New all-electric SUV unveiled

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(dipper @ Oct 4 2006, 11:23 AM) [snapback]327995[/snapback]</div>

The first 100 Teslas were sold in under eight days, for the full $100k up front, with no delivery until next year. The second 100 (and this will be the total production run for next year) will be sort out shortly. Of course these numbers are insignificant in the grand scheme of things, but it does show some serious demand when you consider that this is a new company that nobody has every heard of, and the full cost is paid with no chance of delivery for a year.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(darelldd @ Oct 4 2006, 03:52 PM) [snapback]328153[/snapback]</div>

No chance of delivery? Try worrying about no chance of getting either car or money back... see Corbin Motors. And with those risks, $100k are thrown around like it was just an $100 bet in Vegas. So you know people really wants them.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(vtie @ Oct 4 2006, 10:56 AM) [snapback]327962[/snapback]</div>

We agree more than we disagree, I think. It is all a matter of perspective. I don't see this as "doomed" I see it as the perfect "niche" car for commuters. Here's a *relatively* expensive car that will be cheap and quiet to operate, environmentally friendly, and will blow the freaking doors off of any car in its price range - bar none (we're talking about the $50k Whitestar here, right?). The good news is that the "niche" of drivers who use their cars 99.9% of the time just for commuting is HUGE. Hundreds of millions of cars in this country do nothing but commute, or at least stay well under 100 miles every single day of the year. 250 miles of range for these guys is actually far more than is needed. We could argue the details all day... and again... I think we agree more than we disagree. I just try to avoid the word "doom."

I certainly agree that it would be an easier sell if we could offer a $25k car with 400 miles range and 10 minute recharge time. I also know that reality dictates that it won't happen with the snap of the fingers. To approach that goal, we do what we can with the technology that we have today. If everybody shuns the current offerings, we'll never achieve that goal. Eventually, folks have to see the need, and jump in when they are comfortable. For me, that point happened about 12 years ago. Relegating what we've got today to "niche" is belittling the efforts of today's BEV builders. Look to the goal, and see if what we have today makes more sense with that in mind. If you've decided to keep your horse out of the race until the technology is perfected, it'll take longer to get there (well, we'll NEVER get there). The perfect is the enemy of the good.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Stringmike @ Oct 4 2006, 11:27 AM) [snapback]327999[/snapback]</div>

I too think that PHEVs will slowly get us back to where we should have been years ago. I disagree that we need to wait for battery technologies to mature. I'm driving ever damn day with 10-year-old battery chemistry that's working flawlessly. We had quit a string there in the past ten years where energy density of batteries was DOUBLING every year. Look at the battery in your cell phone today, and think back what it was ten years ago when my car was first put on the market. Any difference?

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Pinto Girl @ Oct 4 2006, 11:47 AM) [snapback]328010[/snapback]</div>

If we're talking about this one vehicle, I can't comment as I know very little about it. I can tell you from experience that I can easily beat the EPA estimates in any production EV ever produced... and I can do far worse. All depends on driving style. There's no "real" answer here, just like with every other car. I can beat the highway EPA in my Prius... others can't. That's just how it is.

I'm not sure I follow. The folks making EVs today have NO track record of making optimistic projections of range. They haven't had any cars on the market yet! I can tell you just from the specs of cars like the Tesla roadster that you wouldn't be able to reduce the range much lower than about 225 miles at anything near safe freeway speeds. If you drive the limit, you'd do much better than the projections.

Not sure how to answer this either. Yes, the battery WOULD be drawn to empty to you drive to the ragged edge of your range... just like your gas tank would be empty if you did the same in a gas car. I drive until I've drained the batteries in the Rav somewhat regularly. If I don't ever use my range, what's the use of having all those batteries?

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(tripp @ Oct 4 2006, 01:55 PM) [snapback]328082[/snapback]</div>

That was probably me. I've done it several times - mostly just to see what'll happen. And once to "self rescue" myself when my SOC gage was wonky and I ran out of battery while I was still indicating 30% remaining. I made it home with this technique - not something you can do in a gas car! Not once have I been stranded in an EV.

The Tesla folks have some great info on their site, including this torque/speed curve as compared to an ICE
http://teslamotors.com/performance/performance.php

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(ken1784 @ Oct 4 2006, 12:22 PM) [snapback]327867[/snapback]</div>

Well, to my non-technical mind, here we have the achilles heel of the all-electric vehicle. 1,000 amps at 240 volts (240,000 watts). Most houses only have a standard 200 amp supply, so it seems we're asking for the entire available amperage of five homes using the maximum amperage possible through their household supplies. Not to mention safely handling a cable that can carry those 1,000 amps at 240 volts.

Perhaps you could exchange charged modules for empty ones at "gas" stations, where the modules have been charged over an extended period. But I can't see that you could park your car outside your house, and just "plug it in".

As far as I can see, the near-term and even medium-term only holds hybrids, not pure electric.

 

The way I see this EV-SUV or SUEV (Sport Utility Electric Vehicle) is something that the Fed Gov't will buy. Right now the GSA is mandated to have 20% of the fleet as a alternate fueled (ie Hybrid, E85, and electric) and this number will rise in the future. E85 is not really what the GSA is looking for and Ford is not making enough Hybrid Escapes and the DoD likes SUVs but right now there is an execute order that GSA will not have SUVs in it's fleet. DLA buys a lot of EVs and use them for most installation functions. Much like the microchips of the 60's and 70's having the Fed Gov't spend money early on these vehicles will make them cheaper for the rest of us later (5 years).

On the other hand most people want their cake and eat it too. They want a big vehicle that will go 500 miles. That is why SUVs have 40 gal tanks. My wife says she will never get a plug-in car because she will forget to pug it in (although she usually doesn't run out of gas because she forgets to fill-up), and I think she is correct because she forgets to charge her cell phone often.

The last point is people don't like change. I know some one who has lived in a house for 18 years and never changed to previous owners paint scheme or carpets. I hear about gas costs from coworkers all the time but when you present an alternative they find reasons why it is crap.

My $.02

Keith

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(dipper @ Oct 4 2006, 08:23 PM) [snapback]327995[/snapback]</div>

Perhaps we have different starting points in this discussion. Personally, I look at every new developement in car technology in the light of solving our current worldwide pollution problems (including global heating). In principle, EV's have some promise to address this.
However, in order to be of any significance, what is needed is an EV model that appeals to a substantial fraction of the market. Think 20% or more.

Yes, a lot of people will be willing to buy it. After all, there are 5 billion people worldwide. The Tesla will sell well in the same sense as Ferrari's are selling well: enough to be quite profitable and create more demand than production.

But, as a possible solution to environmental problems, it's just irrelevant.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(darelldd @ Oct 5 2006, 01:28 AM) [snapback]328164[/snapback]</div>

We can keep on arguing indeed... But as long as you keep posting your arguments in threads, I will add mine
I agree that the market for commuter cars is huge, and that this is where EV's have the highest potential. But I think that the market for a 50.000$ commuter car than can't be used one day to drive to mom and dad in the other state, is small. You need people with money to invest in fun projects.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(darelldd @ Oct 5 2006, 01:28 AM) [snapback]328164[/snapback]</div>

The technology is there: plugin hybrids. EV cars with a plug and a small combustion engine (perhaps serial) to extend the range. Perhaps an irrelevant difference for a rational mind looking for a pure commuter car, but a tremendous difference from a marketing perspective. This is how EV's will find their way to the masses. I have already brought the Renault Kangoo Elect'road to your attention. I believe that this is the right way to go for the transition to electricity. But of course, it's not a flashy sports car than can do 0-100km/h in 5 seconds, can do 160mph and has a race steel cage. It hardly made the news. But I believe that it shows the way to go.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(darelldd @ Oct 5 2006, 01:28 AM) [snapback]328164[/snapback]</div>

Personally, I believe that the technology is not the limiting factor for the moment. The problem has become a commercial and marketing problem. We will have to wait until the first manufacturer figures out how to put the technology together into a reasonable package that appeals to a lot of people, and finds the right balance between function, price, attractiveness, etc... In a sense, we need a new model T. I'm pretty sure that making an EV-biased plugin hybrid is going to do it.

 

To me, it boils down to three factors:

Technology
Tases and preferences.
Cost

I think that the technology issues are becoming (or perhaps have been, or even have long been) irrelevant. You can build EVs that look, work, and last like a gas car. With the range limitation. And have been able to do it for some time.

On preferences, well, there's no accounting for tastes. It never fails to amaze me what people will or won't buy to get from A to B.

There's no doubt that a lot of people could use an EV and displace a lot of gas-powered miles, using the same setup Darell has - one electric, one gas.
1) Of households that have a passenger vehicle, slightly over 80% have 2 or more vehicles.
2) Just over 1% of the US household travel days exceed 250 miles.
3) Days under 250 miles accounted for 88% of US passenger vehicle miles.
(Calculated from the National Household Travel Survey.)

For cost, my take on it is that even with historical technology and prices, lifetime cost-of-ownership of an EV was only slightly different from a gas car. So, at historical battery and gas prices, an EV wasn't clearly the cheapest way to travel, on a lifetime cost-of-ownership basis, focusing narrowly on out-of-pocket costs only. But it was pretty close.

For example: For the 2003 RAV4 EV, my understanding of the facts is that the EPA rated it a 112 MPG (based on US average electricity and gas costs), rated the gas version at 26 MPG, that the battery pack was expected (based on the Cal Edison evaluation) to have a useful working life of 150K miles, and that the cost of a replacement pack was about $17,000. (That price seems to scale well with the projected cost of a PHEV pack for a Prius.) Darell, not that you need the invitation, feel free to correct any of this information.

For 10 years/150,000 miles, at $2.50 a gallon, the fuel cost savings for the EV would have been about $11,000. Let me assume that:
1) Both cars were produced at the same economies of scale, and the cost of the gas engine and transmission was identical to the electrical equivlent, so that the EV cost $17K more than the gas version.
2) Both cars were total junk at 150K miles, so no salvage value.
3) The EV avoids $3K in routine maintenance (30 oil changes, 5 radiator flush-and-fills, 2 major tuneups at 60K and 120K, one exhaust system replacement, one brake job).
4) Nothing else ever breaks on either car.

Then the net additional cost of the EV over the gas is $17K higher purchase price less $11K fuel savings less $3K maintenance savings = $3K, or $300 per year.

So, call it $25 a month more, over the 10 year/150K mile life of the car, to own the EV as opposed to the gas version of the RAV4.

My point is that, even at old tech and old prices, a person interested only in total (private) cost of ownership would have been nearly indifferent to the choice between gas and electric RAV4 EV.

A modest extension of battery life, a modest reduction in battery cost, a modest increase in gas price, a significant gas engine repair, any of these would have made the EV the cheaper vehicle, over the life of the vehicle. In the example above, at $3.20 a gallon for gas, the gas and EV RAV4s would have identical lifetime costs. Not to mention that at 150K, you'd have a ragged-out gas car, but an EV that may only need fresh batteries.

So, if private cost of ownership is the only issue, you'd just have to get over the fact that you're paying up front. I think that's as big a psychological barrier as the range limitation is.

My only other point is that PHEVs raise the bar, in terms of what's the cheapest mode of transportation. At national average travel patterns, PHEV 30 can displace roughly 50% of all gas-powered passenger vehicle miles. You incur diminishing marginal returns trying to displace the rest with battery power. Each increment of battery displaces fewer additional gas miles. (You install all that battery, but in effect you rarely use it.) Until you reach the point where you go full EV, where the calculation may change due to the savings from having no ICE. So it's not clear, for any given combination of battery, electricity, and gas costs, which would be the cheaper solution: a PHEV battery that is heavily used, or a pure EV in which a larger battery pack is on average more lightly used.

It will be interesting to see how this all shakes out.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(chogan @ Oct 5 2006, 05:43 PM) [snapback]328453[/snapback]</div>

Excellent analysis, you raised some valid points that can easily be followed if you think rational about this (just like all Darell's points).

But unfortunately, people don't think rational when they buy cars. Very few people buy the car that brings them from A to B at minimal cost for a given level of comfort. Why do so many people buy SUV's? Because of some perceived go-anywhere image. It's the reasoning "you never know, maybe I will get stuck in the mud some day, or there will be a snow storm, or I need to rescue my family from a flood". Even if for 99.99 precent of the buyers this never happens in their life.

The limited range of an EV goes directly against this (flawed) thinking. For every person that thinks rational about it and likes EV's for what they stand for, there are 20 people that will run with their mind against a mental block when it comes to the limited autonomy. The "you never know" reasoning

Or it has to be a cheap car, that is not replacing any other car, but added to the car park. Just a cummuter econo-box that is purchased entirely based on rational arguments. Even here, only a small fraction will follow that.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(vtie @ Oct 5 2006, 12:04 PM) [snapback]328468[/snapback]</div>

OK, I'll agree with that. Minimizing cost is only part, and perhaps only a small part of the car purchase decision, for many people. Perhaps even most. The cost has to be in the ballpark before people will consider the option, then it's up to their preferences.

Yet, I'd also say that many people tend to go where they are led, either by economic forces or by dint of marketing. Some people would buy a truck/SUV no matter what. But for most of the herd, I'd say they're just going with the flow.

That might change. I think the economic (cost) factors are changing. Gas prices are the most clear, but I don't think that you could reduce creditworthiness standards any more than they have been, or make car loans longer than they are now. So the long decline of monthly payment relative to purchase price, and expansion of the pool of buyers qualified to purchase high-priced vehicles, may both be nearing an end. And I think more people are becoming aware of the incremental environmental cost, though I'm not sure how many are doing anything about it.

On the issue of preferences, the most hopeful sign I perceive is that the coolest cars kids can own no longer seem to be Jeeps and SUVs. That's my impression. Maybe as the SUV fleet and its owners age, reality will sink in and SUVs will get branded as cars for fat, balding, boring middle-aged people (of which I am one), instead of rugged outdoorsmen. Remember Oldsmobile? Can you see "This is not you father's SUV" as an advertising campaign?

I ramble. Your point is well taken, I just don't a) think things are set in stone and further b) I do think things are swinging away from SUV as the kneejerk choice of vehicle. But I admit that may be wishful thinking on my part, and there's no telling whether it will lead to EV or PHEV as viable options. I'm just hoping that it will.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Leo @ Oct 4 2006, 08:27 PM) [snapback]328286[/snapback]</div>

What you say here is true... except the part where it is the achilles heal of EVs. You may have missed the part above where I say that slow charging at home is all that is needed. You don't need to charge your EV at home in 10 minutes. The car is parked in the garage every night, all night! In six years of EV driving, I've never needed to charge quickly at home. I charge over night. Slowly, cheaply and safely. Certainly there have been times where it would have been more convenient for me to have a faster way to charge on the road. It is these "on the way" chargers that would be valuable to have as fast as possible.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Essayons @ Oct 5 2006, 06:00 AM) [snapback]328374[/snapback]</div>

Which is missing the point (at least for a PHEV). A PHEV never needs to be plugged in. It operates just like the Prius does today. But if you DO remember to plug it in, you can enjoy wildly better gas mileage. And if you start saving a few hundred dollars a month by remembering to plug in, I think most folks would eventually be able to train themselves!

We're in full agreement there!

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(clett @ Oct 5 2006, 06:37 AM) [snapback]328388[/snapback]</div>

Yup. You're right of course. In my perfect EV world, everybody has access to power just about everywhere they park. We should have charging at work, and there's no reason we can't have chargers on the street where we already have streetlights. This is an infrastructure issue that isn't insurmountable (nothing compared to H2, for example) but is obviously something that would need attention! In the meantime, before any of that needs to be considered, there are still many hundreds of millions of households who could charge at home in their garage.

Agreed. I'm all over the PHEV concept here! It would make an idea second car for us, in place of the Prius. Our primary vehicle would continue to be a full BEV.

And for Vtie and Chogan - I thank you both for your respective insight. The missing link here in the "logic" and "cost" arguments is this: We are NOT spanked hard enough for the destruction we're doing with our private transportation. If it is way more painful to drive an SUV than to drive an EV to work, I think people might start to see the light a bit sooner. Right now you just pay a little bit more for gas each year, and feel like you've paid your dues. You (and I'm not pointing fingers, of course, this is the figurative YOU) can afford to drive your SUV, so you do. Simple as that. To me it seems that it shouldn't be like that. We need an incentive to "do the right thing." What we have today, for the most part, is big incentives to continue doing all the wrong things!

 

Just 1 or 2 questions. What is the power requirement for the charger on the rav4 elect ? And Darelldd what is the impact on your power bill per month ? I am just attempting to understand the difference to the use of energy. Thanks

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(darelldd @ Oct 5 2006, 10:06 PM) [snapback]328605[/snapback]</div>

I agree 200% with you! Look how far we have come...
Driving our (combustion) cars is way too cheap compared to the real price that is paid by the society, silently and in the long term. There will come a day that people will be amazed about what we are doing right now.

I believe that we will only change our mentality when it really starts to hurt. I'm rather pessimistic in this respect: I don't think that a smooth, rational transition to more clever transportation will arrive in a timely way. I believe that we will be forced one day with a rather hard landing. After all, better alternatives have been available for decades already, but they failed raize sufficient interest. Almost every way of transportation is better than a 2500kg SUV burning fossile fuel to carry single person to his/her work. If you think about it, it's almost hilarious if it wasn't so pathetic.

I can only hope that I'm too pessimistic about the human race!

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(ralph b @ Oct 5 2006, 10:22 PM) [snapback]328611[/snapback]</div>

Ahh, you offered him the perfect opening!


Hint: he lives in a sunny state...

 

great analysis chogan. yes its obvious when comparing nearly 10 year old EV data with modern times, its gonna be cost effective to use EV if its convenient.

ever since they started talking about extended EV operation on a hybrid i have been tracking my usage. specifically, when i would need more than 30 miles of range without having an opportunity to plug in (if it were available.)

now for me its gonna be different because my one way commute is 5½ miles. to date, im at 211 trips under 30 miles (a lot of these were several combined short trips in a day. i did pay attention to whether a stop at home of more than an hour was ever involved etc) 33 trips over 30 including 26 over 100 miles.

so for me, i dont want to pay an extra $10,000 to gain 20 more miles when it will not really do anything for me which is why without all EV, plug-ins are the way to go. they provide the extra range when needed but the EV still takes care of over 80% of my needs.

no matter what actually happens, its pretty obvious that an all gas solution is no longer viable under nearly any configuration

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(ralph b @ Oct 5 2006, 01:22 PM) [snapback]328611[/snapback]</div>

Power needed to charge the Rav (ten year old car, please understand) is 30A, 220V. Modern EVs are being made available with the choice to charge slowly from ANY normal household outlet, up to very fast from specialty fast, high-voltage chargers. All production EVs were pretty much limited to 220V, 30A. If I were paying for my electricity (all my EV power comes from the solar panels on my roof today) for every $16 that I'd pay for electricity to power my Rav4EV, I would have paid about $100 for the gas that I'd have to put in a standard Rav4EV. So yes.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(vtie @ Oct 5 2006, 01:40 PM) [snapback]328622[/snapback]</div>

And finally we have come full circle as I knew we would.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(DaveinOlyWA @ Oct 5 2006, 07:17 PM) [snapback]328773[/snapback]</div>

Cost aside - imagine how much pollution is NOT pumped into the air because of all the cold starts you avoid!

I'd like to chisel that one in stone.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(DaveinOlyWA @ Oct 5 2006, 10:17 PM) [snapback]328773[/snapback]</div>

My wife and I did the same thing on our Prius -- a trip log for a few weeks - and came to pretty much the same conclusion. Between 80 and 90% of our total vehicle miles could be powered by a PHEV 30 mile pack. Far better than the US average, so PHEV would be more cost-effective for us than for the average.

There's one hitch, pointed out to me in an earlier thread, and relevant to the cold start issue. The way that (some? all?) current PHEV Prius conversions are set up, you have to warm up the ICE anyway, to have it available for hard acceleration. They're set up basically to fool the car into thinking the battery is at full charge ("green") so it'll use the battery more. But otherwise the car runs as it does normally. So, startups and hard accel still trigger the ICE on. Maybe that could be avoided on a fully-integrated PHEV Prius.

At risk of being boring, I'll point out something I've brought up in other threads. Your ICE is going to last forever if you get a PHEV 30 pack. With 80% of miles powered by wall-socket electricity, I figure'd we'd put maybe 2.5K miles/year on the ICE. With PHEV 30, if our Prius hit 150K miles, the ICE would be at 30K miles.

So I think PHEV is, on average, going to make cars last significantly longer. No way to prove that. I guess the precise way to say this is that, for the fraction of cars that are junked due at root to a worn-out ICE, a PHEV pack would clearly extend the life of those cars. Having said that I have been unable to find any data on why cars get junked. So no way to get a decent estimate of impact.

I bring this up because the dollars and fossil fuel savings from extending vehicle working life are large. If a Prius costs $25K and would typically last 10 years, if the PHEV pack lets you squeeze just one more year out of it, that's effectively a $2500 additional savings. (Maybe $2300, depending on how you want to do the accounting - 1/10th or 1/11th of a car life.) That's nearly the size of the total lifetime (150K miles) fuel cost savings from the PHEV pack. And, separately, if you roughly estimate the energy required to build the Prius, it looks to me like the fossil fuels saved from that additional year of car life scale at about the same rate, ie,. you save roughly as much carbon from getting another year of life out of the car (and thereby slowing down the rate at which cars are built), as you got from the entire first 10 years of substituting wall-socket-electric for gas.

Take it a step further, and you realize this means we really want even longer battery life than is commonly suggested now. Right now, the ICE wears out around 150K typically? So we're all thinking that batteries that last 150K would a life-of-the-vehicle battery? I say no. I think there's a feedback because the PHEV reduces ICE wear. Suddely, a 150K mile battery pack is no longer good for the life of the vehicle, because the vehicle with PHEV will last (a lot?) longer. So battery life >150k miles is worth something.

Anyway, for me, depending on price, an EV for around town and a PHEV Prius or larger for road trips would be optimal. And could, conceivably, be the last cars I'd ever have to buy.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(chogan @ Oct 6 2006, 11:52 AM) [snapback]328944[/snapback]</div>

Check your facts, but only as a last resort. This statement appears to be wrong. Several reliable sources (e.g., Argonne National Labs, Carnegie Mellon University) suggest that by far the majority of life-cycle energy consumption for a car is in the gasoline to drive it, not in the production and disposal of the car. Argonne puts driving at about 85% of total energy cost for a conventional gas car. So, energy savings from extended vehicle life are minimal, although the cost savings are as previously stated.