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Will Consumers Buy Electric Cars?
Topic Started: Jan 11 2009, 10:37 AM (549 Views)
QuirtEvans
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I Owe It All To John D'Oh
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/11/business/11electric.html?hp
It would be unwise to underestimate what large groups of ill-informed people acting together can achieve. -- John D'Oh, January 14, 2010.
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Mark
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HOLY CARP!!!
I would buy one.

But I would still keep my F350 7.3L Diesel. There is just too much utility in that vehicle to get rid of it.
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When I see an adult on a bicycle, I do not despair for the future of the human race. H.G. Wells
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ivorythumper
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Why didn't they do this 20 years ago? Sheesh.

Americans will buy anything they are told to buy as long as it is marketed to them well.
The dogma lives loudly within me.
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1hp
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Fulla-Carp
They did do this 10 years ago - don't you remember the Impact (aka EV1) from GM. Yes, GM had a clean vehicle way before Honda and Toyota. But at the time no one was really interested. 660 were produced in 1997 with lead acid batteries, and 200 were produced in 1999 with nickel metal hydride batteries.

GM also made a hybrid version of the EV1 - used agas turbine to recharge the battery. The vehicle achieved 60 to 100 mpg.

Posted Image

It isn't clear why these vehicles didn't make it into full production - GM claims not sufficient interest to make it profitable.

I would like to test drive a Chevy Volt, though I probably won't purchase one. The original Volt concept car was enticing, but it has been turned into a tamer looking vehicle - almost Prius like. Not sure why the auto companies do this - it's really a bait and switch technique - show a sexy concept car to get sufficient interest so they can move ahead with the car, then tone it down to a boring looking vehicle before it gets to production. Anyway, unless they've messed up the dc motor drives, the Volt should be one fast vehicle.

Here, decide for yourself - here's the Volt concept car:

Posted Image

And here's what the production car will look like:

Posted Image
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Mikhailoh
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I think it should just be put in the new Malibu platform. Good looking cars.

And yeah, I'll buy one as soon as it is practical to do so, cost-wise.
Once in his life, every man is entitled to fall madly in love with a gorgeous redhead - Lucille Ball
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Dan
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Our next buying decision will be based on mpg and the cars capability to handle a longish commute. If electric makes the grade then we're willing to pay a premium (maybe 10% or so) to be 'green'.
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ivorythumper
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Dan
Jan 11 2009, 01:43 PM
Our next buying decision will be based on mpg and the cars capability to handle a longish commute. If electric makes the grade then we're willing to pay a premium (maybe 10% or so) to be 'green'.
That 10% premium is well worth the smug rights at the cocktail party.
The dogma lives loudly within me.
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Mikhailoh
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If you want trouble, find yourself a redhead
The question is, is it truly green? Is the electric car really better for the environment, considering most electric power is coal generated today?
Once in his life, every man is entitled to fall madly in love with a gorgeous redhead - Lucille Ball
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QuirtEvans
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Mikhailoh
Jan 11 2009, 02:03 PM
The question is, is it truly green? Is the electric car really better for the environment, considering most electric power is coal generated today?
It's got to be easier to scrub the pollution from a few thousand coal-fired generators (some of which are gas-fired) than it is to scrub the pollution from tens of millions of tailpipes. There must be efficiency of size.
It would be unwise to underestimate what large groups of ill-informed people acting together can achieve. -- John D'Oh, January 14, 2010.
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Mikhailoh
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If you want trouble, find yourself a redhead
I wish they'd do it then - not to mention in China and India.
Once in his life, every man is entitled to fall madly in love with a gorgeous redhead - Lucille Ball
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1hp
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Fulla-Carp
Yeah, it is greener. Big generators are run at their sweet spot - and you can believe that there are engineers and technicians making sure they stay there night and day. If the load falls off too much, operators will shut down generators so that they can maintain the remainder at peak efficiency. Or they come up with ways to store energy for the next day, such as pumping water back up hill for hydro power plants.

I also believe most of the coal fired plants are fitted with emissions equipment in the chimneys. But the guy who has to go down the mines to get the coal has my sympathy - terrible job to have.

Here's the car I'm after (no, it's not electric, or hybrid):
Posted Image
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Copper
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Shortstop
Mikhailoh
Jan 11 2009, 02:19 PM
I wish they'd do it then - not to mention in China and India.

No kidding!

If we could just get China and India to drop internal combustion, we could use it all we want.
The Confederate soldier was peculiar in that he was ever ready to fight, but never ready to submit to the routine duty and discipline of the camp or the march. The soldiers were determined to be soldiers after their own notions, and do their duty, for the love of it, as they thought best. Carlton McCarthy
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Axtremus
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ivorythumper
Jan 11 2009, 10:40 AM
Why didn't they do this 20 years ago? Sheesh.
They did not listen to Jimmy Carter.
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Red Rice
HOLY CARP!!!
Axtremus
Jan 12 2009, 05:17 AM
ivorythumper
Jan 11 2009, 10:40 AM
Why didn't they do this 20 years ago? Sheesh.
They did not listen to Jimmy Carter.
When did Jimmy Carter advocate the electric car?
Civilisation, I vaguely realized then - and subsequent observation has confirmed the view - could not progress that way. It must have a greater guiding principle to survive. To treat it as a carcase off which each man tears as much as he can for himself, is to stand convicted a brute, fit for nothing better than a jungle existence, which is a death-struggle, leading nowhither. I did not believe that was the human destiny, for Man individually was sane and reasonable, only collectively a fool.

I hope the gunner of that Hun two-seater shot him clean, bullet to heart, and that his plane, on fire, fell like a meteor through the sky he loved. Since he had to end, I hope he ended so. But, oh, the waste! The loss!

- Cecil Lewis
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JBryan
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I am the grey one
He didn't even advocate the electric sweater.
"Any man who would make an X rated movie should be forced to take his daughter to see it". - John Wayne


There is a line we cross when we go from "I will believe it when I see it" to "I will see it when I believe it".


Henry II: I marvel at you after all these years. Still like a democratic drawbridge: going down for everybody.

Eleanor: At my age there's not much traffic anymore.

From The Lion in Winter.
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Klaus
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HOLY CARP!!!
Toyota will soon announce its new model "PRIapismUS", which is a vibrator powered by hybrid technology. Finally women can climax in an environmentally conscious way :clap:
Trifonov Fleisher Klaus Sokolov Zimmerman
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Wim
Junior Carp
Mikhailoh,

Quote:
 
The question is, is it truly green? Is the electric car really better for the environment, considering most electric power is coal generated today?


A car running on gasoline makes an avarage efficiency of about 30 %. An electric car reaches an avarage efficiency of about 95 %. When considering the primary energy used, there's a benefit of about 60 %.
In addition there will be less expulsion of exhaust fumes (containing ultrafine particles). Besides, not all electricity is generated by coal.

I'm not an expert at all. My son is studying airplane engineering and he gave me these figures because they're just busy comparing fossile-fuel propelled engines to electrical and hydro-oxygen engines.

Wim
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1hp
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Fulla-Carp

Toyota.......that Japanese car company that everyone keeps giving high praise to. Do you know how many SUV models they sell in the US? Six! Land Cruiser, Sequoia, 4Runner, Highlander, FJ-Cruiser, and Rav4. Plus 2 pick up truck models - Tundra and Tacoma. Not that looks like a green company!
There are 10 kinds of people in this world, those that understand binary and................
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Qaanaaq-Liaaq
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Will people buy an all-electric car that requires recharging the battery by plugging it in to an electrical outlet?

I’d say that it mostly depends on whether they have a garage. Those who have a garage might buy one because their garage will have an outlet. A driveway adjacent to their house can do but it’ll require a long extension cord. Hopefully, they’ll remember to unplug the cord before they drive off.

Many people don’t have a garage and have to park their car on the street so an all-electric won’t be practical.

Me QAANAAQ, you NOT.
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Red Rice
HOLY CARP!!!
1hp
Jan 12 2009, 08:08 AM
Toyota.......that Japanese car company that everyone keeps giving high praise to. Do you know how many SUV models they sell in the US? Six! Land Cruiser, Sequoia, 4Runner, Highlander, FJ-Cruiser, and Rav4. Plus 2 pick up truck models - Tundra and Tacoma. Not that looks like a green company!
Actually, the greenest thing Toyota does is build reliable cars that last for years and don't need to be replaced or repaired as frequently. That's cuts down more on resource use than better gas mileage.
Civilisation, I vaguely realized then - and subsequent observation has confirmed the view - could not progress that way. It must have a greater guiding principle to survive. To treat it as a carcase off which each man tears as much as he can for himself, is to stand convicted a brute, fit for nothing better than a jungle existence, which is a death-struggle, leading nowhither. I did not believe that was the human destiny, for Man individually was sane and reasonable, only collectively a fool.

I hope the gunner of that Hun two-seater shot him clean, bullet to heart, and that his plane, on fire, fell like a meteor through the sky he loved. Since he had to end, I hope he ended so. But, oh, the waste! The loss!

- Cecil Lewis
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OperaTenor
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Pisa-Carp
QuirtEvans
Jan 11 2009, 02:17 PM
Mikhailoh
Jan 11 2009, 02:03 PM
The question is, is it truly green? Is the electric car really better for the environment, considering most electric power is coal generated today?
It's got to be easier to scrub the pollution from a few thousand coal-fired generators (some of which are gas-fired) than it is to scrub the pollution from tens of millions of tailpipes. There must be efficiency of size.
In the film, Who Killed the Electric Car?, it was shown there was a dramatic difference in the pollution emitted on producing the electricity to run the cars versus the pollution emitted by petroleum-burning cars. Something like 60% less pollution, IIRC.

[edit]
Quote:
 
Wim said:
A car running on gasoline makes an avarage efficiency of about 30 %. An electric car reaches an avarage efficiency of about 95 %. When considering the primary energy used, there's a benefit of about 60 %.


I guess I did recall correctly.....

Much cheaper per mile, too.



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OperaTenor
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Pisa-Carp
Red Rice
Jan 12 2009, 07:06 AM
Axtremus
Jan 12 2009, 05:17 AM
ivorythumper
Jan 11 2009, 10:40 AM
Why didn't they do this 20 years ago? Sheesh.
They did not listen to Jimmy Carter.
When did Jimmy Carter advocate the electric car?
He was aiming higher. He urged getting off our dependence on oil.


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1hp
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Fulla-Carp
Quote:
 
Actually, the greenest thing Toyota does is build reliable cars that last for years and don't need to be replaced or repaired as frequently. That's cuts down more on resource use than better gas mileage.


I propose that there are more 57 Chevy's on the road than '57 Toyotas, so your statement is incorrect. :D
There are 10 kinds of people in this world, those that understand binary and................
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1hp
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Fulla-Carp
Just came across an interesting review of the Tesla from Top gear (Jeremy Clarkson).

Tesla review

About the most promising thing he says it that it will get you laid if you mention it at a dinner party!.


....................Tesla could not complain about what was shown because it was there. And here’s the strange thing. It didn’t. But someone did. Loudly and to every newspaper in the world. The Daily Telegraph said we’d been caught up in a new fakery row. The Guardian accused us of being “underhanded”. The New York Times wondered if we’d been “misleading”. The Daily Mail said I could give you breast cancer.

This was weird. Tesla, when contacted by reporters, gave its account of what happened and it was exactly the same as ours. It explained that the brakes had stopped working because of a blown fuse and didn’t question at all our claim that the car would have run out of electricity after 55 miles.

So who was driving this onslaught? Nobody in the big wide world ever minds when I say a BMW 1-series is crap or that a Kia Rio is the worst piece of machinery since the landmine. And yet everyone went mad when I said the Tesla, the red-blooded sports car and great white hope for the world’s green movement, “absolutely does not work”.

I fear that what we are seeing here is much the same thing professors see when they claim there is no such thing as man-made global warming. Immediately, they are drowned out by an unseen mob, and then their funding dries up. It’s actually quite frightening.



....................And there’s more. Filling an Elise takes two minutes. Filling a Tesla from a normal 13-amp plug takes about 16 hours. Fit a beefier three-phase supply to your house and you could complete the process in four (Tesla now says 3½). But do not, whatever you do, imagine that you could charge your car from a domestic wind turbine. That would take about 25 days.

You see what I mean. Even if we ignore the argument that the so-called green power that propels this car comes from a dirty great power station, and that it is therefore not as green as you might hope, we are left with the simple fact that it takes a long time to charge it up and the charge doesn’t take you very far. We must also remember that both the cars I tried went wrong.


There are 10 kinds of people in this world, those that understand binary and................
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Qaanaaq-Liaaq
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1hp:

The Pontiac Solstice pictured in your photo looks much better as a hatch back and it’s more practical as well.

Yes, concept cars are theoretical cars. For the Chevy Volt, Chevy had to tone down the styling because it’s too severe for the average buyer. A sports car could have the concept car’s styling because sports cars are lower volume cars geared to auto enthusiasts.

Me QAANAAQ, you NOT.
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