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Post by Deleted on Jun 11, 2013 8:35:26 GMT -8
The electric car stalls in the race to be the green wheels of the future. That is not a tragedy MAY was not the merriest month for electric cars. On May 1st Coda, an American maker of battery-powered cars, declared bankruptcy; on the 26th Better Place, a much-hyped promoter of cars with swappable batteries (which raised nearly $1 billion in 2007), filed for liquidation in Israel. Fisker, another American electric-car maker, which is partly financed by taxpayers, teetered on the brink of collapse, having made no vehicles since its (also state-financed) battery-maker, A123, collapsed last year. Fiat-Chrysler’s boss said during the month that it will lose $10,000 on every 500e battery car it sells. The car costs $32,000, double the price of the petrol version, but Fiat has to try to sell them because California is imposing quotas on sales of “zero-emission” vehicles on carmakers. The news has not all been bad. Tesla, a Californian maker of battery-powered sports cars, recently declared its first quarterly profit, and repaid its $452m of government loans early. But overall, electric cars, whether purely battery-powered or hybrids that use petrol engines as backups, have been a flop. They are expensive, even with state subsidies, and the all-battery ones have a limited range. Does this failure matter? Not that much. The main reason why Better Place failed seems to have been bad management. In 2009 it struck a deal with Renault to sell 100,000 electric cars with swappable batteries by 2016; it sold just 1,300. It failed to get other carmakers to make vehicles with swappable batteries, restricting its subscribers’ choice. Another barrier has been that all cars have been getting greener, driven in part by manufacturers’ need to meet emissions standards. In the longer term a race is on between scientists trying to create low-cost, low-carbon “biofuels”, which could give petrol and diesel engines a new, clean lease on life, and others trying to make electric batteries lighter, cheaper and more reliable. The odds are that pure electric cars, despite their slow start, will be part of tomorrow’s cleaner traffic: they just will not be the whole answer. We watched “Star Trek” too Given this uncertainty, the wise thing for politicians would be to set overall emissions targets, and leave the risk to businesspeople. Wherever this has been tried, in Europe, America, Japan and more recently China, carmakers have grumbled: but they have responded—most notably by squeezing more efficiency out of the century-old internal-combustion engine. Sadly politicians see electric cars not as a means to a greener future but as an end in themselves. Barack Obama is still prattling about having 1m of them on America’s roads by 2015 (so far he is only 5% of the way there); this week Angela Merkel restated her aim to have 1m such cars on Germany’s roads by 2020 (a mere 3,000 were sold there last year). Under fire from Congress, Mr Obama has stopped lending to makers of electric cars and batteries, but he still wants to increase the maximum federal credit for electric cars from $7,500 to $10,000. And the Chinese government is planning to revive an old subsidy scheme worth up to 60,000 yuan ($9,800) per car. Such subsidies make little sense. If governments want to cut emissions it would be better, say, to pay people to insulate their homes. Better Place achieved little in its brief, expensive life. But if its failure, despite having such weighty backers (including GE and HSBC), persuades governments of the folly of picking winners, it will not have died in vain.
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Post by Willing Sniper on Jun 11, 2013 8:56:38 GMT -8
It needs to happen. I wonder where was this story taken from?
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Post by Deleted on Jun 11, 2013 8:58:37 GMT -8
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Post by Willing Sniper on Jun 11, 2013 9:06:03 GMT -8
Ah a right wing rag. They hope they fail.
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Post by Deleted on Jun 11, 2013 9:14:15 GMT -8
How very American to make a statement against the environment because it suits your particular brand of political hatred. Very short sighted.
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Post by ♬ pkbucko ♬ on Jun 12, 2013 7:00:05 GMT -8
MEH.
When an electric car is created that has similar characteristics as a gas powered car, (cost, power, duration of drive time, etc,)it will succeed.
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Post by Deleted on Jun 12, 2013 7:37:56 GMT -8
MEH. When an electric car is created that has similar characteristics as a gas powered car, (cost, power, duration of drive time, etc,)it will succeed. They are going to have to do something about the lack of exhaust noise. I like that sound.
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Post by Willing Sniper on Jun 12, 2013 8:54:54 GMT -8
They have. And it's selectable.
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Post by Deleted on Jun 12, 2013 8:55:45 GMT -8
They have. And it's selectable. Fantastic!
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Post by Willing Sniper on Jun 12, 2013 8:57:43 GMT -8
As to range. How often does anyone drive 300 miles?
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Post by Deleted on Jun 12, 2013 8:59:04 GMT -8
As to range. How often does anyone drive 300 miles? Yes, range has improved significantly.
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Post by Deleted on Jun 12, 2013 9:03:00 GMT -8
We have a fantastic electric car service available in Vancouver. CAR2GO: you can take any of the car2gos you find distributed around the spot or book online 30 minutes before you want to drive. That way you can save yourself the wait and get to your destination faster. At your destination you can either leave the vehicle, or go back to it if you want to drive further.
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Post by Crusher on Jun 12, 2013 9:05:45 GMT -8
Buddy of mine has a Tesla. I haven't been in it, but I've seen him driving around. I'll ask him about it.
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Post by Deleted on Jun 12, 2013 9:06:23 GMT -8
Buddy of mine has a Tesla. I haven't been in it, but I've seen him driving around. I'll ask him about it. They seem to be the primo machine. I'd like to know how he likes it.
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Post by ♬ pkbucko ♬ on Jun 12, 2013 9:30:19 GMT -8
They have. And it's selectable. Fantastic! I was reading about that recently. They're too quiet. You can't hear them coming. So they've created some audible noise to let people hear what's coming to them. Same reason bikes have loud pipes. It doesn't just sound cool, it keeps idiots from running them over because they can hear the pipes even when car drivers can't see them.
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Post by Deleted on Jun 12, 2013 9:34:22 GMT -8
I was reading about that recently. They're too quiet. You can't hear them coming. So they've created some audible noise to let people hear what's coming to them. Same reason bikes have loud pipes. It doesn't just sound cool, it keeps idiots from running them over because they can hear the pipes even when car drivers can't see them. You might be amazed at how much you rely on sound when walking down a street, too quiet is dangerous no doubt.
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Post by ♬ pkbucko ♬ on Jun 12, 2013 9:45:54 GMT -8
When all other obstacles are overcome, and they are significant, affordability will be the biggest hill to climb. When you can get an electric car that can be "fueled" in ten minutes and actually does have decent range, the most important factor will be, "Can I afford it?".
If it has all of the other amenities and it's as cheap as a Chevy Cruise then I see it selling.
Those ole' boys I saw fishing this morning in the flooded farm field won't be buying anything electric anytime soon.
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Post by Willing Sniper on Jun 12, 2013 10:06:12 GMT -8
What's a decent range PK?
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Post by ♬ pkbucko ♬ on Jun 12, 2013 10:10:04 GMT -8
What's a decent range PK? IDK - If you can truly get 300 miles out of it, that's decent. That's about 3 or 4 days for me. When I fuel my gas hog, I can go for more than 400 miles but I never go that far before filling up again.
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