Their cylindrical cells really are great performers and are in use all over the place. RC hobbyists would try pretty hard to get a hold of them. Unfortunately they never sold directly to consumers.
This car seems to offer a DC fast charging connector which is incompatible with CHAdeMO, the current de-facto standard. Does anyone have the scoop on the dueling standards?
The SAE combo fast fast charger is well behind the CADdeMO standard for adoption [1]. This is in part because it was approved much later and part because there was no vehicle in the US with the SAE combo. Though they are both are starting from very low bases, and some companies are building chargers with both plugs [2].
The success of these EVs may actually impact Tesla profitability: if Spark and LEAF sales take off in California, it means less of a market for the ZEV credits that Tesla sells. However, I doubt any mainstream manufacturer will have surplus ZEV credits to sell, like Tesla does--they'd have to sell more than 13% of their cars as electrics. Currently Nissan's sells only 2% of its cars as electric, worldwide.
Tesla are already profitable without selling ZEV credits though, and they're are expecting that source of income to phase out over the next few quarters anyway. It might hurt them a tiny bit, but it shouldn't have much of an impact in the long term.
I don't think that's true. Tesla took in $68M from ZEV last quarter but only made $11M in profits--thus, 600% of their profits came from ZEV. This is a bit of a hand wave, though, because if you know you have ZEV income coming in the door, you might spend more on future R&D than if you didn't.
In practicality you can lease this car for free. Using $4+/gallon of gas and with daily commute I did the math (with the leaf, but this should even be a tad better) and the savings (gas price - electric charging bills) we would be saving about $200/month. And this is using our old Honda (which gives decent gas mileage ). Which makes this car free compared to a decent petroleum-based car.
>How about Hybrids? A Prius can get 50mpg.
The thought of carrying so much more weight for batteries just to get a extra millage that's only similar to diesels makes no sense to me
>Or how about a diesel engine.
Yes, diesel is one of my favorite options. However, you still save more with this car.
But as the price of oil drops the equation will change.
Note that the cruze turbo diesel gets 46 MPG highway. Diesel prices fluctuate often but in recent history it's been more expensive [1].
The gas cruze gets up to 42 MPG highway -- Finally a modern car matching my 1990 Toyota Tercel, which until recently I could not replace without sacrificing fuel economy.
The plausible excuse for worsening or at-best-similar fuel economy is the added weight for safety equipment. Engines have been getting better but cars are getting safer and therefore heavier.
A 201x car like the cruze has very modern things like side curtain airbags and stronger frame and such that the 1990 Tercel could not survive from a similar impact.
It's almost impossible to drive an EV so much as to go over the lease miles, due to range restrictions and charging times. A LEAF can be had for $200 a month.
12,000 miles per year is < 33 miles per day. That's certainly doable when the range of the car is ~80 miles per day.
For the car to be 'free' you would certainly need to be driving it that many miles per day. Say I drive a pickup that gets 15 MPG. If I drive 1,000 miles per month (I don't, but that's the amount generally allowed for a leased vehicle -- 12,000 miles per year), and if those 1,000 miles can be driven in the Spark, then I'm buying ~67 less gallons of gas per month. At $3/gallon, I'm saving $200 per month in gas, and at $4/gallon I'm saving $268 per month in gas. The money I'm saving on gas for my pickup pays for the Spark. We shouldn't forget the $999 down payment, but over three years that's just under $28/month. And then there's the cost of electricity. There's an annual fuel cost of $400, or $33 per month (based on $.12 per kW-hr and 12,000 miles--however, where I live that's going to be about $10 cheaper per month, but I'll use the $33 for these calculations).
My cost: $199 + $28 + $33 = $260/month
My savings: $268/month (at $4/gallon of gas).
I only drive my pickup around 8,000 miles per year, which is ~45 gallons of gas per month. So my savings are only $180/month at $4/gallon of gas, making the cost of the Spark ~$80/month, or $2880 for the 3 year lease.
At this point I can work over the numbers even further so that car is even cheaper saying that over half of my miles can be deducted for business, saving me over $800/year in federal income tax. That brings me down to around $14/month, or $504 for the 3 year lease.
Excellent points, thanks. It makes me wonder, do leases let you "buy" an extra mileage allowance up front? Assuming it's not too expensive, that might add further savings.
Otherwise the commute I have in mind is 90 miles per day x 5 days per week. So the mileage limits wouldn't work.
The other catch is that you'll be depending on an even more of an energy monopoly. If you have enough of your own solar cells that can charge this car, then the catch goes down. Otherwise if the demand on electricity goes high and PG&E or its equivalent deems it necessary to increase your electric bill then you have no where to go.
<100 mile range and needing to be able to plug it in at home are the obvious drawbacks. It certainly sounds like a great deal for anyone that these aren't problems for.
Who wants to sit at a charging station for 20 minutes? I know we as a society have all turned to be more impatient over time. I don't see that working well.
Maybe each charging station should have FREE wifi.
With only 90 miles range, it's clearly designed to be a commuter car. Plug it in every night, drive it to work and on errands and you'll never have to sit in a charging station for 20 minutes.
Honestly I don't mind that. On a longer trip, now that I have a family we wind up spending that long walking around, stretching, bathroom, etc. So the problem isn't really the wait; it's the fact you'd have to do it every 60-70 miles. But, considering a typical day trip is within 150 miles away, it might add an extra hour or so to your total day. Still not feasible to go cross-country yet, but I think we're getting there.
We have them at malls and at work here in Kitchener, Ontario. It's a small-ish town (200k people) in Canada, so if you're in a larger city in the USA I don't see why you wouldn't, too.
Unfortunately for a lot of people, we don't live in large cities.
My city is 12.5k people (as of 2010) and the closest larger city is 125k (Gainesville, FL) with the next being 827k. With this car I could just barely drive to Gainesville and back on a single charge. So, it's almost perfect for my usage, and with public charge stations in the large cities near me it would be perfect.
I know EVs are still in the early stages of being accepted into general use, but I'm very excited about the day when they pass the 50% mark.
It's taken me 20+ minutes quite a few times to fill up my car at a regular gas station. Try filling up at a southern california gas station on a Friday afternoon or on a Monday and depending on it's traffic, it can take quite a while.
People won't sit at a charging station except in emergency situations. I think explicit gas stations will go the way of the dodo and parking lot charging will become the norm.
I've been wondering why there hasn't been more energy piled on to fuel cell vehicles. They're EVs, but have far longer ranges and zero emissions. So far, only Honda's FCX is the fuel-cell vehicle on sale in the United States; there are no others.
It's very feasible; all you need to do is fill up with hydrogen, and considering hydrogen is so plentiful, it would be cheap, simple, and easy to generate infrastructure. Transport may be an issue due to the flammability of hydrogen, but there can and will be solutions to that.
Why bother with outdated Li batteries, when there are more efficient solutions out there?
Hydrogen in pure form is not available and must be refined from other sources (typically natural gas).
Fuel cells cost more than battery packs and require very expensive infrastructure to support them (since you can't charge at home, there have to be plenty of stations around).
I would argue most people don't have 240 Volt electric lines running through their house in North America so they need to 'build' that infrastructure at home too.
Except for perhaps a few extremely rural homes, everyone has 240V in the USA and Canada. The Mexicans without 240V probably aren't the market for electric cars because they don't have cars or electricity. So that covers North America.
Hydrogen, being the smallest atom, tends to leak. For this and energy density reasons, the hydrogen must be cryogenically stored, at low temperature and high pressure. I don't think that nut has been cracked. Creating pure hydrogen cheaply and without CO2 emissions from the reformation process is also an unsolved problem, I think.
There are many reasons fuel cells have not been adopted. They are very expensive (in the $100k+ range), they don't last long, storing hydrogen on the car is hard, and their cold weather performance is bad or they do not work at all [1]. And yes, while hydrogen is abundant, we do not have a distribution system in place.
Contrast this with battery electric cars, they exist today are viable at decent price points, they do not degrade as fast as FCV, they work sufficiently in cold weather (I've driven a leaf in MN winter at -20), and the electricity distribution system in place will mostly meet our needs. Top this off with significant investment from diverse industries to improve battery storage and performance (consumer electronics, car manufacturers, power companies).
On a related note, one of the best storage mechanisms we have for hydrogen is in hydrocarbons. There is actually about 64% more hydrogen in a liter of gasoline than in a liter of liquid hydrogen. That same liter of hydrogen also only contains about 25% the energy of the liter of gasoline.
We don't have a good way to contain and transport hydrogen as a fuel.
They are crazy expensive -- most have significant amounts of platinum. Also, there are fundamental problems with operating them in cold climates.
Fuel cells have some traction in fixed-base applications (backup power for small buildings like fire stations) and for mechanical equipment like forklifts.
"It'll first be available in California and Oregon in mid-June as a 2014 model, and at some future point, GM will roll it out in other states and countries."
Of course they only mention California incentives, since Californians will represent 91% of the potential market.
Also keep in mind the $7,500 in tax incentives will most likely differ from state to state. Some states may not even have incentives - but a sub $30K EV is still pretty sweet.
Very nice but it will never gain any sort of mainstream penetration unless EVs get to at least 200 mile range or perhaps charging technology that gives you 100 miles with at most 10 minute charge.
There are very few folks that can say they only drive 100 miles at any one time.
That's why my next car is going to a Prius Plug in (if they EVER get them in all 50 states - sheesh!). This gives me the all EV range for work (15 miles round trip) as well as the extended range for longer trips.
> There are very few folks that can say they only drive 100 miles at any one time.
You mean, people who can say they will never drive more than 100 miles? Sure. But I also can't say I will _never_ need to transport my desk, bed and couch, but that doesn't mean I drive a U-Haul to work every day.
Most families in America have two cars. Keep the minivan and trade the sedan for an electric. You probably won't have to take the minivan out much. Or, if you want just one car, rent a giant Lexus SUV for trips. You'll still save money.
>There are very few folks that can say they only drive 100 miles at any one time.
I thought the majority of EV market research said that most people only commute ~20 miles a day? Regular 100+ mile trips are fairly uncommon even in the US from the figures I've seen surrounding EVs.
Most families in America have more than one car. In fact, 0 and 3 are the most popular numbers of cars to own! http://www.autospies.com/news/Study-Finds-Americans-Own-2-28... So EVs make a lot of sense as one of your cars, which you can use for commuting.
I have no numbers to back this up, just how it plays out logically in my head, but I would guess that many 3 car families have a car for the kids in the house. At least in my family, when the oldest turned 16 we got a car to share. The car got passed down to younger kids as the older kids moved to college and the younger kids got their license.
It would also make sense that the article says 3 car families prefer a mix of domestic and import, as you can get safe, reliable, and old imports more readily than you can domestic cars. We had a Honda Civic, the parents drove Chevy.
In this situation, buying an EV as the third vehicle wouldn't make sense.
Wait a sec, I thought A123 went into Chapter 11 last year and renamed itself to B456 after the reorganization? http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/05/21/b456systems-confir...
Edit: oh of course it's more complicated. A123 Systems LLC is a subsidiary of Wanxiang America Corporation, which bought most of the assets of A123 Systems Inc. out of bankruptcy. http://www.reuters.com/finance/stocks/AONEQ.PK/key-developme...