Thank you Chris PE! It is obvious most of these people never actually built one or drove one except playing golf. I don't believe in conspiracies but this country was built on unfair competition. Especially the oil industry. Remember the government broke Standard Oil up for unfair business practices. I built my own electric car and it would meet the needs of 95% of Americans. Electric cars do not need to be compared to gasoline cars. Most people drive less than 30 miles a day.
If anything, the conspiracy here is that everyone is being told by the green and gov't types that EVs are ripe and ready to take center stage with everyone and his/her cousin having one parked in the garage. The real conspiracy (if we can call it that) is all the money going to these EV boon-doggle projects.
The fact is that competition and the profit motive in a free market economy would trump the conspiracies that were mentioned in the article. Assume that we allege that car companies are overpriciing their EVs - its only a matter of time before a competitor discovers similar but alternative technologies and finds a way to fill the marketplace gap.
By the way - I'm still waiting for my 100mpg carborater kit.
The engineering and technical professions should take pride in the existence of these conspiracy theories. They are based on the belief that there is no technical problem that cannot be be solved relatively easily. At the beginning of the automotive age, internal combustion, steam, and electric all started on a level playing field as far as infrastructure, supporting technology, etc. Internal combustion became dominant because of technical characteristics. Decades of development have refined those advantages to the level of efficiency we have today, giving internal combustion a substantial head start over other technologies. That being said, I can atleast consider the possibility that battery chemistry will never be good enough to unseat internal combustion - regardless of how much time and effort is expended.
I read all comments with an attention put into business and technical point of view.Let's start here: gasoline is expensive ONLY because of SPECULATORS. Supply and demand stopped existing when President Ford decontrolled petroleum business.Speculators jumped on it. Now they are on Lithium (of course).I have been an electrical engineer for 40 years and have seen tons of great electric cars and I do go to every convention of EV "private" builders. A lot of representatives of oil industry wonder around and many of them don't hide it at all. About twenty years ago I was given ONE cell of a battery used in submarines. I cannot reveal chemistry , but it was neither cheap, non expensive. I put a 1A 6V bulb on it and to my surprise it shined for 4 days. Battery cell was of a size of two cigarette packs.So let's stop that whining that we have no batteries and we can go only 80 miles on a charge.Average American travels 40 miles a day and almost NEVER uses cars for vacation. We like to fly.All we have to do is SUPPORT that industry and a right way is through hybrids (for whiners). I would not allow ANY oil company own a stock in EVs. I mean NONE :batteries, motors ,NOTHING. Once we start thinking about future all conspiracies will just be gone in a short time.
Ev takes a new mind set. Currently they are taking a gas powered vehicle and throwing in sufficiant quantities of batteries and motors to power them. The two concepts are as different as pony express and email. Cars with gas powered engines have 100 years of evolution. EVs could have had the same amount but they faltered early on. They will continue to fail if you want two tons of stuff moving with battery power.
For years Ford has had 5 fairly good sized vehicles that get over 60 mpg on sale in Europe. One as high as 68 mpg. Far better than the Prius. The board of directors met a few years ago in 2010 and decided they would not sell them in the US market. Some of those models are sold here, only without the high mileage engines. All of them meet US standards. The EPA will not allow one of those vehicles to be imported into the USA without a full factory level certification report on each vehicle which costs more than the car. The computer program chips on European vehicles sold in the US are set to waste gas to lower the mpg. Friends in the repair side of the US automotive industry order the European code chips and install them into their personal vehicles. An immediate boost in fuel mileage to European levels is the result. Conspiracy? What Conspiracy.
Chuck: I sense some optimism there in your comments that at some point, some research group, university, or private sector company will nail the special sauce at the right price point. I guess the anticipation is so great and the market need potentially so ripe, that the idea of honing the technology over time is frustrating to so many--hence, the high degree of skepticism and the backlash around conspiracy theories.
Charles, when I brought my EV, I asked the same question to my dealer. Why companies are keeping the prices at high end, when compare with the gasoline based cars. His response is, it's a onetime investment and there after the running cost is negligible. First 2-3 years it's true because nothing goes wrong. But there after we have to change the battery once in 3-4 years, which cost you around ¼ of the car cost. So ineffectively there is no financial benefit other than the satisfaction of an ecco friendly vehicle.
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