Posted on 01/22/2015 7:14:12 PM PST by jazusamo
Drivers trying to calculate whether it's practical to own an electric car are facing a new math.
U.S. gas prices have fallen more than $1 per gallon over the last 12 months, to a national average of $2.06, according to AAA. That makes electric cars — with their higher prices tags — a tougher sell.
"Fuel savings are not top of mind to many consumers right now," says John Krafcik, president of the car shopping site TrueCar.com.
Automakers have responded by slashing thousands of dollars off the sticker price of electrics. Incentives averaged $4,159 per electric car last year, up 68 percent from 2013, according to Kelley Blue Book. The average for all vehicles was $2,791.
The discounting, combined with new vehicles such as the BMW i3, the electric Kia Soul and the Mercedes B Class, boosted sales of electrics 35 percent last year, according to Ward's AutoInfoBank. But the gains came before gas prices plunged in the second half.
So the discounting will likely continue. In January, the electric version of the Ford Focus was selling for an average of $25,168, or 16 percent lower than the sticker price of $29,995, according to TrueCar.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Yep. Costs per kilowatt can vary also by season. What is 12 cents in the summer can be 20 cents in the winter.
what is your lithium solution?
by editor-surveyor
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/3249761/posts?page=66#66
There are other battery technologies that don’t use lithium.
There are other electricity storage and production technologies other than batteries.
by ctdonath2
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/3249761/posts?page=75#75
They are not solutions. They are possible future solutions.
And if the Obama EPA is not reined in? Double, Triple, Quad...
Obama: My Plan Makes Electricity Rates Skyrocket
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HlTxGHn4sH4
That’s not even figuring if everyone moves to electric cars, or even if a number of us did, that the costs to upgrade the already stressed electrical grid would skyrocket electric rates too. As it is we have black and brown outs in the summer in places like California.
You misunderstood. It is to provide the same taxing to both renters and homeowners.
It is difficult to get how much residential versus commercial electricity is used as the Luddites in government do not want people to know that commercial uses half the electricity in the US. They want everyone to think their homes are the culprits.
That said, if half the electricity is used in residential wiring, imagine if a number of us started to increase our electricity usage by 5 times or more to charge electric vehicles. The grid would fry.
Pocket-sized wireless miles-distant low-power multi-megabit/s data transfer cheap enough for cat videos wasn’t on the horizon either not all that long ago. I remember when dialup 1200bps was screaming fast; wireless >10Mbit/s was unthinkable; now everyone has it in their pockets.
We’re going in circles; seems you can’t accept that just because we don’t have a solution _now_ doesn’t mean we won’t concoct a solution _soon_ given enough demand.
I’d have not gotten the EV without the incentive.
Incentive meant I (and others) got it, which in turn meant the office owner had incentive to install a charger.
Now there’s a charger available, mitigating the need for an incentive for others to make up for the lack of a convenient charger.
As for not paying gas tax: oh, we’ve paid plenty of gas tax, and won’t be long until gas tax shifts to a fuel-agnostic mileage (or other) tax. Not everything changes completely & perfectly all at once. For now, money is elsewhere going into building necessary EV infrastructure.
I didn’t say that there can’t be any discovery.
My point is that there is considerable deception in building “battery factories” that are claimed to use a new technology when said new technology is fictional.
Musk is manipulating to get investors; he is a huckster.
We’ve been through this crap too many times before (Enron, Solyndra, etc) to fall for it so easily.
Time for reality.
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>> “Pocket-sized wireless miles-distant low-power multi-megabit/s data transfer cheap enough for cat videos wasn’t on the horizon either not all that long ago. I remember when dialup 1200bps was screaming fast; wireless >10Mbit/s was unthinkable; now everyone has it in their pockets.” <<
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None of that was new tech; it was utilization of developed tech becoming economically feasible.
For increased usage of electric cars to be possible requires tech that hasn’t even been dreamed of yet.
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Electric cars at this point will crash our power grid if they increase further.
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It’s solely a commuter car or for short errands. And definitely not for everybody. I agree.
I suspect the owner had an incentive to put one in. Maybe he gets a tax right off, or wants one to charge his own car, or just wants to keep the troops happy. Can you quick charge it at the office or is it standard charging?
Points well made, and of course, how about all the hydrocarbons (coal, LPG, etc) that get burned to generate charging power? And try pulling a boat for 200-300 miles over mountains...and with how clean gas engines are nowadays (which the libs always avoid) — what is the point?
Food for thought. :-)
Yeah I’ve got the spreadsheet at work, I’m definitely not saving as much now versus when I got it when gas prices were in the $3.5-$4.0/gal range. Back then I was calculated my savings were coming over $125-$150 per month depending on how far I drove.
I travel for work so sometimes I drive as little as 450 miles per month, other months it can get over 700. Just depends.
The “incentive” was that the property owner wants to lease office space, and putting in a charger provides customers one more attractive benefit. (My company alone, 30 people, has 5 EV drivers. There’s at about a dozen EVs in the parking lot for two 7-story office buildings.)
It will charge a Leaf in 4 hours, an upper-mid-range charger. Has 2 plugs, with plans to install 2 more soon.
Dollars per mile (for the acceptable specs) is the way to view it, in my opinion. Glad it works for you.
Specs are not the same for everyone. I need a full size pick-up. Give that requirement, mpg means less than vehicle cost, I found.
While that’s is possible. They said the same thing about the geometry of a transistor on IC’s not that long ago...
Regarding engineering, even with all the losses in electrical power generation and distribution it is still more efficient than a petroleum powered car overall is it not?
We've also been hearing for years and years that LED lighting is "just around the corner"... Even I was becoming very skeptical if LEDs would ever make the grade in real world lighting uses. Suddenly it has.
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