Electric cars and plug-in hybrids are a fail?

he's not far off, even almost two years later. most people won't relinquish the convenience of fossil fuels from their lives until pried out of their cold dead hands. it will be a long slow slog to increasing alternative's, both philosophically and politically, barring some major catastrophic upheaval. i'm happy as a consumer though, at least we have a growing choice.

 

The writer is a diesel/biodiesel booster. That isn't a bad thing, I am one, but don't see electrics as competition to that.

The prices have been dropping for plug ins since that article was written. With more models on the horizon. So EVs look to have more promise than he presented.

 

For a larger car with decent range, diesel really is the only choice, but too bad VW/Audi is the only major choice in the USA.

 

Thank God, you are far from this city's drinking water! Longueuil assures residents tap water is safe to drink despite diesel odour | Montreal Gazette

 

He totally is far off the tree.

He didn't at all account for sales growth. Sales in 2012 in the US were 52,607 which is what he is calling a fail. In 2014 they were 119,710. When he wrote about tesla being a small exception making it sound like low potential they had sold 5000 model S's. Next year they should sell around 50,000 model S and Xs.

But his major fail is the conclusion

The leaf is profitable at these numbers, Volt looks to be profitable in the gen II, bmw says it only needs 20,000 in sales a year for it to make money on the i3, tesla should be making money as soon as the model 3 comes out. It is not going to take a whole decade.

No reason the grid needs to be completely clean before plug-ins are cleaner than diesels and gas cars in many places where either the grid is cleaner or the owner installs solar or buys wind. We can walk and chew gum at the same time. No reason to throw out plug-ins in california because the grid is dirty in indiana.

 

why would anyone buy a diesel with gas at $1.75 and dropping?

 

Diesel is 69 cent. extra per gallon in my area where regular ethanol laced gas is $2.179. Boy a $13.80 fill up was nice yesterday. That is a 31.6% premium for the diesel. My diesel VW friends better my v MPG by maybe 12%-15%. Just doesn't compute for now.

Mercedes makes a nice diesel. Rented one in Germany about 12 years ago and even back then didn't really know it was a diesel from driving it, only when you went for a fill up.

 

isn't mpg the only advantage?

 

BMW and M-B also have large diesels in the USA, Chevy has the Cruze.

People like diesels because they can go farther on a tank of fuel, the tanks usually hold more.

 

^^^ so they are probably not Plug-In fanatics (diesel fans).

We probably should not debate a 2-yr old article.
Plug_ins are not a fail, we've shown with gov't mandates and large incentives, they are a technical success and have significant market success with incentives. At this point, a popular, natural "free market" demand (in the absence of incentives) has not yet materialized.

 

High low end torque is a plus for trucks, and people that use trucks have been asking for a diesel in the 1/2 ton class for years. A diesel doesn't take as big as a hit as a gas truck when towing or hauling.

 

Of course not. Batteries cost $10,000 and pollute the world.

 

So do fake boobs but we need them and they make us happy. Yay for choice!

 

luckily, all us boobs on pchat are real.

 

Are plug in sales a significant percentage of the US auto market? No.

If annual total plug in sales are close to the number of Corvettes Chevy sells does that make the Corvette a failure?

 

MB and BMW have limited models that are diesel, VW is the only major automaker that you can get diesel on almost every model sold in the USA.

 

I contend that is is OK to convert to EVs BEFORE the grid is cleaned up. Most people probably think of "clean" as in low CO2. But it is just as important, (or more important) to get the air cleaner in cities by moving the pollution out of the dense cities to the power plants. We breathe the air we pollute the same day we pollute it. CO2 is a decades-to-many decades long problem. We should work on the two problems in parallel, not serially.

Mike

 

The first 'green' is my wallet. At 65, my next promotion is to a fixed income and an EV would have very low, cost per mile.

Bob Wilson