Again one has to distinguish between sticker price and net effective price after some soon-to-be-determined Tax Credit. The sticker price is what the buyer will have to commit to pay the vehicle maker upfront.

The buyer can't collect the Tax Credit at time of purchase unless the law is written like the C4C program...which is a possibility. I see a firestorm brewing in that case methinks. I can't imagine the Texas oil lobby sitting idly by seeing it's tax payments going to cancel the tax payments of Kalifornians and NyYawkers on the Left and Far Left coasts.

If however it's like the ongoing program where the Tax Credit can only be taken on the taxes due the following Apr 15th, subject to AMT of course, then it might quietly slip by. What if the Tax Credit was $7500 and the tax payer only owed $5000 that year? $15000 and the tax payer only owed $10000 that year?

Lots and lots of details....

I find it amusing. To avoid making the same mistake GM repeats over and over again (over promise, under deliver), they just pick out a number easy to beat.
.

How is it that the (full EV) Nissan Leaf is to be priced similar to a loaded Honda Accord ?

EV WORLD CURRENTS: Nissan Reportedly Pricing Electric Car Comparable to Honda Accord

the volt would be nice if you had some place to plug in every night.



this doesn't really work for apartment dwellers

Hi rfruth ... that's a pretty easy answer. You pay one thing for ICE power ... you pay one thing for EV power. Put them both together? Now you have to pay for both ... plus the integration mechanism that marries them together. So certainly the PHEV will be more expensive than an EV. Also, the jury is out as to whether the Leaf will actually be 'sold' with batteries ... meaning Nissan is still deciding if they'd rather lease the battery pack. Many don't like that idea. The upside (supposedly, if you buy into it) is that if/when the latest/greatest pack gets even more energy efficient, that makes it easier to move up to that newer/better design. That said, hundreds of pounds of batteries makes up a good chunk of the EV's cost ... so if you buy it without batteries ... then it's certainly easy to see why the Leaf could be sold on the cheap.

and yes deadphish I agree. Texas, as well as the multi-national oilie lobby won't simply roll over, lay down and play dead as they sense their strangle hold control of energy power slip away.

The price for the plug in is a little high. Ok.. Much higher then I expected. More and more it looks like I will get a 2010 Prius and get a kit to make it plug in. That total could be under or around $30,000.

Come on hill, you've got to at least read the entire first sentence before responding (emphasis mine)

Excellent point about an ICE or EV having one drive mechanism, but if you buy a PHEV you have to buy both. At the same time, if Honda can sell the Insight for $18K, and Toyota can sell the Prius for $23K, then all the PHEV adds is a power cord and some extra batteries, with the total still being below $29K if it's a mass market system.

I would much prefer that Nissan sell the battery separately. This way, down the road, third party companies can make batteries and compete with the auto manufacturers and it will bring the prices of batteries down. Additionally, Nissan, Toyota, etc, etc, won't be limited in vehicle production due to lack of batteries. They can let the consumer worry about that. If they make 1 million PHEV and EV Prius per year but can only produce 500K batteries (example), then the consumers will find another supplier for batteries. Companies will come out of the woodwork to sell batteries.

Companies don't necessarily price their product based on how much it costs to produce. Microsoft and Sony have been subsidising their 'next generation' game consoles, selling them for less than production costs, and trying to make the money back on accessories and on their cut of the game prices. A lot of attention is paid to 'attach rate', how many games each owner has bought.

Given they're willing to blow untold millions on hydrogen nonsense, the car companies could choose to effectively subsidise the first few cars they sell, to make the price paid by the consumer more palatable. Toyota are believed to have done it for the first few years of the Prius. Not to mention that development costs are always up-front and amortized over every vehicle sold.

People are often price-reactive: frequently, if the item is expensive, and you halve your price, you sell more than twice the number of units, often orders of magnitude more, and the overall revenue is much greater than at the higher price. By selling more, the capital cost of setting up machinery is amortized over more units, and the same can apply to materials costs if the supplier can amortize their cost over more units. It's common to offer price breaks if packaging costs can be reduced, for example.

It's often seen that prices drop for a new technology as it takes hold, and this is usually assumed to just be automatic. Commonly, though, the machinery required to produce the product more cheaply is in fact far more expensive: it can only be afforded if the volume is sufficient to justify it. This is what tends to push mature markets into the hands of fewer and fewer players - the ability to raise the capital to buy the equipment to reduce costs, and beat the competition on price or extract more profit, is limited to the largest players and the smallest can't afford to compete any more. The next generation of processor factories - called fabs - can probably only be afforded by Intel. AMD are having to join forces with others to keep up. Most other chipmakers such as nVidia outsource production to companies like TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co) who can only afford the fabs due to a massive number of contracts.

Anyway, if Nissan keep the price low, even if they make a loss on the materials for each car initially, they and their suppliers can potentially sell more of them, raise the capital to buy new production machinery to reduce the materials cost, and start to turn a profit after a while.

To keep the Leaf at the price at or just under $30000 what the initial buyers will be getting is a vehicle like a Fit or Insight II; IOW a $17000 vehicle.

It's clear from the first debut that it seats 4 comfortably enough but there will be no room in back. It's a small car. It will be great as a commuter and priced correctly it will kick the Volt's butt. 2010 Nissan Leaf electric car: In person, in depth - and U.S. bound [*UPDATED w/vids & live photos] — Autoblog

But it has no capability to be anything more than a local vehicle until a lot of infrastructure is added here in NA.

Then there's the question of the battery life. Still no maker has said anything positive about the life expectancy of the Li-Ions. Everything said thus far implies a need to swap them at some time during the expected lifetime. Forget the hybrid warranties of the NiMHs.

I've been wondering more and more about this lately. It seems like even the original Insights and Priuses from 1999/2000 are still on the roads (with original batteries, right?). My previous cell phone had a NiMH battery and it's charge capacity went down to about 60% after about 14months. With my current cell phone that has a Li-Ion, it's going on 18months now and it still holds [almost;95+%] as much of a charge as when it was brand new. Can someone please explain what the current observed lifetime of the Prius NiHM is, and what the estimate is for a Li-Ion and offer an explanation for the difference. (This is likely why Toyota plans to study PHEV Li-Ion fleet vehicles before offering them to the public and risking a problem/recall. Toyota is like an honor student when it comes to not being perfect. They freak out, hyperventilate, and their CEO can't apologize enough to the public)

On the NiMH's there is no sure Max Mileage yet. Taxi's are going up to 300K miles. I traded a 2004 Prius ( for a new 2010 ) where the owner has 246K on the clock. I'm pretty sure that one can get upwards of 400K - 500K miles on the NiMH pack and maybe even more.

Now time is another issue. Again they haven't been on the road long enough. 10 yrs seems certain ( CARB warranty ) but I think 12-15 yrs is likely.

I'm pretty certain that the EV, EREV and PHEV makers don't want to make a big splash with their vehicles and in the fine print you read Warranty: 3 yrs / 36000 miles on the Li-Ion battery. Not good.

Aren't there any street lights or utilities near the apartments? All potential plug-in sources...

Huh? That's not even an option in most big cities.

Pull up to a light pole with an electrical outlet and whip out the bright orange ( for DANGER !!! ) cord and plug it into the pole? Come back 60 min later and the cord will be gone or cut up just for fun and to top that off the vehicle itself will be vandalized...just because it's different.

Or you'll find an irate dog walker whose dog chewed the cable and electrocuted his family pet.

Or you'll find kids using the plugin cord for a jump rope.

Want to plug it and unplug it during a deluge?

radiocycle was suggesting not to plug directly into a light pole, but that if there are light poles, there is electricity nearby so setting up charging stations should be pretty easy.

Nevermind that all charging stations are designed to safely shut down in those cases you've mentioned. But you really do enjoy setting up strawmen, don't you?

oy vey ... never has something so simple been overy worried about. (regarding availability of street lights being everywhere ... as well as parking garages wired for power) um ... Me thinks you missed the point of the question. The point was, power can be DRAWN from the areas ... all around. Take Fry's electronics, for example ... or Costco. Many of these companies around So Cal already have chargers installed. See how simple? That's because someone PUT a CHARGER where the power already is. Similarly, if WHERE EVER your car is parked ... by a parking meter ... in your garage ... a car port ... on the street or (put your own example here) ? One CAN install chargers ... or outlets ... that's all. My Gawd ... to think otherwise 90 years ago, one would say, "HEY ... we can't have cars because they're not practical ... there are NO GAS STATIONS !
Somehow we overcame THAT hurdle, with NO infrastructure. How much easier will charger implementation be. As for kids plugging in EV's? Same thing. simple. You don't need to over complicate the already uncomplicated.






imagine that ... barefoot and not electrocuted (shaking head). Did you know that WELDERS work under water? and they don't get electrocuted. I've worked with electricity under water. It's NOT an ISSUE for infrastructure implementation.

sheesh ... if that picture disturbs you ... what must THIS EV1 ad do for you?



Yes, the ground fault interrupt HAS been invented ... so hopefully the Disney Eeyore complex has been sufficiently put to bed now.

(thank Darell for the easy access pics)
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Having lived in NYC for most of my adult life there is nothing straw about those objections. Now if you were to say that secure parking garages would install these devices, absolutely, for a fee of course. Now if you were to say that the first ones to develop a cross-country system of charging stations for EVs and PHEVs will be the Marriott chain, absolutely, for a fee of course.

But I'm a lot more realistic than most of the dreamers because I've lived this experience already. Plan to plugin on the street?...pulleeze...in many sections of NYC, Philly, Miami, LA, Detroit, Chicago, Memphis chained bicycles don't last more than one day. Cars need alarms simply to alert you that your vehicle is being vandalized.

My specific issue as noted above is parking on the street. Not in a parking garage and not in a secure private environment. If you park on the street you cannot plugin, it's that simple, until society changes for the better. To believe otherwise is to a) be from the suburbs or b) be dreaming.

I don't know if you've ever lived in or around NYC but those that do have cars and cannot afford $400 to $600 per month extra for a parking garage end up parking on the street within a couple of blocks near where they live. Plugging in is not an option - ever. This group is excluded from considering a PHEV or EV. In addition if they live in a rough area even their own driveway or carport is not secure enough.

There are no such problems with an ICE, a traditional hybrid or even an FCHV. No one is disqualified from getting fuel to power these. One simply has to drive to a filling station and plan 10 min for fueling. The public understand this and is comfortable with this.

Those that can power up in private in a secure location definitely can utilize an EV or PHEV. They're not for everybody.

Evolution. Adaptation.

Initially, the people buying EVs and PHEVs will be those that have access to a power plug. As time goes forward and saturation increases, apartment owners, employers, and others will adapt. Do you park your car under a car port in an apartment complex? The owner can have an electrician wire the car ports with plugs. Parking meters in the city can be converted so that when you pay the meter it asks "would you like fries with..err, uh... would you like electricity with that?" My employer has more benefits and programs for us employees than I can count on all ten fingers. I know of many employers that offer plenty of benefits to their employees. I'm sure that adding electrical plugs would be simple and a perk for employees. They already pay $$$$$$$ for healthcare benefits, 401K matching, daycare, gym memberships, free food Fridays, etc, etc.
As a shift occurs on dealer lots and you see more and more PHEVs and EVs, the rest of society will adapt. Plus, employers like to use things like this for advertising purposes also. City tourism boards love to advertise also. Remember when "Free Wifi" was all the rage in hotel and apartment advertising? Electric plugs will be the same. People will pass up the apartment complexes that don't offer charging stations. Property owners will have to adapt or else go extinct.
Personally, because I live in a house, I have the benefit of running an extension cord over the fence and plugging into my next door neighbor's plug when he's sleeping. (joke)
In the meantime, I see people trying to sneak electricity from others' plugs (restaurants, gas stations, other retailers), and just as gas-cap locks are common today, electric outlet locks will become common. The days of the gas station tenant walking around back and catching you, as you jump to unplug and burn rubber to get away will be short lived.