Webchat: Making Electric Vehicles Attractive to Consumers
One of the big questions surrounding electric vehicles is how many will actually make it to market and when. Chevy Volt Vehicle Line Director Tony Posawatz and California Cars Initiative founder Felix Kramer will answer questions on what needs to happen to quicken public acceptance of EVs beyond making sure they are appealing and relevant. Join us for the webchat Friday at 3:30 p.m. Eastern Time. Posawatz and Kramer are part of an aptly named panel, “The Consumer: Who, Why and When” next Wednesday, Oct. 21, at the Business of Plugging In conference in Detroit.
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Make the EV go a full, guaranteed, 200 miles without recharge (on battery alone) with full A/C or heat and defrost and sell it for around $25k and I’ve got a sale for you. Many commuters travel minimum 50 to 90 miles one way for work and this number is increasing. For anyone traveling 175-200 miles per day the Volt is just an expensive (if the $40,000 projected price tag materializes) hybrid. 40 miles electric only is city-intended and for city driving I think many consumers will be willing to spend somewhere around half that amount to go green. There are pure EVs in the works that will go 100-150-200 miles per charge.
Make the hybrid EV act as a home standy generator when the power is out. That aspect alone could be worth $5,000-$10,000 of the price.
Unfortunately nobody yet has electric cars that go 100-200 miles per charge. Some people say that the leaf will be between $20000 and $30000, but that price doesn’t include the battery.
Give it another 10 years or so…
It appears that you haven’t heard about the Tesla…???
I think that these requests represent a “dream list” that may never occur.
All I would like Chevy to do is release a version of the Volt that does NOT have a gasoine engine and related components and be priced in the low $20s.
Dave,
What GM needs to offer is an all-electric, city car. A lightweight car with an all-electric range of about 50 miles, that would easy to park, easy to maneuver, and be ideal for commuting and using for around town errands.
That car should be priced in the $10-15k range, and would fulfill 90% of the needs of almost all city and suburban dwellers.
Consumers could keep their long-range, liquid fueled cars for special occasions and weekend trips.
Has GM considered making the Volt model with a 20 mile range or maybe a modular upgrade option? I know most people travel less than 40 miles per day, but if the Volt could be more affordable and bought by more people with 20 mile range, would this be considered?
From Chat : Yes, the Volt is coming to Canada – first for the Winter Olympics in Vancouver.
Mean Volt is in Vancouver on or before Feb 12 ? Great !!! , Is there a project drive way model for volt in Vancouver ? If so i would love to apply.
“The Consumer: Who, Why and When” next Wednesday, Oct. 21, at the Business of Plugging In conference in Detroit.
From the article below it sounds like GM is a day late and a dollar short………
Here is an article about Nissan.
Electric Transportation Engineering Corp. this week finalized a deal with the U.S. Department of Energy to begin developing and installing a charging network for electric vehicles across five states, including Oregon.
The Phoenix company, a subsidiary of Scottsdale, Ariz.-based ECOtality Inc., is rolling out more than 11,000 charging stations in five states — Oregon, Arizona, Tennessee, Washington and California — using $99.8 million in federal funds.
The project is in partnership with Nissan North America, which will deploy 4,700 of its all-electric Leaf vehicles which are scheduled for release in fall 2010.
As part of the project, Oregon expects to receive just under 1,000 of the Nissan vehicles and around 2,000 charging stations, centered around Portland, Eugene, Salem and Corvallis.
Pacific Business News
4:34 Comment From Del Gallagher ~ Can you be more specific and supply some numbers. If I turn the A/C to high, will I get 30, 32, or 35 miles before the ICE has to kick in?
4:35 ~ felixkramer: For the broader question on vehicle efficiencies and what consumers can expect: Right now we have three relevant information sources on MPG: carmakers’ fleet MPG (CAFE), vehicle sticker displays (EPA), and real-time/cumulative displays (in car). It’s important that all three in some way convey fuels used, greenhouse gas emissions, and costs/mile. Each is a major challenge to get right, and will require cooperation between industry, government, and consumers.
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Mr. Kramer,
That’s hardly a specific answer. I can’t believe you haven’t done the testing and don’t know exactly how far a Volt can go on a single-charge when the air-conditioner or heater, headlights, and sound system are all on. You say its a matter of cooperation between industry, government, and consumers. It seems to me more like a matter of adequate testing, engineering, and physics.
If you don’t know already have a good handle on those numbers, you would not be doing your proper due diligence.
This chat was extremely disappointing. I could have just gotten this information from a FAQ page about the Volt! Having to shuffle through the awkwardly worded questions posed by “the public” was just irritating. Perhaps the good people at GM could just direct people to a clearer, more concise statement about EVs instead of having them wade through all the fluff of the “technical difficulty”-ridden chat.
And who came up with “The Business of Plugging”? I’m not sure if that name was really the best option for such a conference…
Gary, ever since the dawn of motorized vehicles pure electrics (Baker, et al) have had ranges of approximately 100 miles or better. Jay Leno attests to such whwn bragging up his 100 year old Baker. http://www.popularmechanics.com/automotive/jay_leno_garage/4215940.html True, it is not a family sedan, and will not cruise at 80 mph on the I-95, and the last time most people saw one of these in motion was on the Dennis the Menace television series. And even the fuel-cell electric as prototyped (in tractor form) by Allis-Chalmers is half a century old. But it illustrates how little we’ve progressed in alternative fuel technology in the past 50-100 years.
A missing link with the Electric Vehicle discussions is what the current Petroleum Infrastructure costs the US Taxpayers. No pun intended – but throw some gas on that fire and let the US Consumers and Taxpayers know how much it costs our nation to pump out crude oil in the Middle East, ship it to refineries in Texas and then distribute it around the world. I read somewhere that the true cost of a gallon of gas is someplace closer to $15.00 instead of the amount we pay at the pump. I tried digging the facts out of the Congressional Budget Office in DC but to tell you the truth it’s impossible to figure out how the US Goverment does their accounting. Maybe GM has more access to the true figures. I bet it would make for interesting reading.
If GM and the Electric Car Coalition want converts, hit them where it hurts the most. Remember that as tax dollars go, the true cost of a gallon of gas is a heck of a lot higher that one would imagine and that once you burn that gallon in an ICE engine – it’s gone forever (along with your tax dollars).
Another point is that we can do better as a nation developing Electric Vehicles since we can generate electricity with many other fuel sources. Nuclear, coal, natural gas, bio-fuels and solar offer us greater flexibility to run electric vehicles, so pay attention to new proposals going before Congress and the Senate. For example – Solar Technology Roadmap Act of 2010 – H.R.3585 is chaired by a Democrat from Arizona and will eventually be paid for by your tax money if it passes. I’m suprised California didn’t come up with it first!
My final point – can somebody put a price on one pint of our U.S. Service Mans blood who’s in harms way protecting those middle eastern oil sources?
I think it’s priceless myself, what about other readers?
My final point – can somebody put a price on one pint of our U.S. Service Mans blood who’s in harms way protecting those middle eastern oil sources? I think it’s priceless myself, what about other readers?
What you’ve neglected in your calculus is that some things are worth fighting for.
Without the energy that oil and other fossil fuels have brought us over the last 120 years, and the lifestyle that abundance of energy has allowed us to achieve, we could be like Ethiopia or Rwanda.
Just be lucky some people are willing to do your fighting for you.
Building an electric car that has more than 100 mile range requires a lot of energy, probably 20 kWh useable, which means your battery has to be at least 30 kWh if you want it to last 8 years or more. Right now prices have dropped to around $500-$600 a kWh (BYD claims a lower price but noone is able to get them). So if your battery costs $500 * 30 = $15,000 battery only. No pack management, no car to go with that battery. And you have a car that has a range lower than my ICE car has on its 3 gallon reserve. Most people drive less than 40 miles a day, but they drive more often enough that a 100 best case range won’t do it for them. If you drive more than 60 miles a day, buy a Prius, not a Volt or ER-EV. Even if BYD can deliver their less than perfect battery at $300 a kWh, a 30 kWh battery that gives barely acceptable range for a city car will still cost $9000, add the car and the electric intent heat pump and power steering and pack management and you will be lucky to get the car under $30,000 best case scenario.
BEV’s with acceptable range and price aren’t doable yet, ER-EV’s may be possible soon at a reasonable price, but reasonable priced BEV’s are at least 6 to 8 years away. Battery prices just aren’t dropping fast enough, even with growing economies of scale.
We have several vehicles purchased from a Chevrolet Dealership in Maryland.
We must say that our 2004, 15 pass. vehicle which has many,many, many miles on the odometer, is one of the sturdiest vans. The only reason it is not not beingused at present, is that we have no work for it & will have to sell it. Since we maintain our vehicles it could have gone for another few years. This is just to say THANKS for a quality vehicle.
Every established auto manufacturer is working on an electric vehicle.
Quite a few non established auto manufacturers are working on an electric vehicle.
WiLL GM be able to compete?
Sounds like Nissan is moving pretty fast.