Posted on 12/03/2012 1:55:45 AM PST by neverdem
Exactly two years ago, in November 2010, the Renault-Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn assured reporters that his auto alliance would sell half a million electric vehicles a year by the end of 2013. In 2011, it sold just short of 10,000 electrics, but in April 2012 Ghosn still claimed that the 2012 sales would double to 20,000. On November 15, he had to give up and admit that, after selling less than 7,000 vehicles, the 2012 target cannot be reached. That is just the latest in a less than electrifying saga of modern electric vehicles (this qualification is needed because more than a century ago, before the 1908 Model T, there was a similarly misplaced euphoria).
In contrast, General Motor’s (GM) Volt had a record month this October, with 2,961 vehicles sold, but that is only relatively good news. Chevrolet’s plan was to build 10,000 Volts in 2011, but actual sales that year were 7,671; in March 2012, poor sales forced the company to idle Volt production for five weeks. Sales then picked up and reached a record of 2,500 units in August (a strong month for all car sales), but by September 17 weak sales forced the company to shut down its Volt assembly plant in Detroit-Hamtramck for the second time in 2012 (for four weeks). After a strong October, the total for 2012 will surpass 20,000 vehicles — less than half of the targeted total of 45,000 cars set by GM and still only about 0.15 percent of the total estimated12.8 million vehicles sold in 2012.
And it is all rather expensive — energy consultants estimate that GM’s costs for designing, tooling, and production (but excluding all marketing) are about $80,000 for a vehicle that sells, after a rebate of $7,500, for about $32,000. Costs per vehicle will fall as the production volume goes up, but GM may face years of losses before it starts making any money on a car that was to be a game-changer. And, of course, Volt is not a true electric car; it is merely an extended-range electric vehicle with a standard gasoline engine.
And another extended-range electric vehicle, the high-end Fisker Karma, has fared much worse. Consumer Reports found the $107,000 car, developed with a $529 million loan from the U.S. government and built in Finland, is full of design flaws and did not recommend its purchase. The car’s battery failed during the Consumer Reports test drive and Fisker subsequently replaced all of its 2012 Karma batteries. Then, on October 16, the manufacturer of the substandard lithium-ion battery used in the Karma, A123 Systems, (recipient of a U.S. federal grant worth $249 million in 2009) filed for bankruptcy. And another American true electric car has not done any better: Tesla’s deliveries for 2012 were cut from 5,000 to 2,700–3,250, due to production problems.
I do not see how other major competitors can succeed where Toyota refuses to even tread.
Perhaps most tellingly, in September, just a few days before Toyota’s mini-electric eQ city car was to make its debut at the Paris Motor Show, the company announced that it was cancelling its plans to mass produce the vehicle. According to Takeshi Uchiyamada, the company’s vice-chairman, “The current capabilities of electric vehicles do not meet society's needs, whether it may be the distance the cars can run, or the costs, or how it takes a long time to charge.” If a company that has been in the forefront of innovative design, high-quality production, and consumer satisfaction and that in 2012 reclaimed its title as the world’s largest carmaker (lost in the wake of the March 2011 Tohoku earthquake) comes to such a conclusion, I do not see how other major competitors can succeed where Toyota refuses to even tread. Toyota said it will concentrate instead on hybrid models, but even that has not been going well: Toyota planned to sell 40,000 plug-in hybrids in Japan this year, but fewer than 9,000 were sold by October.
Technical success of electrics comes down, most fundamentally, to batteries. The lithium-ion battery, with its many flaws, is still the only relatively lightweight commercial option and Edison’s dream of a perfect car battery is now more than a century old. Bold plans come and go: a 1980 report on the introduction of electric vehicles in the United States predicted 1–2 million units in sales by 1985 and as many 11–13 million fully electric cars by the year 2000. But by the end of 2012, the United States had about 50,000 electrics on the road, no more than 0.03 percent of all light-duty vehicles licensed to operate in the country. Undaunted, a campaigning President Obama did not repeal his 2011 State of the Union goal of putting 1 million electric cars on the road by 2015.
Clearly, electric hopes never die — but electric realities keep intervening. Motor Trend’s 2013 car of the year is the Tesla Model S, which sells (depending on performance options and after a $7,500 rebate) for between $49,900 and $97,900. Ready to forecast sales of 50,000 units for next year?
Vaclav Smil does interdisciplinary research in the fields of energy, environmental and population change, food production and nutrition, technical innovation, risk assessment, and public policy.
Image by Darren Wamboldt / Bergman Group
Yes, you are currently miserable, but think of the money you could make by being a perfect reverse barometer. If indeed you get no snow after buying a Polaris, I (and many other people in Wisconsin who hate snow) might be willing to pay you millions to move here. Ditto for the driest lower forty states who need rain. You move to one of those states, buy a motorbike, and it starts raining heavily, think of the fortune you could make. (lol)
Another in the series of strategic fiscal failures for the Obama economic interruption team. Glaringly obvious testimony against this Administration’s economic policies.
I suspect Obama’s next strategic energy debacle will hinge upon all US employees installing Zip lines between their homes and place of work, which working half the time (can go downhill one way, but the round trip takes power to return), will still be over 3x as successful as the electric car industry sales he has promoted.
Even a potential electric car buyer can see the coming increase in electric rates with the coal industry under attack. Why spend more to buy a car to save money when the end result might be something yet again even more expensive to drive?
Flying electric cars that go 500 miles on a 5 minute charge are only 2 years from hitting the market.
-——with a standard gasoline engine.———
I don’t know what standard means in this context. How big is the standard gas engine in the volt? Does it power the car or a generator that charges the batteries?
Tell college kids - "You'll be paying on their credit cards till you are ready to retire." Where are the Super Pacs when the noise of campaigns is cut by 90%?
——— -52F at Tok-——
I’ll bet there weren’t many folks in the campground to enjoy that degree of cold
Back in the 60s & 70s, I knew several farmers who converted their pick ups to N.G., I never ran into a single one who actually liked the results for various reasons. Maybe it has improved since then.
“Because madmen and zealots control the fossil fuel AND they are sabotaging electric solar and hybrid automotive companies.”
huh, nobody from the fossil fuel industry is “sabotaging electric solar and hybrid automotive companies”. Heck, they do that all by themselves.
Good point. There are still areas of the northeast without power. After the hurricane, people with gasoline powered cars were sitting in line for hours to buy gas - but at least they were able to obtain fuel for their vehicles. If necessary, you can walk to a gas station and fill up a can with gasoline to bring back to your car. If you own an electric car, what do you do? You can't walk somewhere and get a can of electricity to bring back to your vehicle.
In the Chevrolet Volt there is a 1.4 litre gasoline engine which recharges the battery pack. The actual drive train is all electric.
Aren’t steam engines prone to explosions?
What no one is revealing is that any rechargeable battery has a memory.
Example:
If you constantly charge your cell phone while it has a half charge on it, And this does take a while) when it eventually runs all the way down, when you charge it to full, it will only have taken a half charge.
“physics is a b*tch”...
Yesterday, Sun 12/2/12, I was driving down I26 in South Carolina. The speed limit is 70 and there were lots of trucks on the road.
Traffic began to slow down until everybody was barely doing 40. I couldn’t see what the holdup was because of all the trucks.
Finally I worked my way through the jam and saw the problem. A woman was driving a Chevy Volt in the left lane and going about 43 mph. As I passed her on the right I glanced over. She was banging her fist on the steering wheel and, based on her facial expressions, yelling her head off.
Nice car. Wonder where it is today?
“we used to have warm summers, last time was 2004, now every winter is warmer and wetter, more snow, summers are cooler and wetter.”
The only constant with weather is change.
Ping.
Electric cars are not competitive. Which is why they require government subsidies.
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