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Posted on 05/23/2013 4:55:05 PM PDT by jazusamo
Government Failure: Two years ago the president announced his goal of putting 1 million electric cars on U.S. roads by 2015. Did he mention that to reach that target the unpopular cars might have to be given away?
The market for electric cars is so weak that consumer costs are approaching almost nothing. The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday that in order to "spark buyers for electric cars," there is a need to "drop the price to nearly $0."
"A new round of discount leases on mainstream-brand plug-in cars such as the Nissan Leaf or Fiat 500e, combined with federal, state and local electric-vehicle incentives, could make a battery-electric car an extraordinarily economical way to get around for drivers," reports the Journal.
The favoritism that government shows to electric cars should offend any fair-minded and decent person.
Despite taxpayer money already wasted on forcing a technology that's not ready, President Obama last month proposed raising the Energy Department's vehicle research budget by 75% — adding $575 million in spending. He also wants to raise the federal tax credit for buying an electric car from $7,500 to $10,000.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.investors.com ...
It wasn’t too long ago that only people in Hollywood and the Hamptons could afford plasma TV’s, now they are almost giving them away in the middle isle of walmart.
I believe that million cars is in a law somewhere.
LOL - A manufacturer renown for horribly unreliable electronics marketing an electric car! That there is funny...
$100,000 price range
I still don’t know why it was pulled.
Never heard that about VW. Knew the English cars had that reputation.
I would rather have a 2013 Shelby GT500 for $65k.
To make use of their “free” electric car the consumer would first need an electrician to install a high voltage electric charging unit in their homes. Second consumers would have to plan their routine travel so as to have charging stations at or along the way to their destination. Consumers would also have restrict their driving to the limited range of the vehicle making ample allowance for the use of heaters, defrosters, windshield wipers, headlights and colder temperatures all of which can significantly reduce the range of the vehicle not to mention possibly having to forgo the use of battery draining air conditioning and stereo systems. Forget about packing up the family and driving to a summer vacation spot without having again to carefully plan for numerous hours long recharges enroute. I doubt that with all this inconvenience there would be many takers for these "free" cars
I'm pretty sure the article is referring to sales of the plug-in prius only. The regular prius is quite popular. The plug-in version apparently not so much.
You know I vacillate between knowing what a farce in many ways the whole Hybrid / Electric Car thing is and yet at the same time having "auto gnomes" seeing the Ford "C-Max" being a hybrid I could actually swing.
But a number of "Ugknowns" are out their, that could make this a reality. In a pure sense if you are a car guy, you might a agree, the electric car is fairly simple under the hood, minus the battery and it's recharge. Now to the Ugknowns...
* Is it Moore's law (not really a law) that Computer speed doubles every 18 months.
* This is being applied to Solar Panels, and even the Business Insider is hinting behind the scenes things are happening.
* Now will we get from these two inventions ( below ) what I call the an "anti-battery" breakthrough?
* By that I mean the "Graphene" super-capacitor work being done @ UCLA and elsewhere.
* Add to that the 18 yr old that one 50k with a H-Ti-O2 + POLYANILINE super-capacitor battery for her Cell Phone.
IMHO it is and has always been the battery, are we on the verge of an anti-battery breakthrough, and does Solar have it's breakthrough in Parallel? Perhaps.
I know one thing, I know of one Conservative Family in a lather about Smart Meters that are looking towards home-generator ( and my guess eventually solar ) as means of saying no way to that insanity.
Their may come a time soon when Conservatives gravitate to such technologies to keep Gov't out of their yards and out of their meters.....
Why does Ford have a plug in electric car now? Is there really a market?
No matter how much efficiency you can pull from an electric battery, you will still run up against physical limitations.
Moving a car of a certain mass over a distance will always take a certain amount of energy. The only real energy savings would be in minimizing the amount of waste energy—the energy that goes into heating the engine, overcoming friction, etc.
I think the hybrids are nice, in that they manage to recapture some of the energy that would otherwise be lost, and so manage to pull more usable energy out of the gas. The only problem is that they are ugly. Really, really ugly.
The money passes through the hands of Democrats. The electric car is merely a conduit for the theft
The Democrat party is a criminal enterprise
Overcoming friction?
Look into Ceramic Bearings ( coated with WS2 ), Isotropic Superfinishing, WS2 ( Tungsten DiSulfide ) Coatings, and Cryogenic Treating of engine and driveline parts as a per-cursor to these processes mentioned.... Interesting stuff.
As to why they have one now, their is probably a host of reasons, it is a an Electric Focus, and it isn't selling all that well.
But no one notices what that have done with that platform and it's top-hats, i.e the Escape, C-Max and I think the Transit Connect. What they have done is what GM did in the late 60's. You could get a Nova with an Iron Duke 4 cylinder all the way up to a 427 Big Block and a ton of engines in between.
With the EPA etc driving them, they have a different paradigm today, but they have the following options. 2 eco-boost engines, ( potentially a 3rd with a 3 cylinder coming here ) Hybrid and plug in hybrid called Energi, and a pure electric. That is a total of 6, if you do not include the CNG Transit Connect for Taxi's (note I think the new Transit Connect will finally be on the Focus Platform).
You gonna buy one?
Those standards, which raised average fuel efficiency by 2016 to the equivalent of 35.5 mpg and to over 50 mpg by the middle of the next decade.
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