Electric Cars - What's the Big Deal?

[Famine]

People aren't interested in Corollas, but they still throw money at salesmen to buy them.

All companies need to do to shift hybrids is price them the same as their other blandwagons but make them comfier or put a bit more kit in them. All they'd need to do to shift electrics is the same but overcome the hurdle of refuelling them - people don't like changing their habits and their habits are to go to a gas station and put $20 in the tank, not park it at home in a garage (that they may not have) and plug it into the mains for nine hours (that they may not have).

Luckily, there's this.

 

[Grand Prix]

Charged liquid. Brilliant.

 

[niky]

All they have to do is repeal every roadworthiness law in existence, put people in electric golf-karts, then install 40 km/h speed limiters on every SUV on the road to ensure the golf-karts survive any ensuing collisions... well... most of them, anyway.

Alternatively:

Then us enthusiasts will have enough extra cash to do an extra dozen track days a year...

Electricity can be made using renewable methods whereas oil can not. You're right that a lot of electricity is currently produced using fossil fuels but the amount being produced by other means such as renewable sources and nuclear is in increasing, take a look at France's electricity production for example:

I hesitate to point out... but will, anyway (obviously)... that that huge lump of non-fossil-fuel energy generation is via non-renewable nuclear resources that rely upon a very limited store of available uranium.

Oh... and solar is not the greenest energy source. Geothermal is. Of course, in many areas, it is difficult to create a geothermal plant... but a geothermal plant provides better base-load than solar or wind, is more consistent, and doesn't require expensive or new developments in technology to run. At worst, it takes high tech to dig geothermal taps in areas where you have to dig deeper, but that's a one-time thing.

You need to factor in the carbon footprint of the batteries that the Prius uses and only last 100,000 miles. People forget that WAY too often. Some will go as far as to say that if you want to save the environment, get a diesel, not a hybrid. I'm not so sure.

As homeforsummer states... Prius batteries can last over 300,000 kilometers in metro traffic. I've heard nothing but praises of Prius battery longevity from co-writers who work with secondhand cars. Obviously, this is not true of all climes and uses... and I've seen some media testers go dead due to battery control or cooling issues, but media use is extreme... by and large... hybrids used by non-hoons last a long, long, long time without issue. Unless they have Honda CVTs... though that's not the engine's fault.

The Prius is a very durable car. Brake usage is less than regular gasoline cars. Oil change intervals are very, very long. The planetary gearbox is simpler and more robust than any other automatic out there... and doesn't require a clutch change every 50,000 miles... the only thing wrong with the Prius is it's a Toyota... hence it's boring. But it's not boring because it's a hybrid.

No, they don't, at least not according to the publications I've read. The emissions released during the several production stages of the prius negate any reductions you would see during the life of the car.

That's probably from the Hummer versus Prius study... which has been debunked because it used arbitrary numbers to generate the final analysis, instead of real-world data... which, again, points to the Prius being much longer-lived and easier to maintain, keep and eventually recycle than the study's authors gave it credit for.

Watch the documentary "Who Killed the Electric Car" and it will all make sense.

And that's biased propaganda from the other side. The Electric Car died because GM killed it, yes. But blaming a company for not believing in the viability of a non-profitable product is stupid. Why should a company take a loss for a product that cost four times as much as the market wanted to pay, which was leased at a loss at twice the price most people wanted to pay, and which served no other purpose than to help them spoof fuel economy laws? They would have seen more profit and more greening from simply improving the engineering of the rest of their fleet.

As a point of order, anyone who is a car enthusiast will want everyone to use electric cars for their commute or daily drive. That way they don't use up any gas and we can use it to fuel the interesting cars.

👍

 

[homeforsummer]

As a point of order, anyone who is a car enthusiast will want everyone to use electric cars for their commute or daily drive. That way they don't use up any gas and we can use it to fuel the interesting cars.

Oh heavens no. We don't need, or want, electric sports cars and supercars. We want electric cars to take the place of the generic two/three-box commuterbores that everyone drives in rush hour.

Exactly. Who cares if every Yaris on the road becomes electric as long as the enthusiast cars stay fuelled by dinosaur juice?

List of things your average commuter car doesn't have:
- An interesting engine
- A nice sound
- A gearbox that's fun to use
- Loads of performance

List of things your average commuter car doesn't do:
- Drive across the country

So what people are missing with those cars going electric I'm not sure. You'd miss all those things from your average sports car, but so far the electric sports cars being showcased are mainly halo models to prove that electric cars and performance aren't mutually exclusive.

 

[Moot]

The true cost of electric cars has been found out at last, in respect to the Nissan Leaf in particular. Nissan has kept it's battery replacement cost a secret, but experts predicted a price of around £8,000/$13,000. This is not the case.
Nissan has admitted that the battery from the £31,000/$60,000 car might need replacing after just a few years depending if it's been fast charged or not, fast charging significantly reduces battery life.
Anyway Nissan has now quoted the actual replacement cost now at £19,392/$31,876, Just for the battery pack!