Electric Possibilities
My post on the Tesla roadster brought several comments about both the price and the technology. I've been poking around looking for more information and found some interesting stuff. First, a more family (and wallet) friendly all electric vehicle, an SUT/SUV from Phoenix Motorcars in Ontario, California. This will be a far more affordable vehicle than the Tesla, with a price tag around $45,000. With acceleration and top speeds well able to handle highway driving, it's a pretty attractive package.
Battery power has had some hurdles to overcome, and according to CNET News, new technology has created far more stable batteries. It's this new technology which makes this generation of electrics much more appealing, with higher speeds and longer range between charges.
There are still many questions to be answered about all-electrics, but certainly in some applications - such as corporate or agency fleets, they can be effective.
Comments (8)
While these all-electric cars look interesting, the prices are far too high and they are not as effective as gas or diesel fueled vehicles. There are three reasons for this - one is that after you drive to the next recharge session, you have to wait anywhere from 4 to sixteen hours before you can drive the vehicle again. That means you must plan any trips around their very limited mileage. With a gas-powered car, you simply refuel and drive away.
The second problem comes with the recharge life of the batteries. All batteries have a life span and replacing the batteries in an electric car is extremely expensive.
The third reason is the weight of the batteries severly limits the efficiency of electric cars by requiring the motors to use more power just to move the weight of the car.
The only current viable solution to these problems are gas-electric hybrid cars. These cars do not have to be plugged-in to recharge, although you can plug them in if they haven't recharged enough through your normal driving. There is no wait to use the car after refueling which eliminates problems one and two, and because they use fewer batteries than a full electric car, the replacement cost is lower.
As for me, I won't be buying any of these vehicles until they introduce a hybrid truck that can easily and reliably tow a boat. GM is supposed to introduce a truck this year or next. I will be in the market in 2010, when my truck is 10 years old and I've gotten full value out of it.
Posted by woodNfish | December 30, 2006 12:22 PM
you try driving a 45k vehicle while make'in 49K/yr.........by the way the biggest complainer of "global warming" ,former vice pres. gore.......what does he drive?
Posted by jerry tibbetts | December 31, 2006 5:38 AM
or......by the way, you forgot to mention or at least check into what the cost an damage to the environment these batteries contained in the cars will do
Posted by jerry tibbetts | December 31, 2006 5:53 AM
Hi Laura - I used to work with you at Accuwx (as a part-timer, in L. Reeves dept) about 10 years ago.
My husband has an interesting theory about global warming that I wanted to ask you about. He's a scientist, but not in your field.
It seems like in the 1990s many meteorologists and climatologists were skeptical about global warming, and one of the reasons was the period of cooling from around 1950-1980 (or so).
My husband thinks the temperatures in that period were influenced by all of the nuclear testing that was going on.
One of the reasons his theory makes sense to me is the cooling effect of the Mt. St. Helens eruption some time ago.
Do you think nuclear testing kicked enough debris in the upper atmosphere to offset global warming for a period of time? And do you think we could "fix" global warming now by doing something similar?
Posted by Stacy B | December 31, 2006 9:38 AM
You must consider the cost of the battery replacement in the cost of the car!!
Posted by rich | December 31, 2006 4:13 PM
$45,000 more affordable? Give me a break! When they get to the $20K range Then they will make a real difference in sales and the environment.
Posted by joated | January 1, 2007 7:47 AM
This is the first I've seen your "blog". Not very much into blogging myself, not even fond of the name "blog" to be quite honest. But I couldn't resist the "tease"...Concerened about Global Warming?
Break throught the Hype...41 miles of ice is an awful lot of hype...
As to electric vehicles...I'm a firm proponant of ANY ALTERNATIVE TO FOSSIL FUELS, but, that said...
you still have to generate the electricity to charge the batteries,and most likely, the average consumer will just "plug in" at home, which only tranfers the energy generation process back to "the Grid" anyway. So unless we develope alternative ways to produce / generate ecectricity, we are only shifting the actual pollution from our tailpipes back to the Corporate Energy Moguls!!!!
And we all know how environmentally consious THEY are!!!
G.
Posted by Glenn | January 2, 2007 12:33 AM
I think we should think of solutions to global warming from both ends -- not just the generating side, but also from the cleanup side. What if we could turn carbon dioxide into reusable carbon (such as for use in making carbon fiber products) and free oxygen?
As for electric vehicles, I'd be all for it, but what about apartment dwellers? I don't know of any solutions that would let someone without a plug nearby use such cars. I do think that if batteries could be easily removed (perhaps if the vibration issue could be taken care of, then they could be easily taken out and put back in without needing to carry a wrench), then we could carry the battery in for recharge overnight, or to exchange for a fresh pack. If we could load our electric cars onto "people movers" between cities, then we wouldn't need high mileage vehicles.
What I'd like for the time being though, is a hybrid diesel car that is small enough for an individual, and not too expensive either. This would be the ideal commuter car, while also allowing for the convenience of grocery shopping after work.
Posted by Therese Shellabarger | March 21, 2007 9:37 PM