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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
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.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
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
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?
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.
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
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.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
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.
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.
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.
Gas turbines have been tried in cars, but the problem is that a large mass spinning at extremely high speeds doesn't work out well in a car environment. The sudden changes in direction (both turns and especially bumps) are horrible for large turbine bearings. Something the size of a turbocharger can handle it, but the equivalent of an even a small aircraft APU is a different beast.
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.
Note that resistance heaters have given way to far-more-efficient heat pumps, so it's no worse a range hit than using air conditioning in summer. The HVAC on even a Leaf can be remotely fired up while still hooked to the charger.
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.
Setting the price in stone might be a bit of a problem, but they are putting warranties on batteries. The Leaf's battery warranty is 5 years/60,000 miles, Tesla's 60 kWh pack is 8 years/125,000 miles, and their 85 kWh pack is 8 years, unlimited mileage.
Even with all that, an electric still isn't workable for my own use case, though it comes close. It's still the whole road trip issue for me. A Leaf would fit 90% of my driving, but it's that last 10% that's the deal-breaker. Sure, I could rent something for the long trips, but that can get expensive.
Oh, no! You have walked into the slavering fangs of a lurking grue!