Shopping for New Car - EV Thoughts and Advice Welcomed

have to agree. with EV range, if it does not do 500+ miles, 100 is more than good enough. rare is it that trips fall in between and with more and more charging options popping up all over my area, it just makes it that much more easier to make trips just beyond the range.

 

If you are concerned about the touch thingee in the Focus you should really drive and play with one.

My opinion is that half the complaints are probably from people that aren't bothering to even try to learn how the thing works and then getting mad when it doesn't work how they want it to.

The Fiesta has regular sync, I just use it for bluetooth and listening to music via USB stick.

 

Tesla has not announced official pricing as far as I know, but the last I read I think it's a $20K step-up between the levels. So 300 miles would be $40K more than 160.

I agree with that, except that if you drive the Roadster as it was intended to be driven, the range is less, and if you charge in Standard mode, you only charge to 90% SoC and only discharge to 10%.

If you charge and drive in Range mode, and drive like a sane person, you get 245 miles. You, Dave, would probably get 300 miles.

When I charged in Standard mode, I saw an estimated ideal range of 185 miles, and the way I am driving (hey, it's a new toy!) I'd probably get 150. So it's perfect for me.

And I read that people are getting real-world ranges of only around 85 miles on the Leaf. Run heat or a/c and drive the speed of traffic, and it'll be less.

 

85 miles is plausible especially in cold weather where you could easily see 70 miles since heat uses a lot more energy than A/C does. but as Gary said, i put up with a lot for $30,000 less

 

Yeah, I hear you. I'd have put up with it, too, and probably would have been happy, if Nissan had been willing to stop screwing around and get me a car. But like the old country-western song said, It's too late now. They couldn't be bothered to figure out where my car was hiding and get it on the train, so I got a REAL EV instead.

 

ya because of weight issues from a larger battery pack, i think the range issue will be solved by a combination of a plethora of level 2 charging, a scattering of level 3 chargers, battery swap stations and when lighter batteries come in, one that will get 120 miles of FREEWAY range.

right now, if i drive 70+ in summer i am only getting about 77 miles on a charge. problem is during winter with climate controls driving about 62 mph i am getting about 70 miles of range.

that works for me (i personally dont care how much range i have when i get home as long as i get there but others in my household dont feel that way) but i know a lot of people where the winter range is just a bit short of what they need.

that is the next segment of the market EVs will address. the market that states a 500 mile range vehicle or even 250 mile range vehicle will be left to the elite high end market for years to come.

 

I think the advocates of battery swapping have not thought through the practical aspects:

1. You own car and battery: You take your brand-new car with its brand-new battery to the swap station and now you have an old battery with 80% of the range. Very unhappy.

2. You own the car but lease the battery: Battery swap company goes out of business, foreclosure agent takes your battery to sell to pay off the creditors, because the bankrupt company owns the battery. You're left with a car that has no battery.

3. You lease both car and battery. If you buy at the end of the lease period you're left with option (1) or (2). Otherwise you're in the market for a new car every 3 years. A few people will like this, but most won't and the market will be so small the company fails.

Snafu #1: You need a fresh battery but the swap station is all out of your style.

Snafu #2: The very complicated swap machinery is out of service and you can't get a swap.

Snafu #3: Not enough people in your area (or the place you regularly drive through and need a swap) buy into the program and they close the swap station you were depending on.

Business consideration: Every swap station needs to have enough batteries in stock to supply every car that will stop in that day. The station must either have MASSIVE fast-charging capability (in which case just fast charging the car would be simpler and easier) or else charges slowly, with a long turn-around time for each battery, and the need, as noted above, to have a very large stock of very expensive batteries. Huge investment for small return since most people will charge at home most of the time.

My conclusion: Fast charging on the highway and L2 charging at malls, restaurants, and hotels, rather than swap stations, is the more practical alternative. We already have electricity available almost everywhere. All we need are the plugs for L2. Fast charging will require more infrastructure, but much less than battery swap stations would need.

Sorry for the long post. I'm killing time until it's warm enough outside to drive my car with the top off. I figure a long drive out in the country in Little Orphan Orangie. (It was an "orphan car": someone ordered it but then couldn't come up with the money and it sat in the car orphanage (dealership) for --at my best guess-- over a year.)

 

you dont own the battery nor do you pay for the electricity to charge it on the street or at home

they may fail, but it wont be any time soon. BP has some big time money behind it

back to business success. sure it might fail, but the entire system will be networked to include members where they live and where they plan to swap or charge. its a logistical challenge that is exceeded or met (with hiccups of course) by Fedex, traffic controllers, cellular phone companies, etc. not really that complicated. its simply who is there, how many and what do we need to make them happy.

one thing that would be a no-brainer is when doing a search for swap stations, only ones that have what one needs even shows up


what it really boils down to is there is no one answer. it will be a combination of answers but with one common thread; electricity has to work.

so ya, there will be some who pay for a 300 mile car and charge at home. there will also be others who could not afford to do it any other way but to lease from BP. this allows many many more people including lower income, apartment dwellers, etc to do electric.

What Drives Us had a guy from BP on. listen to it. he makes a very compelling argument

 

More importantly, this is a legal problem. Easy enough to make the contract such that the battery leaser is the primary creditor on that battery. Thus, the company goes under, you own the battery.

After all, you aren't worried that GMAC will go under and their creditors will take your car are you?

 

You guys are describing a set-up that would be ideal for consumers. But in the real world, nothing is ideal for consumers. It's the company executives that make the rules, and they write those rules, and those contracts, to benefit themselves and their investors.

"Easy enough to make the contract such that..." Easy? Have you ever seen a contract that did not benefit the company above the consumer? Have you ever read the contract that you signed when you got a credit card or signed up for cell phone service, or any other service or product? I guarantee you that the contract you'd have to sign to get a battery-swapping lease would be entirely to protect the company and would require you to repudiate any recourse or rights.

 

There is no doubt that BP will try to make money and I am ok with that. What I am not ok with is burning oil from a foreign country paid for with money borrowed from another foreign country

 

Swapping batteries wont ever work unless there is unified standard for batteries across large number of manufacturers.

Since that is not happening anytime soon, i am not sure how would it work.

 

Absolutely agreed. It already seems challenging enough to even have a sufficient # of L2 chargers in the US, let alone setting up stations w/expensive batteries lying around, chargers, other equipment staff on hand, etc. not to mention other overhead such as liability insurance, rent, facilities upkeep, etc.

To have to carry multiple varieties of packs would makes things even worse.

At Alternative Fuels and Advanced Vehicles Data Center: Alternative Fueling Station Locator, I put in San Jose, CA, 25 miles and selected only Level 2 and DC fast. There are only 20 available (none are the DC fast chargers aka Level 3).

 

Not to be the little black raincloud, but am I the only one who isn't buying any of this "out in 2012" propaganda? For example: Ford as a bellwether for the electric future is very elusive when it comes to the details behind the Focus EV so far as price and availability. And worldwide manufacturers seem to be talking up their prototypes, but where is the production?

Maybe I am wrong, but somehow I see all around me an economy that is not exactly conducive to EVs. People are broke, businesses are broke and governments are broke. The businesses I see doing well are mostly anchored in state or government contracts. This carries heavily into the so-called "green" movement, whereby there would be practically no movement at all were it not for the federal paper mill. Many of the (even fairly well heeled) people I talk to are playing catch up with their savings and working to pay off their debt. Sure. A few can afford EVs, but most not for the price of a BMW. Even with the Federal Reserve cartel's paper subsidization the Leaf is priced well out of the range of the median household income, especially when average household debt is factored in. And don't even bother with the Volt. I don't see this changing either. What I sense is a lot of "drag 'em along with sparkles and hype" in order to churn up investment and more importantly- CORPORATE WELFARE when what we really need to see YESTERDAY is units in inventory and wheels on the road with incomes sufficient enough to afford them.

 

Caff; u r right, it probably is not the best time to introduce such a dramatic shift in transportion options right now, especially when it needs tens of billions in support structure buildup to become attractive enough to gain steam.

but not because its too soon. should have been moving this way years ago. the RAV 4 EV proved that we had a viable technology and we abandoned it because we were too blind to see how much damage we were causing by relying on foreign oil.

they fed it to us cheap and we became addicted and now we will have to suffer tremendously to ween ourselves off that foreign oil tit and it will not be done without compromise, money and a complete re-evaluation of how we view our rights to drive.

 

I think that the numbers are really close but real-world shows the smaller cars have an advantage.

Fuelly has 97 2011 Fiestas doing 36.2 mpg average and some cars hitting over 50 mpg on tanks.

There are only 13 2012 Focus (so far) doing 33.3 with 41 being the biggest.

Sync isn't the end-all be-all for me but it lets me have 1800 songs at my disposal and brought in my phonebook instantly when my phone was paired with bluetooth...which was all I wanted as well.