Electric Cars Flooding the Market

Electric Cars Flooding the Market

money.cnn.com

From General Motors (GM) to Honda, almost every major automaker -- and even some not-so-major ones -- plans to have at least one plug-in car on the market by the end of 2012. Toyota alone will have three, including the Rav4 EV SUV and the Prius plug-in.

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The public currently has no interest in Cars but all major car companies are heavily investing into Electric Cars for the future because they believe they will eventually take over.

There is a very much needed change in mentality in order to become less dependent on Oil.

In Combination with the news piece linked below (Lithium Ion Batteries to Drop Electric Car Prices), this is very good news.



money.cnn.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

There are quite a few people around here who potter around in their electric cars..

right now I see them as pretty useless.. however if I lived in London they would be on my list of possible options for travelling around. (no congestion charges, no road tax, free parking with power points etc) make them an cheaper option to conventional travel,

Good to see them starting to move away from fossil fuels..

reply to post by Skyfloating

In Combination with the news piece linked below (Lithium Ion Batteries to Drop Electric Car Prices), this is very good news.

Didn't I hear they just found Lithium in Afghanistan?
What a stroke of luck that the US is already there huh..

Fortunately not all Electric Cars are boring little shoeboxes used to go shopping in a city.

For instance, in the U.S. you have Tesla Motors making great long range electric sports and saloon cars. The following link shows the four door saloon....

Tesla Motors

Not sure of names but there are companies on the U.S. West Coast that will modify your car to electricity only and provide excellent performance gains.

Jaguar recently produced a fully functioning electric supercar that has two micro-turbines you can switch on to recharge the system as you drive...

Jaguar Electric Supercar

One drawback to electric cars would be.. Australia, where electricity cost per killowatt hour has risen by 12 to 15% at least half a dozen times in two years. Which means recharging the car will cost more than fuel, especially on the quick charge system.. and fuel here is already stupidly expensive at A$1.25 per Litre.

reply to post by Tayesin


Thats right, E-Cars are no longer boring, slow, dull. It just needs some time before this catches up with the general populace and then its finally goodbye to fuel.

reply to post by Skyfloating


Currently in Australia power generations is almost 100% reliant on fossil fuel..
When that changes then electric cars will be good..

But also like someone else pointed out, my elec bill has increased 50% in 4 years and I'm told there's more rises to come..

This saving the planet business isn't cheap..Someone's making a fortune...

Originally posted by Skyfloating
reply to post by Tayesin

 

Thats right, E-Cars are no longer boring, slow, dull. It just needs some time before this catches up with the general populace and then its finally goodbye to fuel.

And how exactly is that electricity being generated? Here's a conspiracy theory...there's lots of coal out there...dirty coal...and the only way that you can run a car on it is to use it to make electricity.

Cuz I keep hearing that we can barely come up with enough juice as is right now.

This is great news

One thing I learned (and was not too shocked about) while watching Who Killed the Electric Car was just how deep the automobile companies (GM, Toyota, Honda) were in bed with big oil.

If this upcoming onslaught of e-cars is true, it's almost like the auto manufacturers have said "ENOUGH!" to the oil companies for dictating how they can plan for the future.

reply to post by JohnnyCanuck


Is there an electricity shortage? If so I wasnt aware of that.

I'm not going to be a party pooper here, but I dont get excited about it because at the end of the day, we will still have to pay for it, and we will still be under the thumb of the same major fuel companies, and all this will do is help with the carbon footprint.

And im not knocking that improving your carbon footprint is good for the environment, as there is a lot of other things that need to change to to help with the environment, but I would really get excited if for instance it was a car that never had the issue of having to be re-fuelled or charged, and the damn things could just go on non stop, and obviously something has to be paid for, but that would be in my eyes, something to get excited about.

With fuel at least when your about to run out, you can quicky fill it up and move on, but with a chargable one, wont it mean that when its coming to the end of its charge and if there no fuel too, your car will be sidelined for a couple of hours before you can set off again.

Look, im not being negative, I think its a great move, but in honesty, when your having to play fuel slave to the fuel oligarcs for yet more time, I get a little frustrated about it.

reply to post by multichild


Technically thats not actually true. You could make your own electric with a windmill, watermill, solarpanels.

People could get together in small groups to fund a bigger project, and become independent of the big companies.

It already happens here in UK, some folk have put up a windmill and actually sell electric to the grid. If everyone did that the big boys are out the window.

I'm all for it.

Diesel in UK is now £1.28 a litre where I stay ...... it's getting ridiculous.

reply to post by bigyin


Ok that sounds good, but that solves one of my issues of not being under the control of big oil companies, but what about the charging issue.

I drive quite a bit, and at the moment, i fill up twice a week and then usually gets me through, but what it also measn is that if I need to go at a moments notice then I can as I have fuel.

What if after driving all day im running low on charge and I also forgot to put fuel in, I will then have to wait hours for the car to charge up so I can go.

In the future I would prefer more efficient and less costly travel, and this doesnt tick that box does it.

In cities where one can park and recharge their batteries the parking meter will become the means to pay for the charge - insert coins to buy minutes of charge time.

reply to post by Skyfloating


But this will only have a positive effect on our addiction (not just to oil) to fossil fuels, if the power plants which generate the electricity are themselves run in a sustainable manner, without any form of carbon burning or release.
Otherwise the energy which ends up in the cars comes from virtualy the same source, which would be unacceptable and represent a total waste of effort on the part of car manufacturers at best, and at worst a deliberate deception on thier part, in collaberation with the oil and fossil fuel companies.
My attitude to it, is that if it comes out of the Earth, and you have to burn it to gain benifit from it, you shouldnt be doing it at all .
Thats pretty much why I advocate the advance of the solar cell to ever increasing degrees of efficiency , and the proliferation of wind and wave based generation of power.

What people fail to realize is the fact that the push for Electric Cars is more about control than global warming or reduction of fossil fuels.

Electric Cars will soon become common place. Unleaded Motor Vehicle Fuel/Gas will become incredibly expensive. Soon it will be cheaper for the middle and lower classes to switch to all electric vehicles. What will be interesting is that the range of these vehicles will not significantly increase for quite some time.

Basically the lower and middle classes will have electric vehicles that have a very low range (50-150 miles) before needing a recharge. The Upper classes will still drive gas guzzling fuel-powered vehicles with incredibly high ranges (400 miles or more). The middle and lower classes will also be encouraged to switch to electric vehicles, most likely through a "cash for clunkers" type program to massively subsidize the cost of procuring these vehicles. This will be utilized to do a few things.

1) Controlling the mobility of the population. Essentially restricting people to stay near their homes, as the mentality changes. If someone attempts to go farther they will be forced to have to STOP and recharge in order to travel even more. This aids in monitoring and controlling citizens. They already have cameras installed in most intersections and along the interstate in the US, all tied into centralized subservience systems. This limited range of travel will make it even easier to contain the populous.

2) The Airline/Bus/Train line industries will actually benefit as people will have to pay to travel long distances instead of driving themselves. As it will take too long to go 1000 miles if you have to drive 150 miles then recharge for a few hours, then drive another 150 miles, etc. Essentially it will probably double the travel time anywhere. So what would previously take 15 hours to drive will take 30 or so hours when you include the need to recharge. Not to mention require the cost of hotel stays for what was previously a 1 day drive.

3) The wealthy will have much more powerful vehicles with long ranges, but they will also be able to afford the $15/gallon or higher that it will cost to fuel these vehicles, in addition to the "pollution tax" that they will pay on top of that for registering their gas guzzling SUVs or high range vehicles.

4) The electric vehicles will also have a much lower top-end speed, and people will not travel at the top end speeds in order to maximize battery life. If there is a "high speed" chase with law enforcement the battery would quickly deplete or the vehicles will be quickly disabled utilizing the new black-boxes that will soon be mandated to be installed in all new vehicles.

5) Ultimately this all boils down to enriching a few wealthy individuals who at first suppressed this technology but now are pushing its' implementation. Mainly due to the fact that they now own the mineral rights to a majority of the deposits of the metals needed to produce the batteries, world-wide. Much of the big oil/coal/energy companies will profit directly from it, and it was pushed aside for decades to ensure that they were properly positioned to maintain their profit and power with this "new" technology being pushed onto the masses.

Essentially we will be giving up much of our freedom of movement, as well as increasing the cost of bus/train/air travel, which will be required to realistically go anywhere long-distance.

Just my opinions.

reply to post by TrueBrit


Hi TrueBrit,

Thats pretty much my line of thought too.

Its sort of fools play really, in that they are moving the fuel away from the car and putting it in th ebackground to create fuel for the cars in another way, and then you still got to find a place to charge it, and if not you break down and then have to wait hours for it to charge again.

I dont think its the best idea that could have happened.

Its change though I suppose, so lets have it and then maybe the next couple of generations after us can push it on more.

reply to post by Tayesin


Australia however has less than no excuse for its laxity in dropping its electricity prices. In Australia after all , there is an absolute abundance of sunshine, and so solar panels should really have taken off and been installed about a decade ago in that part of the world.
If they havent been already , now would be the time to lobby your government to provide a comprehensive system of price drops, made possible by the building of MASSIVE solar farms. There are countless things the Australian government and the energy suppliers in the nation could be doing to improve the lot of the service users in the country , and make possible the idea of a electric car replacing a petrol one.

reply to post by multichild


I think its important that BEFORE the cars come on the market, the nations in which they are sold, must regardless of the difficulties or the cost, install renewable non carbon power plants, in order to feed the vehicles . Further more, limitations in range and power will have to be fought against vigilantly to prevent journey times collapsing into huge time wasting trudges!