The Electric Car and Hawaii - match made in Aloha heaven? (Honolulu: rooftop, live)
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But think about it, daily recharging is also a chore, one that a lot of circumstances could interfere with. As simple an event as staying overnight with a friend could be a logistic challenge without some reserve capacity over and above what the daily commute required.
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for experimentation and exploration of alternate energy sources and different transportation modalities, but I think one of the factors that has to be licked in order to get wide acceptance is that of total range.
The owner's manual for the Tesla states that the car has to be plugged in when its not in use. It has a horrific parasitic power draw and if the battery level EVER gets to 0% it CANNOT be recharged and their warranty doesn't cover the $40,000.00 battery replacement fee if the owner allows the battery to get to zero. (It can go from 5% charge to 0% in 2 days while parked, a fully charged battery will be bricked in 11 weeks if not plugged in). So its not just the "chore" of plugging it in every night, it's also making sure that nobody trips over the cord, or a GFCI or circuit doesn't trip while your on vacation. As far as I know, the Leaf's battery doesn't brick if it gets to zero, but I could be wrong.
A Volt makes more sense. It costs $6000 more than the Leaf but you get a gas motor too.
Yes, and there is no limit to the range, so long as you have access to gas. I'm actually suprised that this concept was originally passed over in favor of hybrids. The technology has been used since the early 1900s in locomotives and ships. It give the average consumer all the charge they need to commute without using gas, and it allows for unlimited range so you don't need that second car. The problem with extending range using more batteries is that more batteries= more weight. More weight=need more batteries. The more you extend the range of an electric car using batteries, the less efficient it becomes.
I saw a news clip about 10 years ago about this guy who lived on a remote island and was 100% solar. The problem of course is that when you need lights etc the sun isn't out and he didn't want to deal with the hassle and expense of replacing batteries so he made his own setup that turned the unused electricity during the day into hydrogen using electrolysis and sea water. A fuel cell turned the hydrogen into electricity at night. It was a pretty slick setup. I wonder why nobody has considered this for powering vehicles. Using solar panels to charge a car is impractical (you can't fit enough on the car to do it, so you have to use your house roof) but for most people, their car is at work when the sun is out. You can store a lot more energy per pound in hydrogen than in batteries. And for folks who can't afford the solar setup, their car could still get hydrogen at gas stations (when the infrastructure is in place of course). And hyrdogen powered vehicles can ether be traditional internal combustion or electric depending on if you prefer an engine or a fuel cell and motors.
Last edited by terracore; 04-16-2012 at 01:02 PM..
A Volt makes more sense. It costs $6000 more than the Leaf but you get a gas motor too.
I count the spread as $4,645 (base prices - rebates), which makes the appeal of a second power source even higher. And across the country the Volt has been outselling the Leaf about 2:1, so others may be coming to the same conclusion. On the other hand, even with higher sales than last year Chevy recently had to stop the assembly line for 5 weeks due to a high backlog of unsold vehicles. It's still a tiny fraction of the total market.
Like everything else, what makes sense to a particular person depends on their given priorities and parameters. If you wanted to use only electric power for a commute that is 50 miles round trip, the Volt would not make sense at all, because its electric-only range is 35 miles, whereas the all-electric Leaf has an EPA range of 73 miles. If the round trip were 80 miles, however, that choice would likely flip.
The thing is, people have different motivations for buying electric cars. According to folks who track this kind of thing, there are four different groups responsible for most of the electric car sales so far:
1. Early adopter/tech geeks - There are people who buy new technology just to be able to show off to others how hip they are. Cost is not as important as coolness and performance, hence the relatively high interest in the Tesla and Fiskers cars with their sports car performance. But the Leaf or the Volt will give you bragging rights too.
2. UltraGreenies - These are people who are focused on reducing their carbon footprint. Many have had a Prius long enough that they're ready to make the next step up, and all-electric is state of the art, with the promise of alternative power sources to come dangling over there on the fringes.
3. Beancounters - People focused on the bottom line, and cutting costs as much as possible. With the current round of big rebates and other incentives, they are starting to adopt electrics. As gas prices rise, more people join this group, and with it's higher-than-mainland gas prices, Hawai'i is bobbing up on the markets as a focus area for the makers.
4. Survival/oil security alarmists - Counting on alternate energy electricity generation to save us from the international oil collapse they see coming.
The average consumer, however, has a more complex set of considerations, so they have not been big players in this field to date. And they're very sensitive to bad news, so every time a battery blows up, or whatever, it kills sales to this group for a while.
In any case, with more than 930,000 registered cars on the road, the total number of electrics on the road in Hawai'i totals maybe 750 today, with about 400 of those being sold in the last year. That's hardly a tick on the counter, although the state is projecting maybe 1/3 of our cars will be electric in 20 years time.
That prediction and $1.50 will buy you a cup of coffee some places.
I'm actually suprised that this concept was originally passed over in favor of hybrids.
I don't think the Volt could have been built back then. There's been a lot of engineering progress since the Prius was first released in 1997. Batteries are better, regeneration from braking is better, etc.
After all, they're both using gas engines to charge batteries, and batteries to locomote with, but the Volt has a longer range and much higher top speed in all-electric mode.
Who and How will make power installation for electricity ?
Also how to be connected on same electricity with condo ?
What if someone steal this special VOLT charger? (cost like 2000$?)
Who and How will make power installation for electricity ?
Also how to be connected on same electricity with condo ?
What if someone steal this special VOLT charger? (cost like 2000$?)
etc...etc...
With all the litigation going on at the Moana Pacific - a plug in car is probably the least of your issues.
With that said - it was pointed out in Post #2 of this thread that electrics and condos don't go well with each other at this point.
The owner's manual for the Tesla states that the car has to be plugged in when its not in use. It has a horrific parasitic power draw and if the battery level EVER gets to 0% it CANNOT be recharged and their warranty doesn't cover the $40,000.00 battery replacement fee if the owner allows the battery to get to zero. (It can go from 5% charge to 0% in 2 days while parked, a fully charged battery will be bricked in 11 weeks if not plugged in). So its not just the "chore" of plugging it in every night, it's also making sure that nobody trips over the cord, or a GFCI or circuit doesn't trip while your on vacation. As far as I know, the Leaf's battery doesn't brick if it gets to zero, but I could be wrong.
If those batteries cost $40,000 to replace....
Than, I could definitely foresee a thriving underground industry of stealing batteries, and setting up a black market to buy 'previously owned' batteries.
I don't think the Volt could have been built back then. There's been a lot of engineering progress since the Prius was first released in 1997. Batteries are better, regeneration from braking is better, etc.
After all, they're both using gas engines to charge batteries, and batteries to locomote with, but the Volt has a longer range and much higher top speed in all-electric mode.
I thought that all the hybrid cars on the market (except the Volt) are parallel hybrids, meaning that the engine powers the transmission directly? The benefit is that the batteries and motor can power the car at the same time, improving fuel economy, but the only real charging comes from regenerative braking. Locomotives typically don't have batteries, or regenerative braking. They do use the motors to slow down the beast while saving the brakes, the electricity that is generated during that process goes through a huge set of resistance wires and is lost as heat. Apparently the economics of it all doesn't support the battery concept (usually, there are some out there).
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