Repair-It

I have spent many interesting lunchtimes arguing with Kevin about electric cars. I don't think anyone is quite happy with the range of current electric cars. So often when electric cars come up, people suddenly become macho, iron-butt, all-american-road-trip vacationers who have an inherent need to cover 1200 miles a day with 15-minute fill-ups. Even though I am an on-and-off electric car supporter, I have been of the opinion that the e-car is for commuting, and a second car is needed for 'Family Trips..'

Reading this article, traveling by ($90,000) electric car sounds pretty appealing.

http://www.edmunds.com/tesla/model-s/20 ... -trip.html

PS: Driving 200 miles without a break means you're behind the wheel for a full three hours in most cases. Yech.

It sure is the car from the future:

Twice a year my family heads north to Oregon to visit my parents on the spectacular yet remote southern Oregon coast. Each time we take a different car from the long-term fleet, and this time it was the 2103 Tesla Model S sedan.

Dan adds a comment in the comment section:

One thing to remember: Most families have more than one car. Some have three. One would assume that is especially true here in the 100k price strata. That the Tesla Model S (or any short-range EV, for that matter) can't go everyplace in any circumstance isn't as huge an issue as people tend to make. You'd choose the Tahoe or F-150 over your Camry if you were towing a boat, right? You'd choose your Minivan over your Mini Cooper for a long road trip. Point is, the average family has more than one vehicle and they move among them as specific trip needs dictate. The Mini Cooper you commute to work in isn't a horrible vehicle because it can't take the wife and kids to the Grand Canyon. The F-150 wasn't a bad move because you'd rather take something more fuel efficient on a long trip where your boat isn't coming along. It's OK that the BMW M3 with the trick summer tires sits in the garage for three months while you drive your winter beater in the snow. The Tesla doesn't suck because it can't go everyplace at any pace. It may not be right for you, but that doesn't make it bad.

I totally agree. There is a LOT of work to do before the Tesla comes out of the niche department and those things will take a while (cost of li-ion power density and supercharger locations as common as gas stations). I am not impressed by planning a trip around supercharger locations. One thing that's nice about electric vehicles is you can charge at home. The interesting thing about home charging, though, is the limiting factor for commute driving really becomes how much electricity you can source to drive to work and back, not how much electricity you can store. For example, the Volt needs like 0.289 kWh per mile. If your commute is 35 miles round trip, you need 10.1 kWh each night. On a 120V 15-amp circuit, you can charge at maybe a 1.5 kWh rate so you're looking at like 7 hours to replenish those 35 miles, regardless of how large the battery is. I guess that was just a tangent, but my point was adding a bigger battery doesn't necessarily fix anything if you're charging at home from 120V. I'm not very excited about 25 minute "fuel ups" if I don't charge at home. Or going more often.

Somebody has to buy these and develop the infrastructure. But the reason I like the Volt is mere mortals can afford it, get the EV experience, and it is just as flexible as any purely gasoline powered car. In the future, who knows. And in that future, someone pining for the sound of a V8 will be as eccentric as someone who insists on hearing the clip-clop of horseshoes to travel anywhere. I guess I can console myself that we'll be using gas for a long time, as we mix in other forms of energy storage. Which is fine.

The path with the horse, though, was that the car was far more practical and affordable. Get back to me when gas is actually prohibitively expensive as a fuel (in the ICE specifically) compared to EV and we'll talk again.

I want to like electric cars because they have full torque basically the full band and electric motors have potential for being competitive to gas performance cars.

There are many things that I don't buy though.

I don't buy that they are green - having a chemical disaster in the back of your car that only lasts 5 to 10 years at best isn't green.
Burning coal to drive isn't greener than oil. Most electric plants burn coal.
I don't buy that you save any money. They cost more than an equally sized gas car, and have way more to go wrong.
I don't want a non performance car to have 3500 points of failure. Expensive points of failure at that. Battery, electric motor, gas motor/generator, transmission for both motors, etc.

For what? gas mileage? If you plan on keeping these cars for 8 or more years the repair bills on all of this extra equipment will far exceed the gas cost of another fuel economical car. The new Mazda3 skyactiv motor gets 40 mpg, has 10 hp more than my 2.0 getting 30 mpg at best and is NOT electric and seats 5.

I like the electric motor but to me hybrids or electrics of today make no sense for anybody that has a longer commute than 15 miles so they only use electric and get 97 mpg on only electric.

I really think the only feasible option to gas/diesel is Hydrogen. Hydrogen fuel with an electric motor is what car companies should really focus on.

One smart company already is:
http://automobiles.honda.com/fcx-clarity/

I wish it were GM. This car is hideous, but hydrogen is in liquid form, and can be filled at hydrogen stations in about 2 minutes longer than it takes to fill up a gas car. There would be no range issues if the market took off, and a company in Australia already makes a solar setup that can power these cars for 50 miles a day for free via solar.

Continuing rant after pricing...

True Market Value® Pricing

$94,900 for High Power Home Charging $2,700, High Power Wall Connector
Destination Fee $1,170

$98,770
WHATTTTTTTT!!!!!!!!!!

Warranty info on battery:
Four year or 50,000 mile, whichever comes first, new vehicle limited warranty
60 kWh battery has an eight year or 125,000 mile, whichever comes first, battery warranty
85 kWh battery has an eight year, unlimited mile battery warranty


So for 94k I could get a ZL1 54k, a Grand National in great condition - 20k, and a Mazda3 (20k 40 mpg) and have a daily driver and 2 awesome cars for the same price.

Or a new stingray vette, 55k, Grand National 20k and 25k towards a diesel eco car.


I give Elon Musk a lot of credit for making a very good product. It just isn't price competitive with anything. Yet anyway. I wish him luck.

But it is GM, too. All you hear about is Honda, for some reason. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Mo ... initiative

Hydrogen initiative[edit]
Sequel, a fuel cell-powered vehicle from GMThe 1966 GM Electrovan is credited with being the first hydrogen fuel cell car ever produced.[citation needed] Though fuel cells have been around since the early 1800s, General Motors was the first to use a fuel cell to power the wheels of a vehicle.[110] The economic feasibility of the technically challenging hydrogen car, and the low-cost production of hydrogen to fuel it, has also been discussed by other automobile manufacturers such as Ford and Chrysler. In June 2007, Larry Burns, vice president of research and development, said he's not yet willing to say exactly when hydrogen vehicles will be mass-produced, but he said it should happen before 2020, the year many experts have predicted. He said "I sure would be disappointed if we weren't there" before 2020.[111]

On July 2, 2013, GM and Honda announced a partnership to develop fuel cell systems and hydrogen storage technologies for the 2020 time frame. GM and Honda are leaders in fuel cell technology, ranking No. 1 and No. 2, respectively, in total fuel cell patents filed between 2002 and 2012, with more than 1,200 between them according to the Clean Energy Patent Growth Index.

Electricity IS often cheaper than gas per unit to drive down the road, but only because electric motors are way more efficient at extracting motive force from the electricity than gas engines are at extracting power from gasoline. I haven't checked recently (I will) but I think I pay around $0.16/kWh. Using nice round numbers, the Volt can go 40 miles on 12kWh of electricity, which is $1.92. Using nice round numbers, gas is $3.50/gal for 87, so that's the equivalent of 73 mpg in cost. It's 55% of the cost of gas. So if you could drive 12,000 miles a year on electricity in the Volt (averages ~33 miles per day, which is within the round-trip range per day assuming you charge at night and not at some fast charging station), that would cost you $576 in electricity. Those 12,000 miles in a car that got 30mpg would cost you $1,400, saving you $824/yr. Obviously tens of thousands of dollars of EV premium will NEVER pay off. A few thousand, however (after incentives), will.

billgiacheri wrote:Warranty info on battery:
Four year or 50,000 mile, whichever comes first, new vehicle limited warranty
60 kWh battery has an eight year or 125,000 mile, whichever comes first, battery warranty
85 kWh battery has an eight year, unlimited mile battery warranty

Volt has an 8 year/100k warranty on the battery. I don't know what Tesla does but the Volt has the best battery care/management available in its price range (one reason the warranty is so good). MSRP of the 2014 Volt is down to $35k, before any incentives. The $7,500 federal tax rebate is still available bringing the purchase MSRP down to $27,500. If you live in CA, subtract another $1,500, so $26k.

There are also good lease deals on the Volt. $254/mo w/ $1,000 down and 10,000 miles/year. That's $10,144 to drive it 3 years (plus electricity/gas). Not terrible.

GM also collects some interesting telematic statistics on the Volt.

The Volt continues to earn the best customer-satisfaction ratings of any car GM sells, and lure "conquest buyers" to the Chevrolet brand.

Volt owners run almost two-thirds of their miles on grid power--225 million miles out of 364 million total, to date--and average 900 miles between monthly fill-ups.