Posted on 07/24/2013 1:27:04 AM PDT by grundle
BMW has lowered their price because Chevy lowered their price recently. And for chevy it was also a better leasing program.
And with Chevy everyone thinks about the Volt, but Chevy is now rolling out the Spark EV, and with the price cuts is supposedly the cheapest EV on the market. Around $17,000(after credits) and on a lease for $1000 down and $200/month. But it is available now in only 2 states.
As a comparison the gasoline Chevy Spark is about $12,000 The Spark is really a Korean Daewoo that has been around 10-15 years but is now owned by GM Korea.
200 miles is enough for you? Not really, not for me. A rather routine trip for me is from GA to TN...then return trip on a later date. The distance is 250 miles. What am I supposed to be doing at some mid-point once or twice during the trip while the battery charges on my EV-only car? Charge it where? Charge it for how long? Slow charge VS fast charge? And, c'mon, 250 miles is a short drive across America.
Hah! I see a new Chevy Chase movie coming! "Drained Battery Vacation"?
I can't see EV-onlys ever being reliably acceptable for the touring public in all weather conditions and with safety considerations for trips longer than 50-60 miles or so...if that far.
For me, 200 miles would satisfy 95% of my auto transport needs. I could rent a car for the infrequent longer trips or use my girlfriends’ car.
But yeah, 200 miles is too short for most people, and certainly way too short when used as a primary or only vehicle.
For those that want a cheap city commute car as a 2nd/3rd vehicle, sure, an EV or hybrid might be just the thing.
Someone above mentioned they have to get the battery charging time down to 15 minutes for EVs to be practicle. That's still way too long for me, considering that I can do self-serve gas in 3 minutes.
I suspect most buyers want the highest efficiency in $$$/mile, not miles per gallon. That makes the diesel hybrid a tough sell when including the purchase price.
People want a lot of things - performance no least. After all, none of us drives as slowly as we walk, even though we know that a vehicle made to run very slowly could attain very good fuel economy. But as far as economy goes, the value of fuel economy is great if you commute long distances, and insignificant if you only drive to church on Sunday. But then, if you’re an ecofreak, you get a lot of psychic reward from an impractical “emission free” electric car.
Personally, I think the future in electric cars is high internal surface area capacitors based on nanotech. That is the breakthrough type that I think will bring us 100% electric cars that sell.
Dead batteries could mean dead you.
Does the TDI VW line qualify? Not interested in urea tanks. They seem to run OK, but that price differential buys a lot of Unleaded.
I have a full sized Ford truck as well. It uses gasoline and drives and handles much better than the diesels when empty, which is the way most trucks are most of the time.
That being said, no pickup is a sports or drag car to start with and it’s doubly bad when someone tries to do such things with a diesel.
However, I’m the first to stand for everyone’s freedom to drive what they like.
I think most will start with a desired performance & utility and compare price from there. If you need a pickup for the hauling capacity, you set your requirements and go from there to compare price. Sorry if I seemed to imply only price and nothing else; I did not mean that.
Last vehicle for me was required to be a new full size truck. From there I went to price ($/mile).
Back in the 70s when gas rationing was a reality, GM was designing a 40 gallon tank for the full size sedans but was told "no way" by the feds.
But you must admit they are primarily existing by selling phony "credits" mandated by California.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/patrickmichaels/2013/05/27/if-tesla-would-stop-selling-cars-wed-all-save-some-money/
The bureaucrats at the USEPA are very anti-diesel. They mandated extremely low emission limits on light duty diesels and have forced design compromises which really hurt efficiency (massive EGR, lower compression ratios, DPF "burn-off" cycles, etc).
The tank size of the urea-based diesel exhaust fluid (DEF) is typically designed to match up with oil change intervals, often only requiring a refill every couple changes.
There lots of good technical detail (probably more than you want) about the VW/Audi/Porsche system here:
http://www.myturbodiesel.com/1000q/audi-q7-tdi-dpf-faq.htm
Start about 1/3 of the way down that page, look for the first section that talks about “AdBlue”, which is the VAG trade name for their DEF.
I’m reading you can find it at truck stops in the $2-3/gal range.
I suspect I’ll have this on my next truck.
Thanks
But some dealers were charging $35-40/gal!
Highway robbery!
Welcome to the world of high-end Euro dealers.
>>>Does the TDI VW line qualify? Not interested in urea tanks. They seem to run OK, but that price differential buys a lot of Unleaded.<<<
Far from being the best, but at least they aren’t an alien space ship design for a US-based service folks. Still not too bad in terms of performance.
And as it was stated earlier urea tank is not that much a headache. It is getting filled once in a thousands miles.
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