This article was apparently posted before the lates events in the Fisker saga, but I read it in the April issue of the print mag and thought it to be pretty ironic.
The car business is a rough one, and takes no prisoners. Mr Fisker was probably packing his bags with that Cayman Islands ticket clenched between his teeth as soon as he ended your interview. Next they will be looking for who he sold the drugs to and later the car will appear in a time travel movie.
Auto executives consur with your point, shrimper53. In the KPMG study mentioned here, manyt said that the internal combustion engine was the best bet for reaching the 54.5 mpg CAFE mandate.
The real point is that the real target population continues to be ignored. Someone that can afford to spend $100K to $250K on a car, can basically do what they want; price is NO OBJECT. The "average" citizen that is looking for ECONOMY, has to consider both the cost of the vehicle and the cost of fuel......unless the vehicle cost is brought within an affordable range, there willl never be the required mass adoption for commercial success. The hybrid (plug-in or not) is that current best leap in technology. The pure electric is just another example of government trying to force technology on the basis of some leftist political agenda, disguised as compassionate concern for "the planet". It is not ready or practical at this time, like it or not! The ICE is still the best, most practical propulsion system overall.
I don't know that it's the number of choices as much as all the FUD and misinformation.
For example, just how does one score a Hybrid like the Prius as a battery powered car? (Non plug-in obviously) The last time I looked, 100% of the power was generated by an Internal Combustion Engine!
This is a fantastic step that improves the efficiency of the ICE. In one swoop it eliminates the waste of idling and acceleration. However it has practically nothing to do with making a viable plug in battery vehicle.
Excellent observations of driving habits. I am shopping for a vehicle with top MPG. It seems that ICE only cars can get great MPG (driven correctly). However, the hybrid still gets better (when driven correctly).
I think many purchase the hybrid for the sticker MPG but in practice drive with no intention of optimizing MPG.
The pure electric still suffers from range anxiety. Until that is solved, it will remain a small percentage of car sales.
I think the auto manufacturers are optimizing ICE and batteries because they have to, but they will eventually have to address letting the car control driving habits. Perhaps even automated driving (or at least control the acceleration/deceleration functions, and not the old Toyota way;-)
Fisker makes a great point, that the automotive companies are making a (not-in-demand) model of electric that not many want, just to cheat on the CAFE standards. Typical of the mentality that got the automotive companies in trouble in the first place, fighting regulations (with countless millions of wasted dollars) instead of using them to their advantage and just designing cars the way they are supposed to. Obviously, the majority of the American public wants to be economical, that is why these standards are being pushed. Instead of bowing to the will of the people, the auto companies are copping out of a challenge by throwing money at something just to cheat or beat the system, the American public, and mankind itself by sticking to archaic technology and refusing to progress into the next millenium. These lame tactics by the automotive companies breed contempt and keep us 'tied' to the pump, with the oil industry deciding when how our budgets get organized. Shame on the media for repeating the pro-oil propaganda of lumping all electrics and hybrids into the same category. It's time we opened our eyes to the future, and it is not ICE driven, unless we are using H2 for the power source.
The government wants to study your brain, and DARPA wants to use similar information to give robots true autonomy beyond any artificial intelligence developed to date. Sound like science fiction? It's not.
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