Vroom Vroom!

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

So, last March, I posted about electric vehicles, specifically about by position on the Nissan Leaf and Chevy Volt. Many of you were correct, however, in that I may have been premature in my evaluations. Among the most relevant data shared was the Volt "selling every one [they could] make" and 20k preorders for the Leaf, and that it was a deliberately slow rollout. The consensus, at least at the time, appeared to be that we needed to have a year under our belt to really get a good grasp on the situation.

So what do we know now in 2012 that we didn't in 2011?

* GM predicted at least 10k Volts sold in 2010, and didn't even come close to that number, missing it by nearly 2400 cars, spurred in part by an allowance to sell the existing demo models. Inexplicably, GM intends to produce 60k of them this year even though demand has not been high. Granted: the Volt only reached nationwide status in the fourth quarter, but that did not seem to show significantly more demand.

* If the Chevy Volt isn't winning over hearts and minds, the Nissan Leaf isn't faring much better. It had higher sales year-long than the Volt, coming in at 9600 sold in the US. The Leaf, however, saw its sales peak over the summer and has mostly seen a precipitous decline from its height.

The issue with electric cars remains the same: they're expensive, they don't go far, and they cost too much to the taxpayer. A Volt costs the taxpayer $250k per vehicle sold on top of the ticket cost to the consumer - no wonder you have to be fairly affluent to drive one. The Volt runs for a whopping 40 miles on electricity (and then another 340 per tank on premium gas), the Leaf a significantly-better-yet-still-sad 110 miles at best, probably closer to 75 - I drove more than that to visit my friend last weekend. With the price tag in the high $20s-low $30s even with tax credits, it's not likely to find many more adopters, etiher - catching only 2% of the market overall isn't much of a splash for an industry with high expectations it set for itself, never mind what the rest of the people who supposedly know what they're doing thought. But, to be fair, even the execs are only thinking 6% market share 13 years from now.

The Jalopnik post above says it best, to me:

I can't look someone in the eye who's about to buy their first car and say, "Look, buy this electric vehicle. It's not very fun. It's not what you want. You can't really haul anything. It's very likely not any better for the environment. But it is very, very quiet. Especially for the hours and hours it takes to charge."

The reality is that we will see viable alternative energy vehicles sooner rather than later. I think, given what we know about the electric options available and the options coming down the turnpike, that electric vehicles are not ready for prime time, and perhaps aren't actually the answer at all. I could still be proven wrong on this, but when we sink literally billions of taxpayer dollars into a technology that so few people want or need, it may be time to say "enough is enough" on the electric car experiment. We now know who killed the electric car - the consumer.

Comments

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

If we had this attitude with regard to air power we'd never have developed it. I'm honestly amazed that libertarians here reject the free market in this case. But since when do libertarians have any consistency at all, moral, intellectual, or logical?

[404.livejournal.com]

So your response was a strawman,

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Not in the least. My response is that the free market and individual choice should decide. I figure there'll be a functional one of these when there are functional jet packs but I don't see why the kind of view that says the Civil Rights Act was an abomination doesn't favor individual choice here.

[404.livejournal.com]

Having the government pick what company/person they are going to back in the development of a product doesn't sound like the free market to me...

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

The real world has no free market in the anarcho-capitalist sense all libertarians identify as free. And if it did we'd just have a few trusts monopolizing everything anyway and not "free" either.

[mrbogey.livejournal.com]

Early American spending on airplane research was on the loser and if anything hurt the Wright Brothers and their development.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Yes, I know, the free market and the attempts to market this totally aren't justifiable here even if they are elsewhere. I understand the free market doesn't work here, though I don't understand why. I mean it's not like it's the first time people kept trying for a product before it succeeded, people still keep trying to make functional jet-packs.

[mrbogey.livejournal.com]

What are you talking about?

The US Government was funding Curtiss and their airplane development. The Wright Brothers were paranoid about Curtiss stealing their ideas (rightfully so as Curtiss did) and thus hid most of their early success from prying eyes. Up to the point of being called hoaxers because they refused most offers from people trying to see the craft or watch it fly.

Your argument that gov't funding was crucial to the development of airpower and yet the opposite happened. The gov't helped to prop up the loser to the detriment of the winner. Eventually the Wright Bros and Curtiss merged their companies under gov't pressure.

So please, tell me how Glenn Curtiss and Samuel Langley had more to do with powered airplanes than the Wright Brothers and anyone who criticizes the gov't giving them thousands of dollars while the Wright Brothers built a working plane for just over a thousand was a great decision.

Please, tell me this.

Jeff, I know this is your thread so you'll probably get a reply by default, you probably should read up on the Wright Brothers as an aside. It's a good tale of how it took years for the Wright Brothers to get credit for their invention. A mix of paranoia over patent disputes and "experts" belittling their claims. America got lucky that we didn't kill the airplane in its crib.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

We would not have killed it in its crib, the mechanisms were well-understood and if we did not invent it one of the European states would have invented it as a perfect means to invincible reconnaissance: how can your enemy hide if you can see him where he can't shoot you? Instant airplane, USA not needed.

[mrbogey.livejournal.com]

'...the mechanisms were well-understood...'

No they weren't. Prior to the Wright Brothers there was no solid way of controlling the aircraft and most flights crashed immediately upon take-off. The Wright Brothers built one that could be controlled. They subsequently received patents on their designs. Immediately after their invention was made public and was witnessed by several aeroclubs they became celebrities in France (due to the large number of aeronautical enthusiasts there). For the beginning of the air age they were more popular overseas than here.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

That's because the generals overseas realized that they could use them to start spying on their enemies where their enemies could never reciprocate. All that development by Mordor and the Legion of Doom-er government in World War I turned air power into a modern, feasible means of transportation and travel technology. But I'm sure in the analysis of enlightened historical scholars adhering to Bizarro-Stalinism that all this is just a bunch of lies by media and that the Party-er Private Sector invented everything and government just plain lied.

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

Jeff, I know this is your thread so you'll probably get a reply by default, you probably should read up on the Wright Brothers as an aside. It's a good tale of how it took years for the Wright Brothers to get credit for their invention. A mix of paranoia over patent disputes and "experts" belittling their claims. America got lucky that we didn't kill the airplane in its crib.

Yeah, this is all new to me. I'll definitely be looking some stuff up later.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

His point's a bunch of rot. Multiple states invented the airplane and it was not the USA that was to first start really developing the uses of the technology.

[jerseycajun.livejournal.com]

My 'attitude' or anyone else's isn't the subject of the question I'm asking. I'm asking if your grounds for optimism in this particular case are grounded on more solid footing than the pessimists'.

[malasadas.livejournal.com]

Well, I'll try a THIRD time.

Jeff says the "consumer killed the electric car". I would argue differently. The consumer has made the electric car inevitable. They did it by lining up like crazed Beatles fanatics to buy hybrids. As a result, most major car manufacturers have spent the past decade putting hybrid vehicles into development and production and have vastly improved battery technology. Even the major luxury marques are using hybrid assist systems now.

With this industry wide investment in batteries, it is absolutely inevitable that they would start looking to from hybrid assist drive trains to all electric drive trains. Any vehicle has to get power to the wheels -- and the all electric drive train is here now. It can be powered by batteries or by something like a hydrogen fuel cell, but at the end of the day it still an all electric drive train, and the Leaf and Volt prove that such a drive train can offer fine driving dynamics. Car makers are going to use mostly batteries now because the supply chain and industry for their manufacture is already proven, plus the infrastructure to supply electricity for charging them is almost infinitely more available than anything to support fuel cells. In 30 years? Maybe it will be fuel cells, but battery electric vehicles that plug in are here and it was the CONSUMERS' enthusiasm for hybrids that got them here.

They are NOT a "perfect" green solution and electric car enthusiasts who tout them as such are dumb. Batteries are neither clean to produce or dispose of. And electricity for charging comes mostly from "dirty" sources. On the other hand, electric drive trains greatly diminish engine emissions and can realign our energy consumption more towards domestic sources, so those a clear plusses.

The Leaf and the Volt are not going to be sales leaders any time soon. The Leaf's range limits currently make it a very expensive second car, and the Volt is very expensive for its size and amenities. Both cars face stiff competition in the C-segment from an array of well appointed vehicles that push the boundary of 40 mpg. So, sure, we won't see THESE EVs flying off lots in Prius numbers soon, but the electric car is far from dead -- it is an inevitability unless someone has a power plant under development that uses neither gasoline nor electricity to make the wheels go that can be in the market in 10 years.

[jerseycajun.livejournal.com]

Third time for you, first for me :) .

Thank you for presenting a positive case for optimism, even if it didn't come from the person I asked.

*Tips hat*

I still shy away from making statements of inevitability, if for no other reason than technological developments, among many other things, have a way of defying those claims, regardless of how well thought-through the presentation.

[malasadas.livejournal.com]

[jerseycajun.livejournal.com]

I never tire of that macro :)

[mrbogey.livejournal.com]

'The consumer has made the electric car inevitable. They did it by lining up like crazed Beatles fanatics to buy hybrids. As a result, most major car manufacturers have spent the past decade putting hybrid vehicles into development and production and have vastly improved battery technology.'

I disagree. GM built a prototype car back in the 90s and while trialing it determined that battery development was not there for a fully electric vehicle. In a way, the Prius proved it. It used a small battery pack and only took the edge off of idling and low speed driving.

Battery development has made huge strides and that more than anything has made them feasible.

Look at it like DVD and Blu-ray. Not many people wanted a $1,000 DVD player, same for blu-ray. As the tech kept getting developed to make it cheaper it hit a good consumer price level. Well that's what EVs are experiencing right now.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Jeff doesn't want the technology developed at all, full-stop. But of course it's worth noting that libertarianism would have ensured a world where the USSR had a monopoly on the atomic bomb and none of the democracies did, as libertarians would never pay for pricey but necessary things like space travel or nuclear weapons.

[404.livejournal.com]

That's an unfair assessment, why do you keep doing this?

[jerseycajun.livejournal.com]

It's always distressing when someone's comment boils down into "You (insert target of derision)...", the likes of which I could find on LGF if I could tolerate reading it.

Your comments typically demonstrate a level of literacy and intelligence well above the average comment on LGF, but on substance, I can't see this as anything but a draw.

[lafinjack.livejournal.com]

Battery development has made huge strides and that more than anything has made them feasible.

You disagree by agreeing with his point?

[mrbogey.livejournal.com]

How have I agreed with him?

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Who said I was optimistic? I said that there would be multiple tries and that the problem's in the engineering. What I'm saying is why not let the free market decide and keep trying to market products like this? Why you hatin' on the market, dude? Sochulizm's evil, so why do you favor restricting the rights of others to choose as they please?