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Electric Cars: Drivers Love 'Em, So Why Are Sales Still Low?
cartechboy writes "The electric car challenge is what insiders call "getting butts in seats" — and a lot of butts today still belong to humans who are not yet buying electric cars. The big question is: Why? Surveys show drivers are interested in electric cars--and that they love them once they drive them. EVs also cost less to maintain (though more to buy in the first place) and many experts say they're simply nicer to drive. So what's the problem? Disinterested dealers, uneven distribution, limited supplies, and media bias are some potential challenges. Or maybe it's just lousy marketing--casting electric cars as a moral imperative or a duty, like medicine you have to take."
Infrastructure
Range
...when I can buy a used one for $5,000 and expect it to last me five to ten years without major maintenance.
It's as simple as that.
I live in an apartment building. I've discussed the matter with the building management but we haven't come up with an answer. While new buildings must have electrical hookups for electric cars, there is no incentive to retrofit old buildings.
...laura
Let me know when a used one is in my working-class budget range, and we'll talk.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
PRICE!! I'd buy one in a heartbeat if they were a sane price compared to a gasoline equivalent.
Seems obvious to me. I, like many others, live in an apartment. My parking spot doesn't have an electrical outlet anywhere nearby, and neither does my office parking lot.
The three year lease on my Nissan Leaf is over in a few months. I absolutely adore the car. It's been the best commuter vehicle I've had in all ways but one -- range. This is the biggest complaint of all those I've shown it to, as well. Many of the co-workers and friends who have ridden in my car over the years want one! Then they hear what the range is like and they lose interest.
My daily round trip (+lunch) comes in at just under 50 miles. With the highway speeds in my area (75 and up) and putting slightly better tires on it instead of the no-traction-in-rain stocks that I went through all too quickly, my real-world run-until-empty range is about 65 miles (When new with the super-eco tires and driving 65 on the freeway, I could get closer to 80-85 miles of range). This means that by the time I get home I can go back out to shop and return, and that's about it. I cannot use the Leaf for longer weekend runs, road trips, or even for the once every three weeks that I have to commute from San Jose to San Fran (about 120mi round trip). Therefore I have to have a second gas-powered car.
Being that I work in Silicon Valley, owning one gas car and leasing an electric car alongside is feasible. With how much I save on gas the lease is nearly 75% covered anyway. With my office soon installing chargers at work my range will extend considerably. But for most of my friends having more than one car is out of the question, budgetary-wise, and the limitations of a car that can only go about 65 miles before it has to charge for 5 hours (my usual L2 charge is 4h:40m or so, overnight) are just too restrictive. With L3 chargers being few and far between, and often having a cost associated with their use, they don't help much. So, no EV for them.
When my lease is up I'll probably try to get a Toyota RAV-4 EV. It supposedly has a real-world range of over 110mi - nearly double my Leaf. It's more affordable than the Tesla models, and more important to me, I can fit in it (I'm very tall-torso and short-legged; I simply can't get in the sports-car-low roof line of the Model S, and no Model X's exist that they will let a consumer sit in to see if they fit!). I'm bummed that Nissan hasn't found a way to 2x the range of the Leaf, or I'd gladly stick with that model. The Tesla-drivetrain RAV4 is still more expensive than I like, but it'll fit my EV driving needs far better.
When battery technology increases enough that 150+mi range EVs are Leaf-level affordable _then_ you will see sales take off in the urban areas. Any advancements in fast-rate (L3 or better) charging will help that too. Until then, for all of their benefits and wonderfulness to drive, they'll remain a niche for packed-urban-area dwellers who can afford to have a second, dedicated commute car.
Up here, at least. In the depths of winter I think you'd be using a lot more power for heating than for driving. Though, it would blow hot air right away, which would be nice.
I imagine battery performance would be seriously hurt by the cold as well. I don't know how bad NiMH and Li-ion drop off in cold, maybe not as much as lead acid but still quite a lot I imagine, being how chemistry works... Get a big battery blanket, I guess.
I'm yet to notice any EV rollin' around here, anyway.
Sent from my PDP-11
but we still want them to be able to go on long distance journeys a few times a year for family holidays
I'd like to take a moment to introduce you to a fledgling little company known as Hertz.
Electricity generation in the US, by energy source.
"Coal 37%
Natural Gas 30%
Nuclear 19%
Hydropower 7%
Other Renewable 5%
Petroleum 1%"
A cheap electric car that performs well will sell like crazy.
Define "cheap". I bought my Nissan LEAF because, compared to every other new hybrid or ICE-only vehicle I looked at, it was the cheapest option.
Now, I was looking to buy new, not used, which means I was looking at a higher price point than a lot of people, and I am willing (and able) to spend a little more money up front in order to save it over the longer term. Within those parameters, though, and making some assumptions about the price of fuel (which, I have to admit, are pretty far off base right now; I didn't anticipate such a dramatic drop), the three EVs I looked at were all significantly cheaper than any of the other options over an eight-year time horizon -- and that was without even considering the lower maintenance costs, didn't factor in the tax credits and included some pretty pessimistic assumptions about EV resale value.
With the tax credits available, the break-even point against the next-best vehicle (the Honda Insight) as just a bit over two years. And the price of the LEAF has dropped significantly since I did the analysis.
Assuming a LEAF or an i-MiEV or similar fits your driving needs, they are very cost-effective options. And my LEAF is a lot of fun to drive; it performs quite well.
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They will do this because it offers a competitive advantage, the same way that offering free wifi does.
You have got to be joking - do you have ANY concept of how much it costs to add a WiFi router to an internet connection the business already has, vs. running a high-load electrical connection out to even just TWO parking spaces? Not to mention cost of the electricity, not to mention the high likelihood of outside connections being vandalized...
There is no way you can justify the cost of adding car charging outlets to every small business.
This is the reason Electric is failing, because there's just so large a gap between the fantasy and reality.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Get a garage, the fun will last longer. My '91 is still going strong.
show me an electric car I can slap my truck nuts on without it looks like I'm doing it ironically, and you got yourself a sale
how many pairs of boxer shorts should you own?
If you can afford an electric car, your budget likely isn't being squeezed by the cost of conventionally fuels. Those who actually would be helped substantially by the savings an electric car provides generally don't have the income and/or credit score to purchase a brand new electric vehicle. The other problems with electric vehicles:
Range - For the most part, you can drive a conventionally fueled vehicle so long as it's mechanically sound and has fuel. Trip from Florida to Alaska? No problem, so long as you remember to stop for gas.
Inconvenience - Forget to fill up your tank and you can solve the problem with a call to a friend (or a long walk) and 5 gallon fuel container. Forget to charge your EV and you need a tow, which is generally a lot more expensive than doing the walk of shame, to a gas station. You have to plan your trips around the level of charge in your car. Just got home from a road trip to your aunt Susy's and now the school is calling that your kid needs to be picked up because he puked his guts out? Sorry, little Jimmy, you'll have to wait while the car has enough capacity to make it to school and back home.
Electricity - Sure, it's cheaper than gas today, but what happens if electric cars started catching on? They'd have to build more coal and natural gas plants (there's still that pesky fear of nuclear and renewables aren't feasible everywhere) and everyone gets to pay for them in higher utility costs. See, very little petroleum (roughly 1%) is actually used for electricity generation, so a shift towards electric cars would actually just make gasoline and diesel cheaper, while every fucking thing you use electricity for becomes more expensive. Now, I'm sure the car buyer who walks past the Model S isn't worried about it costing twice as much to microwave a burrito or watch the Superbowl on his 60" TV, but it is still something to consider.
Battery lifespan - If the battery craps out, you could be on the hook for an extremely expensive repair. This will be a bigger problem in the future as more electric cars start entering the second-hand market.
---
DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
Yep, you got it. When I run the math, it just is not in my favor yet.
I drive a truck now, and have been looking to get a second car to commute with to keep the miles off the truck, as I like having a truck but never want to have to buy another one. When I run the math on a Leaf, or Focus EV the break even point is way out there. $35k ballpark vs. ~15k for gasoline. At $4/gallon that is 5000 gallons of gas for a break even point of roughly 200k miles. Given my commuting use of about 5k miles per year I am looking at a 40 year break even compared to a 40 mpg econobox. I'll still be racking up about 5k miles per year on long trips in my truck. So for me, despite the desire, the math stinks.
I have seen this trend on a lot of the for sale Leaf's, commuting modest distances doesn't rack up many miles. Lots of folks end up selling simply because they change jobs and end up with a long commute, but the range isn't adequate. Sort of a catch 22.
also, some of the other electric cars....are just ugly.
If Tesla can make an electric car that looks as nice and sexy as the Model S, why can't the other manufacturers?
Perhaps, they don't want to or think it won't sell.
Two reasons:
1. Battery technology is not there yet - so the car has to be as aerodynamically efficient as possible. A Mercedes W140 with an electric motor probably would not go very far.
2. If your electric car looks exactly the same as a gasoline car, how will anyone be able to see that you are driving an electric car and saving the planet?
1. I like to do a lot of my own maintenance but the high voltage warnings under the hood scare the bejesus out of me.
2. I don't drive enough to make it economically justifiable.
3. I'm old and cantankerous and have noticed mostly hipsters drive electric cars. Not really a hipster fan.
Here in Australia the Leaf and Miev are both above $50k. I can buy two corollas and ten years of fuel with that amount of money.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Price, range and infrastructure.
Maintenance, schmaintenance, when was the last time you heard of an American spending more in something and thinking ahead to spend less later? (see: phone contracts)
Anything that only goes only 60 miles at a time and then takes all night to be able to start again is worthless other than for very short, painstakingly planned, local trips.
Even if the infrastructure *was* there, who is able to stop every 60 miles for several hours on end?
Even if you're buying it to be "green" (ugh), how much energy was needed and how much pollution was created in the manufacturing process vs. that of a dead-dinosaur automobile? There are reports that these figures are tremendously high *just* for the batteries. Are you really causing less pollution or just relocating it?
Speaking purely in terms of range capability, I think the Chevy Volt has the right idea. The propulsion is 100% electric. The batteries are charged by plugin or an gas-powered generator, so you use no fuel for short trips but can still make longer ones when you need to.
I've been trying to price out electric car ROIs as well and I'm getting basically the opposite outcome. They all seem to be ~$7500 more after the tax credit than the comparable gas powered car (e.g. leaf vs versa S plus) and that pays for quite a lot of gasoline. I calculate ~65k miles worth at 35mpg and $4/gal and that doesn't include the electric power costs.
Using this calculator I keep coming up with a break even point of about 8 years.
Cost of New Gas Car: $13970
Fuel Efficency of Gas Car: 35mpg
Cost of Gas: $4/gal
Cost of Electric Car: $21300
Cost of Electricity: $0.06/kWhr
kWh/100 miles: 34
Annual Driving Distance: 10000mi
Knowledge Brings Fear
First, we are a 2 truck family, so we could easily replace 1 of them with an EV, leaving 1 gas truck for long trips (or a "volt" technology version with plenty of range).
Selection is a problem. All of the current EVs are little cars, which are only useful for people who want little cars. There are no big vehicles in EV trim.
Price is also a problem. The EV version of all the cars is much more expensive than the gas powered version. The price needs to be the same, then you'll find customer interest.
Give me a EV version of my 2012 GMC Yukon XL Denali and sell it to me for about the same price as I paid for this one ($58K) and I'm seriously interested. Even better, put Volt technology into it, give it a small engine for generator duty for long trips, batteries for all the small around town trips, and I'd pay about $5K more for it than I did for the gas only version.
I suspect that the true cost would have to be $20K more, which I won't pay, which is why there isn't a "volt" version of the Suburban/Yukon/Escalade line of full size SUVs.
Electric cars are still just too expensive for most buyers and don't come in the right options. No EV minivans, full size SUVs or pick-ups means a lot of buyers can't find an electric version of the type of car they want. I think the Model S is an awesome car but it's effectively a luxury sedan and the market for luxury sedans isn't that big. To get "butts in seats" someone has to come up with an EV pickup and sedan which get comparable range to their gas counterparts at the same price point.
Hopefully battery prices will fall significantly with the new technologies being developed, but until they do I think we'll continue to see more gas powered cars than hybrids, and more hybrids than full EVs.
For most people, it isn't just a few times a year. The national average commute to work is about 16 miles, or a 32-mile round trip. The worst case range on a Nissan leaf is only 47 miles. So if you have to make an extra stop across town to drop your kid off at school or pick up groceries, then even a driver with an average commute under worst-case conditions might not make it home without a charge. So for about half of all drivers (assuming the median is probably near the mean), electric cars aren't practical or are just barely practical when brand new.
Oh, but it gets worse. The older the battery gets, the less capacity it has. By the time a car is ten years old, I would expect it to have about half as much range as it did when it was new. Thus, the range of a 10-year-old EV is likely to be inadequate for the overwhelming majority of drivers in their day-to-day activities.
The magic number is 200 miles for the worst-case range. This ensures that when the vehicle is a few years old, its range will likely still be enough to handle the majority of owners' commutes. This translates to about a 300 mile average range. In other words, the batteries on existing EVs are undersized by more than a factor of 4 from what I would consider to be a usable vehicle. They're simply nowhere close to being ready for prime time.
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which means I was looking at a higher price point than a lot of people,
Well that's why people aren't following you to all buy EVs.
No, that doesn't explain it, because there are plenty of other people who buy new cars. In fact, the article is all about new car purchases.
Incidentally, your post motivated me to check out the Leaf's 0-60 time, which appears to be 7.9 seconds, which is indeed fairly reasonable. So now we're just looking at price.
It's actually even a little better than that -- not that 7.9 seconds is wrong, but the acceleration feels even zippier than the number expresses, partly because it's front-loaded as compared to ICE vehicles with similar 0-60 times and partly because it feels really cool to accelerate like that in near silence.
Put it this way... my teenage kids' friends think my LEAF is more awesome than their dads' BMWs and Audis, even though those cars are actually more capable in virtually every respect (and more expensive!). All it takes is me putting the pedal all the way down once and they're sold. And it's not because they care a bit about "saving the planet".
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I think you got it backwards... The poster talking about Hertz was saying that you can buy an EV car to drive around town, when you need to drive cross country 1 or 2 times a year, rent a gas car from Hertz.
Well, none of the gas cars I looked at were $14K. The cheapest was $18K (IIRC), mostly because I wanted an apples-to-apples comparison and the EVs are pretty loaded. And, I actually wanted all the gizmos. In addition, I drive quite a bit more than 10K miles per year, which increases the operational cost advantage of EVs.
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In Norway they sell well.
Then again they have a high income and the government have likely tried to force people into that direction, they likely have a higher social environmental interest than people in the U.S. do.
Right now electric cars are for very specific people who have fairly specific needs plus they are missing critical features.
There are two sorts of people who can use a modern electric car: People who commute well within a basic battery range (less than 100km round trip) and the other are people like me who live downtown and mostly need a car to avoid using the terrible bus system or bike in bad weather.
Quite simply it is impossible to build a reasonably priced electric car that can match a gasoline car so the simple solution is to not bother. So if you make a case to the less than 100km round trip commuter that they will basically never buy gas for their commuting again then you will have their attention.
If you tell me as a very infrequent driver and generally short trip driver that I will never buy gas again then you will have my attention.
But if you lie to me and tell me that electric is basically the same as a gas car then I will call BS and you won't have my attention.
On top of all that there are a few bad design decisions. First is they keep trying to put too big a battery in the cars; this is just stupid until batteries get cheaper and better. Just meet the average commuter's needs for a round trip with margin and you will sell them a car. The next design disaster is when they try to simulate a real gas car by putting a piston engine in as in the volt. The best solution would be to have a low power gas turbine (5-10hp) that can charge the car's battery slowly. This way you eliminate range anxiety by allowing the person to realize that they don't have enough juice to complete the journey so they kick in the turbine (or automatically when they set a destination that is beyond the battery's range) which will buy more range. If the turbine doesn't provide enough immediate range the driver could pull over and get a coffee while the turbine adds a mile of range every minute or two.
Then you roof the car in solar so that the battery is charging during sunny days. For a commuter this would be great as they might use 30% of their charge getting to work and come out having recovered 10%. Then when they get home they would get an hour or two more charging not quite topping them up but reducing their electrical bill.
For an occasional user like me a solar roof might mean that my battery is nearly always charged as it should get topped off most sunny days.
Lastly there are all kinds of engineering gaps in these cars. One interesting one is heating in colder climates. In the winter around here a smaller battery would be eaten just keeping me warm, especially if I am waiting in the car. One simple solution would be to have an alcohol heater which would be simple and single purposed for keeping me warm. This would be great if you could turn it on 10 minutes before you get into the car and it would warm up the car and maybe even the batteries.
Then the last and most important bit which is battery life. That is how many years will these batteries run the car. We all have laptops where the batteries have cacked after a year or two; often fairly suddenly, one moment we had a battery life and then the battery is complaining seconds after unplugging the laptop. So the car companies need to either warranty the batteries and maybe even set an eventual replacement price in stone. This way you know that in 8 years they will sell you a new set of cells for $2,000 or something. This might be a bit of a risk for the car companies but I would think that the odds are in favor of better cheaper batteries being generally available in less than 8 years.
Lastly there is nearly zero customer education. Most people don't know that most of these cars can be charged slowly with a normal outlet and that the "advanced" outlet is basically a higher amperage dryer plug. The slower charging is important as they know that they can do things such as go to the cottage and charge the car overnight.
The stupid thing is that without fixing the above they are
Your $35K estimate for the EV is too high. However, at only 5K miles per year it's extremely unlikely that the math will work out to favor EVs for you, at least in the near term. Now, if you were driving 15K miles (like I do), it would be a different story.
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Frankly, I drive even less, just a few miles here and a few miles there. An EV would be perfect for me, if the price were similar to the gas version and if they offered a full-size SUV EV.
I do need one gas car because we do take family road trips, but I'd also consider a "volt" EV type truck with a range extender as the second "gas" car. I'd pay $5K more over the gas only version for that truck.
When that comes out, I'm a customer, I personally think EV is the future, the cost just needs to come down.
Cost of Unleaded Regular gasoline in 2003 was avg. $1.50 (http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/surveymost?ap), and is $3.60 in 2013. We can likely expect similar rises in price over the next 10 years.
You might want to run your cost calculations with a higher value on the price of gas to see a more accurate picture.
I welcome our new 99% overlords.
I'd love a diesel hybrid, especially a truck (can you say "jobsite power"?), but the reason we don't have cars with electric motors in each wheel is the unpleasant things which happen to wheels.
Putting complex parts outboard where they'll get a water (or in the Rust Belt, salty water and urea in winter) bath isn't great for longevity. Cables would wear and short, especially on the front wheels. Multiple motors would be very expensive and at the size needed could not be very robust.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
I should also mention that when it comes to the "with tax credits" side of the evaluation, I had not only the $7500 federal tax credit, but also a $4800 state tax credit. I'm actually philosophically opposed to subsidies like that, but I'll take any route I can find to legally reduce my tax liability. The fact that I projected a break-even point within the lifetime of the battery warranty even without the credits was impressive, and convincing, to me, though.
BTW, in practice the car has turned out to be an even better deal than I projected. I hadn't considered the fact that my LEAF requires virtually no maintenance -- really just consumables like tires, wiper blades, etc. -- and I overestimated the amount of charging I'd have to do at home. In practice I do 90% of my charging at the office, letting my employer pay for the electricity. Also I had budgeted for a 240V charger installation at home, but ended up decided that the slow 110V charger that came with the car was adequate.
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My daily commute is less than 10km, and I would love to have and affordable, safe, less-consumptive/polluting vehicle. I would be very tempted by a car-like EV that was very small and light with range 50km if it cost something like $5-7k. (for $10k I can get a small used ICE that burns absurdly little gas.) It has to be able to take me up a decent-sized hill at 50 kph, though. An in-town EV could make a lot of sense, market-wise, but I think it should be purposed-designed, not just an ICE vehicle with a the engine swapped out.
Otherwise, the problem is that EV or hybrids try to deliver long range and highway performance and wind up simply being too expensive. Hybrids in particular wind up carrying so much extra weight that you can usually do better pure EV *xor* ICE. It doesn't make sense to pretend that the technology supports non-premium EVs yet (Tesla is great, but it's a sports car at sports car prices.) In some sense, the problem is that petroleum ICE sets a high bar of energy density. I often wonder if there's a place for an EV that has an optional IDE add-in module for range (maybe fuel cell some day, maybe petroleum+turbine today or just a conventional diesel.)
You could potentially refill the H2 on the side of the road, just like gasoline. Not so with a battery
SJWs are the new boogeyman. -Me
Nuclear could be 75% of our power, that is the base load. Renewables could be the other 25%. (the percentages could vary, it could be 50/50, or 65/35, the principle remains the same)
Within a generation, if we wanted to, we could rid ourselves of fossil fuels completely.
For some reason, we just don't want to. I support it, but I feel like I'm in the minority.
You go on long trips four times a year?
I go on about 4 trips a year that are well outside the range of an EV. It only has to be more than 100 miles to hit that limit.
Why would you want to, especially if you're renting because you need capabilities(range, cargo space, etc...) that your normal vehicle doesn't have?
My normal truck is a $60K Yukon XL Denali, it has air conditioned seats. I think you'll find it hard to find a rental with air conditioned seats. :) You'll also find it hard to rent a truck with more space than mine, short of a U-Haul (and those aren't really very "luxury".
Frankly, this is the problem. I'm the target customer for Tesla, I can afford one. But I'm not interested because it isn't a full size SUV. Even when it comes out, it is likely to be so expensive, I won't care.
I could afford it, but I didn't end up with money by making such foolish financial decisions. It either makes economic sense, or it doesn't. When it does, I'm all over EV, I believe EV cars and trucks are the future, once the cost comes down.
I don't need 250 miles of range in an EV, 75 miles is plenty. The 250 miles doesn't help me because when I need that, I really need 500-1,000 miles of range, refilling my gas tank takes 5 minutes, recharging a 250 mile range SUV takes 5 hours.
Next year we're taking the kids to Disney World, it is a 2 day drive from Texas, if you drive all day. 3 days if you take your time. An EV doesn't work for that, so I either need a gas truck, or a "Volt" technology version, which I would be interested in, if the cost were about $5K more than my current truck. Any more than that and it isn't worth it.
Can we fly to Florida? Yes, but I hate the airlines, airports, and all the crap that goes along with flying these days (and I say that as a pilot!), I would much rather drive. Driving doesn't save any money, the cost to drive my truck to Florida and back is actually about the same as 5 coach round trip tickets. I can charter a plane, but that is 4 times the price, but interestingly enough, about the same cost as 5 first class round trip tickets.
So we drive and make an adventure out of it.
If your car gets x mpg in the US, your cost of gasoline over the lifetime of the car is about $1M / x. ($5 per gallon * 200,000 miles / mpg) So a 20mpg SUV will cost you $50K in gas, or a 50mpg Prius will cost you $20K. (Pro-rate if you're just keeping the car a few years, of course.) If the price per mile for electric is equivalent to 100 mpg, then it's going to save you only $10K over a Prius, but $40K over an SUV.
I live in the San Francisco Bay Area. A lot of the driving I do is less than 10 miles each way, but there are a lot of 40-50 mile trips that I make frequently (one is to work, on the days I don't telecommute), also between Silicon Valley and SF or Berkeley. I'd need a car with at least 200-mile range that I can charge at home in 6 hours to feel really comfortable driving that. If I could afford to maintain three cars (I don't have parking for them, and would rather not pay for the insurance and registration), I'd be fine with the current electric cars, which would get used for most non-commute driving, but my wife and I would still have full-range cars if we needed them, though I'd rather wait a few years.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Not enough range, refueling takes too long.
Gotta fix one or the other.
There is no -1 Disagree mod. Slashdot.org/faq defines mod options. USE IT.
At only 5 miles, I'd be at work in maybe 10 to 15 minutes.
I live 4.4 km from work. I can bike there in maybe 10 minutes (I've biked there lots but never actually timed it), but then I have to either stand around for 15 minutes to cool down, or hop in the shower before I can go to the office. Realistically, my 10-minute bicycle commute takes a minimum of 30 minutes.
Then there's winter. Last night we got 30 cm of snow. Last week we got 20 cm of snow. Two weeks ago we got 20 cm of snow. I have studded tires on the bike, but you just can't keep those things rolling in more than about 5 or 6 cm of soft snow. Even on packed snow or ice, you're looking again at double commute time, plus snow pants, goggles, etc. Add to this the time it takes to clean and maintain your drivetrain on a daily basis due to slush and sand.
So yeah, biking to work is an option, and one that I have used, but to say that it's basically equivalent to driving for any commute over about 1 km is not being realistic in my experience.
I am literally 3000 tokens away from the chaotic crossbow --Stephen
What has changed? The price of solar panels. It will have come down even further.
Perhaps, or perhaps they will go up as well.
To get oil to $500 a barrel, you need massive inflation. Oil is priced in dollars, it won't go anywhere near that high, short of a major war, major shortage, or major inflation. All of those are likely to affect the price of everything.
Anyone doing the math on EV vs ECI should consider:
- more than the purchase price
- when doing the math, don't base the calculation on the current fuel/electricity cost, but the average cost over the next few years. (I drive ICE, here the price has gone up in about 8 years with over 30%, and there have been periods when it was 40% higher).
Where is "here"? In the US, gas prices are actually lower than they were 8 years ago. They go up and down, but overall, gas is unlikely to have huge spikes in the near future, not the timeframe of owning a car in any case.
As for "more than the purchase price", if you're referring to helping the environment, I'm not sure that is much of a valid reason. Replacing gas with coal doesn't strike me as a huge improvement. Yes, in theory coal fired power plants can be "clean", but most aren't, and I don't think many in Texas are very clean.
Frankly, if my goal is to help the environment, paying the premium to install solar PV on my roof would do more than buying an EV would.
I cycle 5.6km to work, but don't need time to cool down or change clothes. It's not a race! It takes a bit under half an hour.
(Except sometimes on the way home, when I feel like going as fast as I can.)
I can't solve winter for you, and it's not unlikely that your summer is hotter than mine. I might see ~3cm of snow, in which case I'll either take the bus (~40m), or, if all the car drivers have been scared away from the roads again, cycle down the main road, which will be nicely gritted and salted.
"Surveys show drivers are interested in electric cars--and that they love them once they drive them. "
Yeah, except the real-world has considerations outside the scope a 30-second commercial or magazine ad, or that marketers are 'uncomfortable' to address (and we're not *quite* to the point of Idiocracy where we simply do what the market-wonks tell us we should):
- range: most people seem to drive 20-30 miles to work, with commutes of approximately 20-45 minutes. Can I drive this (to AND from), plus run and get groceries, and maybe go out to a movie without being nervous about being UTTERLY out of power
- where am I supposed to charge the stupid thing? The 'spin' notwithstanding, nobody has the time to dawdle while these recharge on 220v plugs, much less the 110v-overnight-option.
- cost: contrary to popular belief, a lot of people can't afford a $30k car, particularly one that smells like it might need a new $10k battery pack after 100k miles.
-Styopa