Nearly six of 10 Americans ”” 57% ”” say they won’t buy an all-electric car no matter the price of gas, according to a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll.
That’s a stiff headwind just as automakers are developing electrics to help meet tighter federal rules that could require their fleets to average as high as 62 miles per gallon in 2025. And President Obama has set a goal of 1 million electric vehicles in use in the U.S. by 2015.
The anti-electric sentiment unmasked by the poll shows that pure electrics ”” defined in the poll question as “an electric car that you could only drive for a limited number of miles at one time” ”” could have trouble getting a foothold in the U.S.
Strictly for urban use only.
And I bet that 57% number is low if the folks responding really knew what was involved: high initial cost, short range, can’t power all the amenities we want (you mean no A/C here in south MS???? Ugh!), not much storage space, and it isn’t free power, you will see all those Kwh’s on your home utility bill and depending on where you live, that will add up quickly.
But you don’t have to listen to me; watch the market place–tax incentives are needed to build the things and sell the things. Which means you and I are buying them even if we don’t get to own one.
High fuel prices will motivate technology development. As the technology improves, consumer resistance will lessen.
carl
What is needed IMHO, are inexpensive hybrid diesel/electric cars. You could after-market solar charging panels for charging vehicles in the parking lot. As far as the expense…I figured buying a loaded Hyundai that got 35 mpg for $12K beat the socks of of buying a loaded Prius (after the year long waiting list) for $32.5K. I can fuel my car for over a decade on the difference in price, even at $4/gal.
What? People aren’t clamoring to pay $40,000 for a $60,000 coal powered car?
[i]As the technology improves, consumer resistance will lessen[/i]
I don’t think that will work. Right now the barriers are defined by physics and engineering. Gasoline/diesel are incredibly efficient stores of energy and relatively convenient to use and internal combustion has reached a high degree of perfection which has taken ~130 years to evolve to this point.
For an all-electric vehicle to work we need a quantum leap breakthrough in energy storage. Current electric motors are close to 100% efficient so they are not the problem. And the solar cell on the roof won’t work–what happens if you park in a garage?
A breakthrough might come someday, I hope it does. But BHO flogging the current crop of beauties with massive tax incentives is just as bad a policy as his infamous “cash for clunkers was”. Socialist fiat does not good science make.
I suspect they invented the necessary car years ago but it is not in the interests of the taxman, oil industry, governments and super powers to switch from oil…..and they are the big boys!
And if you want to drive more folks than yourself on a trip, the electric car is too small, too light, and hence too unsafe. It is certainly not for families. Does anyone recall President Obama telling a man with several children (five? six?) that he needed a hybrid van? Not in our lifetime!
#8 — yes, just like the evil government/big oil conspiracy suppresed the engine that runs on water and the light bulbs that burn forever.
That’s not the way it works. If some enterprising person invented an electric car that was genuinely better than a gasoline car, nobody would be able to suppress it — and nobody would try; instead, they’d just try to grab a piece of it for themselves.
We didn’t settle on fossil fuels as the primary energy source for our civilization by accident or by conspiracy of fossil fuel providers; of all the energy sources we’ve found so far, fossil fuels provide the best energy delta (energy you get out of a chunk of fuel minus the energy you have to spend to produce that chunk of fuel) in combination with being widely available and easily handled.
Now, it is true that there are other, non-obvious costs to fossil fuels — environmental costs in pollution, political costs in being beholden to oil-producing despots, the fact that however large the supply of fossil fuels is, it is finite and eventually we’ll run out — and those costs do provide incentives to look for alternative energy sources. But the cold truth is that the utility of fossil fuels sets the bar really high, and so far no alternative energy source is better or even equal. Nuclear comes closest, but people are disproportionately terrified of the word “nuclear.” Wind and hydro and solar are useful contributors in areas that lend themselves to those sources — and should be leveraged when possible — but none of them can come close to taking the load of modern civilization by themselves.
As a good liberal I’m all for the government encouraging ongoing research into alternative energy, via grants and tax incentives. But so far it remains just that: research. Electric cars are a niche product, and so far at least hybrids don’t make economic sense — you can just buy a fuel-efficient conventional car for a fraction of the price and still come out well ahead over the lifetime of the car. Electric and hybrid cars as they exist now are a good effort, but they’re not the solution yet and it’s a mistake to push them as though they were.
The 1994 Geo Metro got 51 highway per the revised 2007 EPA mileage standards. If that could be done 17 years ago, without the fancy composites and all the engineering advances we have made since then, why can’t it be done better today? This isn’t fiction or gee-wiz thinking. At the very least, this model could be re-introduced in the age of $3.50 – $4.00 per gallon gas. By the way, they were cheap! Very inexpensive cars, that are multi-passenger hatchbacks, and that get 15 mpg with a gasoline engine (better mileage than most cars today), and have a decent safety rating should sell like mad. What’s the hold up?
ST & N: I own and drive a 1998 Chevy Metro with a 5 speed tranny and A/C. It doesn’t look like much, but with 100K miles on it, it still gets a solid 45mpg in my combined city/highway type of driving. I still have my dad’s orginal bill of sale where he bought it for just a bit over $6,000 cash. Gas at $4/gal is not a big deal as I typically drive about 300mi/week.
Ever try driving uphill in an electric gold cart? Doesn’t get very far, does it? Batteries don’t last long, either, before they need recharging. Nice idea, but not exactly workable.
I meant “an electric [i]golf[/i] cart.”
Heh, I had a Geo Metro convertible! I absolutely LOVED that car! Alas, I had to trade her when we moved to Texas. She had no air conditioning and we needed something a bit bigger than a 2-seater compact convertible. She was an economical and really fun car to drive, though.
Back to alternative fuels, Honda has been testing out a hydrogen fuel cell car in California. I’ve seen rave reviews of it but they limited leases to California so far, where they’ve put in hydrogen fueling stations next to gas pumps. It will be interesting to see how that goes.
Oops…I wrote “that get 15 mpg with a gasoline engine” and I meant, “that get 10 to 15 more mpg with a gasoline engine”.
Anyway, that technology is from 1994. Now, with the onboard computers, I would think that that design could do even better…or do the same with more passengers/cargo/room.
I have seen no Chevy Volts on the road but have seen plenty of new Chevy Camaro’s. The muscle car lives on! Actually, it supposedly gets 18 mpg in the city and 29 mpg on the highway. Certainly better than the 12 mpg that the 1969 Rally Sport Camaro that I almost bought when I was a teen. (It turned out to be stolen, so I am glad that I didn’t.)
I don’t know what the engine options in the Camaro are, but there is plenty of big iron out there, check this out
http://www.proformanceunlimited.com/specs/540_625.html
Note the engine is “chrome”, not “green”, heh, heh, heh