Brief news by Ryan Maue
The recent oil price shock likely hasn’t figured into the February sales numbers at GM or Nissan, which announced their electric vehicle sales numbers for the month. Actually, there wasn’t an announcement, but you can find the information buried in a PDF file:
GM “delivered” 281 Volts in February, which is a function of the extremely slow nationwide roll-out of the newfangled buggy. This is clearly the window of opportunity with the much higher gas prices to take advantage (of) consumers who may spring the cash for an electric car. Then, they can watch their new PG&E Smart Meter spin wildly in delight. Either way, it’s very early in the game.
Indeed, with gasoline prices soaring past $4 a gallon in California and elsewhere, the demand for the Volt and Nissan Leaf should continue to soar. Coupled with generous government subsidies provided by Uncle Sam, a new Volt may provide quite a charge to the US economy, or not. With the announcement of Ipad 2.0 yesterday by Steve Jobs, early adopters will be lining up again to buy a thinner, better version of favorite toy. It’s early in the game for the Volt, Leaf, and other electric buggies, but when supply ramps up to meet the burgeoning demand, we can expect the marketplace to expand with many more options. However, until then, outfits like Consumer Reports aren’t exactly enthused with the efficiency of the Volt of the Leaf, considering the sticker.
It gets worse. CR figures the cost of recharging the Volt would work out to about 5.7 cents a mile for electric mode and 10 cents a mile for gas. Yet a Toyota Prius, which gets about 50 miles a gallon, would cost 6.8 cents a mile to operate. A Prius costs half as much as a Volt.CR seems to feel a little better about the all-electric Leaf. It borrowed one from Nissan while it awaits delivery of its own. The $35,270 electric car had its range severely restricted by the cold weather that has gripped the East, much like the Volt. The range has been averaging 65 miles, not the 100 miles that Nissan bills. Plus the mileage gauge isn’t that accurate in the cold when electric heaters gobble up kilowatts. Instead of the 36 miles of range that the car said it had, one tester got 19.
Yet CR said other than range, it liked a lot of things about the Leaf. It accelerated rapidly and climbed hills well. It said it would be a good second car in urban area if it is in “a temperate climate.” Guess that rules out the Northeast, Midwest, deserts and a bunch of other places.
Here in the UK nobody is queuing to buy electric vehicles, even though most forecourt petrol pump prices have now hit the £6.oo per gallon mark, which translates to almost US$10.00 per (imperial) gallon, which is slightly larger than a US gallon, but that’s still a horrific price. The reason is that most potential buyers are not interested and the BBC’s recent stunt of driving an electric Mini from London to Edinborough and taking longer to do it than a standard horse-drawn coach took 150 years ago proves that the biggest stumbling block for EVs is that they are, essentially, impractical when compared with a modern petrol or deisel fuelled automobile.
We have been told here in the UK that electricity demand must match supply as wind power increases its capacity in the generating mix. Never mind that wind is not a 24/7 supplier. So Leaf owners will find themselves charging at a time that does not fit into the work cycle or being unable to charge for weeks when a prolonged anticyclonic weather system hits. I expect the US, or at least California, to get into the same third world thinking. Crazy people!
Folks – do you remember the Apple II and the Tandy TSR80?
(I was the proud owner of a TSR80).
Do you remember the absolutely huge subsidies the government paid us to buy them?
If you do, then you’re much younger than I.
If electic cars are the go, then they’ll go.
Otherwise they’re gone, government subsidy or no.
Brian H says:
March 3, 2011 at 4:28 pm
Record range on open roads was 313 mi. in a controlled competition in Australia.
Yeah I know both those guys. Both glider pilots and one is my ISP. Nice business that gives excellent service to its customers but he’s bought into the green scam.
The road was dead flat and straight, they didn’t have A/C and they kept the windows closed. The car was displayed at a motor show in Brisbane. It is 2000Km frm Adelaide to Brisbane. As far as I know the car was shipped to Bris on a semi trailer (18 wheeler to US readers ). Great. Also imported from the US by AIR! I had a couple of 747 freighter drivers here a while ago and I asked how much fuel per tonne from the US to Oz. Enough to drive the car about 50,000 km on hydrocarbon fuels.
IMHO Elon Musk is going to lose his shirt and reputation on Tesla Motors which is a great pity as he’s got a very important job at SpaceX making the human race a space faring one. Go Falcons!
Here in the UK it took a BBC news reporter 4 days to travel from London to Edinburgh., complete nonsense for a car, a stagecoach could do it in 4 days. If we really want to get to grips with this, we at WUWT know how to do it, Thorium reactors producing electricity, making Hydrogen, using Hydrogen fuel cell cars.
In the UK my wonderful Government will give you $1600 off the purchase price of one of these funny elecric cars, no takers really, apart from the odd believer.
Tax Subsidy? So now we all pay for electric cars whether we use them or not? I love that – Right!
The European VW Polo, with the 1.2 Liter BlueMotion Diesel engine starts at 10,000 pounds in the UK and has a fuel economy of 67.3/91.1 MPG!!!!!
http://www.volkswagen.co.uk/#/new/polo-v/which-model/engines/fuel-consumption/
At today’s diesel price of $3.75 a gallon I could commute a daily 30-mile round trip for (drum roll…..) SIX DOLLARS AND NINETY SEVEN CENTS A WEEK!
So why is this vehicle not available in the USA???? Our Federal Government at work. Got to love our politicians and bureaucrats……….
Best,
Jose
AusieDan, “Folks – do you remember the Apple II and the Tandy TSR80?
(I was the proud owner of a TSR80). Do you remember the absolutely huge subsidies the government paid us to buy them? If you do, then you’re much younger than I.”
Not in the U.S, the only thing I remember is tax breaks for school computer donations in the 1980s that only benefited Apple Computer because it was impossible for them to compete with PC pricing via competitive bidding. It did not do anything to help Apple Computer in the real market as they still cannot not compete. Now people think that “technology” (Apple iPad) that lacks Flash Support, File Browsing/Sharing, USB Ports and the ability to Print is “genius” tech, I call it useless.
Jose,
The Skoda Fabia Greenline, which is also one of VW groups’ brands, does even better than the VW Polo:
http://www.skoda.co.uk/GBR/newcars/fabiaestate/Pages/default.aspx
battery energy/weight doubles every 18 months??????
According to whom? It’s taken 100 years to get the most recent doubling. What magic tech is in the wings that is expected to double it again.
Ref Greg Holmes comment. the trip from London to Edinburgh was by an electric
mini, it charged its battery at official charging points and took twice as long as a
stagecoach did in 1850, and didn’t produce free garden manure on the way!
I agree with Greg’s comments ref hydrogen and our Government, they think the
general public are as stupid as they are!
With my 10 year old Saturn SL1 4 door, I easily get 38 to 40mph on the highway. I can get up to 45mph if I can find a semi to draft. (Yes, I maintain the 1 car length for every 10mph rule.) Once I start tweaking the body and engine, I should be able to get a few more mph out of it.
Looking at what I paid for my 1999 Crown Vic and what a buddy spent on his Prius the difference will pay for twenty years of fuel for my Crown Vic at my rate of usage. It is even worse because his trade in car was a less than two year old Volkswagen diesel station wagon not some gas guzzler.
“It gets worse. CR figures the cost of recharging the Volt would work out to about 5.7 cents a mile for electric mode and 10 cents a mile for gas.”
Try charging that Volt at the European central-solar rate of 58.5 cents per kwh (at the plant fence). That figures out to about 13 times the current average U.S. rate at the fence. With transmission and distribution costs factored in, that would translate to about 6.5 times the current U.S. average price per kwh at the residential meter, which would run the Volt cost per mile up to 37 cents per mile.
The standard response to complaints that electric cars would require more power plants (and attendant pollution) is universally met with the response that, “Oh, we’d make those plants solar.” Got news for ya’, boys and girls: Solar economics is a horror you never want to have to face.
Go back a few generations, think steam powered automobiles (aka Horseless Carriages). Just look at all the progress that has been made since then. Now, sit back, relax, and wait, there’s a Ford (or something) in your future; I can feel it in my old bones. Kids do the darndest things, eventually.
For running around town get a velomobile. Check out velomobile.com pretty cool if you like bikes and stuff.
I can’t wait or electric and hybrid cars to become the norm. They eventfully will become much cheaper to build, buy, drive and repair than our present reciprocating gas engines. I will buy one then, but today the trouble with electric cars is cold weather. Electric motors are very efficient and therefore produce little heat. If the passengers need heat, the power comes directly from the batteries thereby draining them faster in cold weather than in warm weather. In addition, cold temperatures reduce the ability of batteries to hold a charge in the first place. You hear very little about this from the media or car magazines, you get the impression from journalists that battery driven cars will simply clobber gas cars, sorry but that’s simply not the truth. The internal combustion engine has been around for over 100 years, and there are very good reasons for this. Electric cars are good for warm climates primarily, in cold winters the owners of e-cars will face the harsh realities of their purchase. I wish them good luck if they are driving their frozen electric car in a nighttime blizzard, especially if they have kids in the back and the batteries fail. They’ll watch the toasty warm fossil fuel cars simply cruise right by, if they survive. It’s actually very serious.
Brian H says:
March 3, 2011 at 2:50 pm
“DirkH;
Inductive in roads is a pipe dream. The losses are huge, and the maintenance is impossible. A factory floor is a totally different environment.
Batteries will work fine. Users of the TeslaMotors Roadster have almost no problems with charging or range.”
Rolls Royce uses a wireless charging system in their new Silver Shopper.
http://www.gearlog.com/2011/03/no_wires_sire_rolls-royce_elec.php
(Well it’s actually not called the Silver Shopper)
Tesla users have almost no problems with the range? Good. When they have *almost* no problems, that probably mean that they end up on the hard shoulder only once in a while. They’re probably not driving much – *i* *would* have problems with the range.
I could place several Teslas around Northern Germany, though, and have some people recharge them for me so i’d use a modern variant of the Pony Express. That would work.
More about Rolls Royce’s inductive charging system: They say it achieves 90% efficiency. Don’t know if that’s true but here’s the article that says so:
http://www.gearlog.com/2011/03/no_wires_sire_rolls-royce_elec.php
Sorry… posted the same link twice… anyway, it says what it says…
DirkH says:
March 4, 2011 at 8:28 am
More about Rolls Royce’s inductive charging system: They say it achieves 90% efficiency. Don’t know if that’s true but here’s the article that says so:
http://www.gearlog.com/2011/03/no_wires_sire_rolls-royce_elec.php
Did you read all of it?
” There are no production plans imminent, although there’s no reason it couldn’t be built. Whether it costs a million dollars or a million pounds, there’s enough environmentally aware buyers, as well as those who believe in the power of one-upsmanship, to keep the Rolls-Royce factory humming. “
The BBC here in the UK recently sent a reporter out to see if he could drive an electric Mini from London to Edinburgh.
(In a petrol or diesel car you fill it with fuel and point it north – but I digress..)
By some VERY careful routing to get to charging points – during daylight hours – and wrapped up warmly to avoid putting the heater on – our brave journo did it in FOUR DAYS…
As subsequently pointed out in the press – a stagecoach 200 years ago would do it in two days..
Another point on the electric versus fossil-fuelled cars – here in the UK we suffer from something like 70% tax on our road fuel. How long, I ask myself, before the government starts taxing the electricity used to charge electric cars – are they REALLY keen to let all that lovely tax revenue disappear..? I don’t think so..!
Brad says: “As you say, early days. If battery tech meets expectations and energy/weight doubles or triples every 18 months (as expects) these become pretty useable everywhere pretty quickly.”
And whose expectations would those be, Brad? Can you cite any peer reviewed work based on actual physical data in this field? We’d be very lucky if energy:weight doubles in 100 years. I think you’ve been led down the garden path, Brad.
Battery theory and computer modelling resulting in unrealized expectations and imaginary consequences. Where else has that happened I wonder…
Alexander K says:
March 4, 2011 at 1:30 am
Here’s the story:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-12138420
Poptech says:
March 4, 2011 at 5:23 am “I call it useless.”
Be honest. Call it what it is. Brilliant marketing.