September 15th, 2003

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Technology
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Electric Cars

I’ve never owned a new car. For no particular reason, I’m relatively proud of that fact. I’ve always said that the first new car I own will be an electric or (at least) a hybrid vehicle. I’ve followed their glacial adoption (mightily resisted by the automotive and oil industries), and so was quite interested in this discussion on Slashdot about buying one. There’s some interesting tidbits about SUVs too.

As a bonus link, here’s an Ars Technica review of the Honda Insight. If you make it to page four, you’ll see how one guy modified his Insight to charge its batteries using wind power.

Comments: One Response so far

Michael Kohne
September 16th, 2003
5:32 am

Please stop trying to blame auto makers and oil companies for the failure of electric cars in the marketplace. There is no conspiracy - merely maket forces at work.

Electric cars have never sold well to the general population because they have a number of severe disadvantages compared to the gasoline vehicles that people are used to. First and foremost is the recharge time - a gasoline vehicle can be refulled in 10 minutes or less at thousands of locations, while an electric may take several hours (or even overnight for older technology) to recharge. Electric vehicles tend to have relatively short ranges on a single charge, which means that a long commute is out of the question, and even a short commute doesn’t necessarily leave you a lot of spare capacity for running errands, etc. Further, electric vehicles are hardly cheap, and tend to have very little cargo space.

Hybrids, as you will notice, are doing much better in the marketplace than pure electrics. The first couple of models had small to unusable back seats, but the current Honda Civic has about the same interior as a normal Civic (I’ve driven one. It’s nice). The only difference is that it’s got a bit less trunk space and massively better fuel economy. The higher price of hybrids is still putting some folks off (slowing uptake), but the great fuel economy is drawing some in, which will help bring up the manufacturing volumes and bring down the prices. The hybid has all of the advantages of a gasoline car, plus better milage, without any of the disadvantages of an electric.

One other factor that’s slowed uptake on both hybrids and electrics is that many consumers have learned not to go near the first few models of a brand new thing. We’ve figured out that the first couple of revs are going to have problems - better to let someone else work out the bugs, then buy a later, more robust product in a few years.

Until an electric becomes available that allows for quick refuel, AND an infrastructure is in place to allow easy refueling at multiple locations, you aren’t going to see electrics make any significant dent in the marketplace.

You don’t need a conspiracy theory to explain the failure of electrics in the marketplace. They just don’t do what most of the car buying population wants them to do. And if an electric car can’t do what people want, why would you expect them to buy one?

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