Posted on 11/05/2012 6:20:53 PM PST by AmonAmarth
The debate about the value of electric cars just got another jolt.
In the aftermath of superstorm Sandy, unprepared electic vehicle owners in the Northeast were out of luck. With power grids and public charging stations down there was, and in some places still is no way to get energy into their cars.
According to automotive analyst Thilo Koslowski, the storm has revealed the one major vulnerability with electric cars: that a backup infrastructure is almost non-existent.
“If the outages continue, this will negatively impact consumer interest,” he told FoxNews.com. “We will need to address the issue of electricity shortages if we want to have a growing share of EVs.”
Technology analyst Rob Enderle agrees that the infrastructure problem with EVs is being called into question in the wake of the storm. Early funding for the EV infrastructure has focused on building charging stations at malls and offices, not on disaster-proofing them. If the grid goes dark, he says, there’s no back-up battery storage to keep your EV running.
ChargePoint, which runs one of the largest public charge station networks in the area affected by Sandy did not respond to requests from FoxNews.com to discuss it's contingency plans.
“EVs need infrastructure and low cost batteries to survive -- and they have neither,” he says. “We need some strong advancements in energy storage or generation to truly make electric competitive.”
The automakers themselves are looking for answers, as well.
“As more pure EVs hit the market, consumers will demand solutions to these types of dilemmas and the industry will have to respond,” says Jana Hartline, an environmental manager at Toyota.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
No sympathy here.
Big paper weights.
All Bambi needed to do was skylift some solar panels in there.
Problems solved right?
Correction: "Yet ANOTHER vulnerability."
I live in an area of flash floods where motorists are frequently trapped on top their car. Seeing that parking lot of Fiskers that exploded when submerged by Sandy has got to be an eye opener.
That’s why every Pious...er...Prius should come with a bicycle taped to the roof.
It aint easy pushing a giant heavy battery around looking for a charger...
Ping.
You betcha! One way to start is to have the EPA accelerate the closing of those coal-fired electric plants they're planning to shut down. /s
“It aint easy pushing a giant heavy battery around looking for a charger...”
They should just drive....
Not if the battery is dead, or there is not enough juice to go far enough to the nearest charger.
I think everyone should purchase what works for them. Also, I think that the government should not pick and choose the winners in business.
However, to add one small point on EV’s side... I think we are seeing that having no electricity is a problem for both types of vehicles. Gas pumps work on electricity also.
I’ll never get an EV, but no option is perfect.
Gas pumps no longer have a manual back-up pump inside the case?
Gasoline is tough to compete with.
If a R administration got it back in the $2/gallon range via increasing supply, it’s even more competitive.
If nat gas starts taking a decent slice of truck consumption, that’s another drag on oil prices.
I do forecast that a significant percent of golf carts will remain electric powered.
Electric cars are NOT green!
They use electricity generated by a power plant nearby.
And 95% of power generation currently uses fossil fuels + Nuclear.
Wind power is also no good after a hurricane. They would be severely damaged by a direct hit. Another fact no one talks about.....more workers have died working on wind turbine towers than all the people killed in man made nuclear power accidents in the non-communist world.
Those went away when they went away from the mechanical dial type volume and price indicators.
I don’t think so... Isn’t that the reason there are so many issues in NY/NY? Unless I’m misreading, I thought it was lack of electricity more than lack of gas.
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