) over a 10 year period, or a 1.5% difference per year. On a $30k vehicle, that's about $38/mo. One would hope you're saving that much in maintenance and fuel costs.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Now cars. I've worked out that to make it worth while replacing my last-gen European turbodiesel (40 miles to the US gallon) with a hybrid, Diesel will need to hit around $20/US gallon, based on typical mileage. It's a pointless waste of money. EVs are even worse. To replace my wife's town car with an EV and make it worthwhile, fuel would need to hit nearly $40/US gallon. If it does, whether or not to buy and EV will be the least of most people's worries.
Sad, really. I liked the idea of an EV. But when it actually came to it, it made sense to spend the same amount of money on "boring" energy saving, generating and food growing projects.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Referring also to the post above, I get about the same economy as you from a similar sized European TDI. Unless I drive at illegal speeds...which of course I never do. It's a simple fact that once above the speeds at which the Government figures get calculated, the reduced drag tires,streamlining and so on of a hybrid are offset by the more efficient engine in a Diesel, which means that at autobahn speeds the fuel consumption is similar with the Diesel usually having the edge. Except that most hybrids really don't want to run all day at Autobahn speeds, whereas most TDis are perfectly happy at 160kph.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
it's not true. do you have any idea what kind of electronics you need to be able to capture energy from regenerative braking? they don't capture all of it, just a small part, but that's still a lot.
But there's no way that ultra cap is going to store the energy needed to go more than say 10 (or even 1) in the ultra caps. All the ones I've seen have less energy density than lead-acid batteries.
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Community is a cartel
Of course, the 10% figure is a crock, but so is the 25% figure on non-electric cars. I have two cars, both about 10 years old, that have a Kelly Blue Book price of 25-35% of their new price. When they were 5 years old, the Blue Book was about 60% of new MSRP. This isn't the 80s where a 10 year old car was fit for the scrap heap. If you treat a new car right these days, it can still run and look almost new when it is 10 years old.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
Lithium battery production is hardly a carbon neutral set of processes and most of the world's electricity is generated by coal, oil or gas burning. I for one will welcome the failure of the electric car, the hybrid car and the hydrogen car. Farm waste sourced biocrude is the only short-term solution that can be rolled out quickly enough to make a difference and will actually solve more than just the CO2 and peak oil problems. It took 50 years and 2 world wars to create the petroleum infrastructure we take for granted, electric and hydrogen transport just throw that infrastructure away requiring a whole new, totally incompatible infrastructure. Truth be told, I'd be glad to see the private car die altogether.
"I hope you like Guinness, Sir. I find it a refreshing substitute for, er... food." Col. Jack O'Neil, SG-1
Are the drivers where you are really so terrible they can't make room for cars joining a road?
As I said, where I live, a slow car is dangerous. No, people don't make room. A good portion of the drivers don't even have licenses.
No one mentioned the reason why I'd get an EV. I'm in the northeast and drive 2 miles to work each way. With the salt on the road plus never getting my car to warm up, my muffler and exhaust pretty much falls of every 2 years like clockwork. Everybody's so concerned about the range. Take a look at how far you drive everyday. Should be in the range of the current crop of EV's. And if you're worried about vacations or road trips, rent a car. They're like 30 bucks a day w/ unlimited miles at thrifty. You can drive the heck out of them then return
Having driven a heavily-loaded big rig over the Grapevine, I can attest that slow cars are worse than anything short of a rockslide. When you're climbing a steep grade, every bit of the 1800 foot lbs of torque that Cummins engine is putting out is being used to get that big ass up the hill - and down it. If you have to slow down because granny can't find the gas, you have to downshift. Shifting gears in a truck isn't like shifting in a car - you either have to double-clutch, or you have to match your RPMs to your transmission speed _exactly_, or it won't go into gear - and double-clutching only works within a band of RPMs. If you're over- or under-revved, it's not going into gear, and that big dog will flat out stop and start rolling backwards if you don't recover quickly enough when you're going uphill - if you're going down, granny just started a new career as a hood ornament.
Yes, trucks have brakes. Brakes on trucks are not designed to hold a load on a hill, they're designed to stop the truck, fully loaded, on dry, flat pavement. If the truck or pavement does not match those conditions, it will take longer to stop the truck. Yes, a truck-trailer combination weighing 40,000 lbs can take longer to stop than a truck-trailer combination weighing 80,000 lbs.
Trucks are designed to be slowed on a grade by the engine brake - that thing that makes the loud brp-brp-brp-brp-brp-brpbrpbrpbrpBRPBRPBRPBRP! noise when he's rolling through town. If it's not in gear, and it's on a grade, it's not stopping. Period.
Off the subject a bit, but still related: Consider, when you see a sign in your town that says "engine brakes not permitted" or some similar ordinance, that trucks cannot safely brake in anything other than perfect conditions without using an engine brake. Also consider that semi-tractors do not have DOT crash safety requirements, and that only in the last 3 years have any trucks ever been manufactured (Freightliner Cascadia and International ProStar) that come close to meeting the crash-safety requirements for passenger vehicles - including rollover and crush tests. Consider that the ordinance in question may very well be ignored by a seasoned driver - and may very well kill the inexperienced driver who is scared he'll lose his CDL when the local yokels haul him in because his truck was too noisy for your manicured lawns. My first week driving a truck solo I almost set my trailer on fire coming into Salt Lake City from the east - because I didn't want to break the no engine brake ordinance. I expect the sirens and commotion did as much to shatter the peace and quiet of suburban SLC than my engine brakes would have done, if not more, and I'm sure it cost the local taxpayers - the ones who voted for that ordinance - quite a bit more than my loud passing would have. I got lucky, and I learned from the experience - but the next guy might not.
Truck driver, plumber, Linux systems engineer.
Ok, wait. Say I pay 20 000 euros for a new car. After five years, an electric car is worth 2000 euros on the market, while some gas-powered car is worth 5000. During that time running the gas-powered car comes to around 3000 euros per year (gas, insurance, taxes, fixing etc). Add to this interest for the possible loan et cetera, and you'll find that the cost of using a car is not the cost of the car but rather much more.
3000 euros in 5 years makes 50 euros a month. That's such a minor amount of money compared to the big picture that I'd simply not care. Also, it's very well possible that one could save 50 euros a month because electricity is cheaper than gas..
I know someone already debunked your reply, but I have to chime-in on this.
This citation needed parroting of wikipedia has to fucking stop.
No, it has only begun and it needs to go further. I'm here to learn and discuss. Not to hear some random person's opinions. Part of the problem with today's culture of anti-intellectualism is that opinions are as good as facts. People go onto radio, television, and corporate meetings with completely incorrect opinions and if they play them right, people think they are facts. This is causing innumerable problems. Governments passing bad laws, corporations making stupid decisions, consumers buying the wrong products due to misinformation, voters making bad choices.
Here at Slashdot, I love seeing citations. It makes me feel good that I finally waded through the BS and found a glimmer of truth. And I try to remember the citation for the next time I find myself surrounded by a bunch of people with opinions. Nothing is better than stopping a big highly-opinionated debate with something like "According to the study by Bernz and Wilson in 2008, the correct number is 42."
For a start, you'd need to find a swap station with compatible batteries. Secondly making the batteries swappable places significant design constraints on where you can locate the batteries, you can no longer stick some here and there in the dead (as in not easy to use) spaces of the car. It will also limit the battery technology that can be used.
Also, in a battery swap system what will you do if you get a bad battery that just dies in the middle of nowhere 50 miles from where you just got it. Whose responsibility is it? How do you take it back?
I disagree that the risk for a swapped battery failing is the same as it would be for personal battery, if you have your own battery the capacity will slowly degrade over time, with a swapped battery, you won't know how long your replacement will last until you have it. Ok, I guess this could be worked around if the swap stations actively monitor their batteries properly and actually replace them when they should. So, I guess my disagreement is mostly based on how I think it will work in practise, rather than how it could theoretically work.
There is also the the issue with infrastructure, building the infrastructure for a battery swap station system requires a lot more overhead than simple charging stations will and you will only be able to use swap stations that are part of your leasing agreement, and then only if they have suitable batteries for your car, whereas you wouldn't need to worry about that with a simple charging station, just as you don't have to worry about only being able to go to a certain companies gas stations to fill up your car.
IMO, the a battery swap system is a poor method of charging an electric car, it is really looking at the way we use gas cars and apply it to electric disregarding the significant differences in the technologies.
With electric, there are far more opportunities to keep a car charged than there is with gas. You can make sure it is topped up every night at home. Slow charging points can be placed in every other parking space, so you can charge it while you are at work or at the the shops. Fast charge stations can replace gas stations on the highways, if you've been driving 200 miles you should probably take a break anyway, so you pull in top the station, plug it in, go and get a coffee and bite to eat (or whatever) and come back 15 minutes later with enough of a charge to take you another 200 miles.
Another workable solution is the series hybrid, a car with enough battery to last around 50 miles, suitable for most day-to-day uses, and when the battery runs low the gas engine kicks in as a generator to directly power the car with the excess charging the battery, this could also work with the gas-fuelled generator as a trailer for regular electric on long journeys, and the trailer could be hired just for the long journeys. This allows the existing gas refuelling infrastructure to be kept and used for electric, while still keeping the benefits of electric for >90% of use cases.
If you are concerned about future value, lease it. Then you have no reason to be concerned about future value. For more information about the Nissan LEAF, you can find it at http://livingleaf.info/