Two weeks ago I was looking for a used car with my son. We came upon a 2003 Honda Insight with 234,000 miles! It was still running, original battery, passed inspection, I guess it is only 7 years old. He didn't want to buy something with quite that many miles on it, but who ever owned it saved a lot on gas! The car is in Massachusetts, so it doesn't have the summer heat to break it down like desert states might have.
Do your home work. That is not "just an idea" , it is a practical proposition already in operation in Israel. Look up "Betterplace".
Problem is, the company is targeting the wrong market, pushing "company cars" and family saloons, instead of concentrating on the market where electric power gives the greater advantge and where limited range is less of a problem - light delivery vehicles which operate mostly in urban environments and are little used outside normal working hours.
I agree with what you have done and think we are saying the same thing but I avoided saying "EV". My study found worst case trips over 50 miles at 16% while you have 60 miles at 10%. These are both valid and a range extender is meant to address the psychological impediment of the customer (user).
What most people think of as Hybrid is the electro-mechanical modulation vehicle whether plug in or onboard generator charged. I think of the battery/range extender system as pure EV with backup. My current understanding is that the Government would consider the battery/range extender vehicle as an EV because the range extender is not necessary to the primary operation of the vehicle. In fact, I would suggest the range extender as an after market product.
My point was to suggest a better engine as a great step in economy and a huge pollution reduction from less fuel/mile and higher thermal efficiency when you need an engine. My company abandoned the electric car many years ago as a project because we concluded it was the battery and we don't do batteries. We still support electric vehicles but will focus on our engine concept.
I agree with analysis supporting the benefits of battery changing systems. It seems to be the quick and clean solution,
"leave the charging to someone else, just gimme a full pack"
That's how we roll these days, but is it a practical attitude ?
I think what is needed to get things underway is large scale involvement of a company which wants to use battery changing stations as a way to win customers for their products. After all, nobody is going to just start a business building battery changing stations when nobody has a car to use them yet...and it works the other way around too.
Which is why i'm starting to think this could be an ideal way for car hire companies to get involved. They have safe storage, they have power (usually), they have security, they have a simple administration system, and so on.
So what happens when you want to go further in your electric car than there is miles between you and the next battery station ? Well, the hire car company would no doubt be happy to hire you a gas car as a gap filler. You know, they could even give discounts. They savings in gas expenditure (especially here in the UK) would easily pay for day trips in hire cars in the long run.
"Leave the charging to someone else, just gimme a full pack.....and when I need to go further gimme a gas car"
Your note onthe small battery "EV" is called aPlug-In Hybrid that i pioneered 25 ears ago and have a patent issued in 1997. I prposed then that the baterypack should be on the order of 16 to 20 kwhrs for vehicles up to 5000 lbs. i constructed 10 cars of different size over a period of ten or ore years demonstrating that 60 mils of all electric Range AER would displace 90% of the gaoline used with elecricity and that the charging infrastruture only needs to be Level 1 or 110 volts. I have Chevy Volt 30 ad have 24000 miles in 1.5 years and use only 110 volt charging and have achieved 128 mpg or I hav displaced over 600 gallons of gasoline with110 volt electricity with no range anxiety!
When all they hype is over, the fact remains that the cost per mile for EV is in premium over Gasoline powered vehicle if the cost of the replacement battery is either included, or the "bricked" vehicle is depreciated to ZERO when the battery warranty is over and in most likelihood a replacement battery is not even available at any price.
Not a single exibitor could give a price for a battery on ANY of their offerings !!!
Theay also sang the same song, the battery price will go down by the time you will need one, and do not worry the battery has 8 year warranty, 80,000 to 100,000 miles, etc.
Yet NISSAN in theri Warranty book specifically states that "deterioration" or range with battery use and age IS NOT COVERED by theri "Warranty" !!!
Thus legal action is the only thing people can do to get their what they thought they bought XXX miles per charge !
The EV has some significant advantages over a gasoline fueled automobile, but to make it work is a bigger engineering problem than any one auto company can solve. an example, Ford and GM just signed an agreement to develop the next generation of transmissions (10% better gas mileage) because neither had enough cash to design it. Getting two companies together is difficult, and only the government is big enough to get all of the companies together to solve a problem as big as the EV car or the self drive car.
Warren, you make it sound like you are buying the car of your choice , when you are in fact only able to choose from the models that the car companies decide to sell you. The car companies are bureaucrats with armies of marketing people who have been studying the comsumer and know just how to extract the maximum dollars from you, and make you think that you have choosen freely. They have been selling you the same old car for 100 years, but each time you buy it you think it's the greatest new thing.At least with the Government you have a vote, and if you choose well people who will try to take into account the overall problem of the impact of cars on society.
Look at the fight that the car companies are putting up to stop the self drive car in California! Part of the reason the car companies failed in 2008 was poor choices by company managers on what type of car to sell the public. They guessed monster SUV's would make them the most money but when gas prices went up and people couldn't afford the cost of their commute look what happened.
Warren, It's easy to say we want less government involvement. But, that is too simplistic. I don't want the government trying to compete with private enterprise. However, I wouldn't want to have them stop building/maintaining roads.
There are areas where there is not enough demand for simple basic services to make it worthwhile for private companies to attempt to compete.
If the rural electrification program had not happened, we would be looking at a very different nation today.
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