Why Electric Cars Have Stalled

all this discussion will hopefully be for naught.

Obama is moving quickly to force automakers to comply with much more efficient vehicles which will nearly force them to come out with Zero emission (yes that means 100% fully electric vehicles!!) autos to balance out their SUV/truck lines.

i am proud to live in one of the states (WA) that is leading the charge to hasten the change. add to that, no sales tax (in this state new vehicles get a 6.8% ; 6.5 % sales tax, and .3% motor tax applied on the purchase price) on high efficiency vehicles including NEV's, EV's and high mileage hybrids (only the Prius and HCH currently qualify)

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/26/us/politics/26calif.html?_r=1&th&emc=th

 

It is good to see that Washington is providing incentives to purchase high efficiency vehicles. Obama may force automakers to build more efficient vehicles but he has done nothing so far to force consumers to buy them. It seems that raising the fuel tax is still out of bounds.

High efficiency vehicles will be more expensive, smaller, or less powerful. The current consumer doesn't like any of these choices. Without expensive fuel to cause consumers to seek out efficient vehicles, the federal and state governments will need to offer some incentive for consumers to purchase these new vehicles.

 

i agree raising fuel taxes is the way to go, but Obama is a long way from doing that. that would cause an immediate hit to the pocketbook and especially does not work when the options for EV's are nil, high mileage hybrid supplies are waay understocked (sure there is a small glut of 2009 Pri's and the announcment of the 2010 in 3 months will insure that glut remains, but offer a $5000 + REBATE (not tax credit, im talking cold hard CASH) and that glut will disappear faster than GM at a hybrid convention!!)

i think his best option for the short term is to give HUGE incentives to buy a high mileage hybrid. lets face it, bush did EVERYTHING Wrong when it comes to this area...

he essentially penalized success for the hybrid tax credit which is waaay beyond stupid. even idiotic does not come close to evaluating THAT decision

 

This, of course, is separate from any concerns about actual battery technology. On the one hand, it increases awareness of EVs. On the other, it fosters the idea that EVs have such short range that you have to plug them in everywhere. I have no opinion at present as to which is more significant. My solution to education is to have "ALL ELECTRIC ALL THE TIME" in bold letters on the back of my car, and "ELECTRIC" on both sides. And of course the Xebra stands out in a crowd more than the Zenn does, on account of being shy one wheel.

This had never occured to me. I liked the idea of in-wheel motors because it gives all the advantages of posi-traction with none of the disadvantages, and eliminates the shortcomings of a differential on slippery roads.

But since you offer the alternative of separate motors with a short drive shaft to each, I'd find that acceptable: Two motors on each axle, one connected to each wheel. Plus electronics to reduce the speed on a wheel that is spinning freely due to lack of traction.

My take: We need high gas taxes to motivate people to drive more-efficient cars, and we need government-funded research to develop better batteries and related technology, with all the patents going into the public domain so any manufacturer could use them, and big oil (e.g. Cobasys) could not keep technologies off the market.

 

high gas taxes are still at least a few years away. such a thing would immediately penalize everyone... now doctors and lawyers i would LOVE to see them suffer (well not so much doctors... ok substitute politicos) but what about low income people scraping by driving beaters? they would be screwed with no options.

so, right now today if not yesterday, immediately institute a rebate program for high mileage vehicles of any kind...

start at 20% off anything at 40+ mpg
then 30% at 50+ mpg
40% for any BEV's

and i am not talking tax deductions or any of that crap... i mean a rebate... cold hard CASH...now to keep from doing turnaround, if you finance, you simply finance the applicable after rebate amount. if paying cash, lets try to get the rebate back in at least 4 weeks or less. (i know if the government is involved, this will be asking a lot)

i also think there should be a low cost lease program for the underemployed (over employed but underpaid maybe) to get them immediately into a high mileage vehicle...

the place i work at specializes in entry level jobs paying $9 an hour so there is a ton of people here driving what ever the could afford to buy... in an area where at least 1 in 10 drive a hybrid, there is 3 Pri's, one HCH and one insight for nearly 400 people... that is 1 in 80.... pretty sad

 

I'd still go for the high gas taxes. I'd address the low-income issue by making it a felony punishable by a minimum 5-year prison term to pay any employee less than a living wage. I'm thinking probably $15 an hour, but I'd be happy to see some realistic cost-of-living studies before setting an actual figure.

 

problem with that is that $15 in Bellevue, WA is just about minimum wage, but $15 in Mission Tx is more than enough to buy a house.

 

Probably not a very nice house.

 

I consider my house pretty nice. 3 Bed / 2 Bath with 1800 square feet located in a city Money Magazine listed as one of the top 100 places to live. Incredibly low crime, good schools, etc. It cost less than $150,000. To many people confuse the size of a house with the quality of a house.


Minimum wages need to be adjusted for the cost of living in the area. However, I agree that the current minimum wage is too low for the vast majority of areas.

 

Heads up!!!

from reportonbusiness.com: globeinvestor.com - ZENN Motor sales up 52 per cent

 

It's good to see that Zenn is working on a higher speed vehicle. I don't like to see that they lost $7.7 million and only have $15 million in cash.

I was hopefully that TH!NK would come back to the US but that hope is gone since TH!NK has filed for bankruptcy protection.

Financial crisis hits electric car company Think Global - MotorAuthority - Car news, reviews, spy shots

 

The awesome and important point to take from my last post is that they have a working prototype, which I took to mean they have a working Eestor ultracap! Then again, maybe their working prototype is sans cap.

 

Could a person with a family, earning $15 an hour afford to buy a $150,000 house? Real estate values are insane. I paid $178,000 for my very nice house in Spokane. My sister paid something like $500,000 for her house in L.A., 1/4 the size, much older, and in need of extensive repairs when she bought it.

I think you are mistaken. They apparently are testing components, but I do not believe EEstor has yet produced even a demonstration capacitor, much less constructed a facility capable of building them in quality. Last I read, they had succeeded only in refining the material they believed would serve as the dialectric, but had not yet shown that that dialectric would function as hoped.

In other words, Zenn is pegging its hopes on a dream. I do not believe they have a working prototype high-speed car.

Their NEV, however, is a wonderful little car, and more powerful than my Xebra, at least the Zenn with the AC motor is.

 

Yeah, you're probably right.... doh

 

No. $150,000 with 20% down is $880 per month. That is 33% of monthly gross. Standard home mortgages cap payments at 28% of gross monthly pay.

A person making minimum wage shouldn't be buying my house. An entry level house in the area is about $100,000. That is 3 bed / 2 bath with about 1000 to 1200 square feet and no garage. That would be $582 per month or 22% of gross on a 30 year. It is $769 per mont or 30% of gross on a 15 year.

A townhouse would be less than a single family home.

 

yep... once again someone willing to risk all to bring a good idea to market and getting ZERO support...heck up until a few months back, the Zenn was not legal to drive on the street in front of its factory!!

granted, they are Canadian, but still the US fell flat on its bushy face by not giving any incentives to go green... to be quite honest with ya, the last 8 years has been a major backwards step in time... for Obama to be an inch beyond where we were in jan 2001 anytime soon will require monumental changes in our policy.

so far, he seems on track, but i have waited 8 years, i simply have lost patience... he needs to act faster...and i dont care that he has had only a week....

 

The president is not a king. He has to convince a lot of other people to go along. His views are far too moderate for me, but I am delighted and optimistic that for the first time in 8 years we have a president who is not a complete moron, and for the first time in my lifetime we have a president who is not a criminal and for the first time since FDR we have a president who really and truly wants to do the best he can for the people of his country.

We will never have justice as long as Adam Smith is generally viewed as a prophet of the stature of my namesake. But with Barak Obama at the helm, I am optimistic about the future.

As for Zenn, they deserve support for the car they are building now. But in my view the City Zenn deserves no more credence than the Zap Alias.

 

well, even under the best of circumstances, a CityZenn would not be here until late 2010 which is when everyone else is supposed to be showing up with something. either way, we will know about it long before it gets here. the scheduled release cycle is Europe, Asia, South America and then us... yep we will have plenty of warning

 

Zenn says it will sell the City Zenn in South America before they sell it here??? That seems an odd decision.

 

that was the newsletter gist they sent out last fall. as far as hearing ANYTHING about the UltraCap technology, they pretty much said that they were not allowed to divulge anything at all... so i would have to assume if they are to the point where they are validating manufacturing processes, then they must have built and tested a prototype... sure would like to get my hands on some of the test results...

but then again, it might all be vaporware