Post by Ed PawlowskiPost by g***@gmail.comPost by Ed PawlowskiPost by Tomhttp://insideevs.com/october-2012-plug-in-electric-vehicle-sales-report-card/
Thinking about the market for electrics, they would be great around the
city, especially a small one. The 40 mile electric limit is not a problem.
The downside though, is How do you charge it? Many city dwellers have to
park on the street. One place I live in the city it was rare that I could
find a spot in front of my house. Even when I could, running an extension
cord across a city sidewalk is not going to work.
There is an increasing number of parkingmeters being set up as charging poles.
In some cases the electricity in those poles are free to encourage use of electrical cars.
So in the future charging the EVs will not be a problem.
It may lessen the problem, but not eliminate it. Some people park at
the meter for minutes, maybe an hour or two, others can't use them at
all.
Ever live in the city? I mean where parking is allowed only on one
side of the street. Where you come home and find the nearest parking
spot is a block away. There are hundreds of thousands of homes like
that in big cities. You go someplace for a while and come back and
cannot charge your car.
Where I lived in Philly, I had a private driveway so charging is OK,
but I also lived with my grandmother for a couple of years and there
was no way to run a cord to a car. Many people are not allowed to
park in front of their house. It eliminates huge numbers of
potential buyers.
Side note: I was in Vermont this weekend. Twice I was behind a Prius
with an Obama sticker.
If you take it to extreme then you could have an electric contact at every parking space where you can connect your EV wherever you park your car.
There is already trials with cordless charging of cars.
In many places there are EVs vailable to rent for a short time like half an hour and you can take the car from a train station and leave it at your hotel or shopping mall and thn you can use another later to go on another short trip.
There is no longer the need for everyone to own a car or two which is not used more than say 1 hour a day and then stand parked somewhere the remaining 23 hours.
As the systems of EVs grows these kind of problems will disappear.
There is no need for a massive net of stations with the style used with gasoline.
Every parking space can easily be a fuelling station and you can use your card or telephone to pay for the electricity.
The powergrid to distribute electricity is already more or less in place.
You do not need trucks to distribute it.
In many countries the loss in the powergrids is enough to do the charging of the EVs at off peak times and can be very cheap and no need for new power plants just to accomodate the EV revolution.
Another big change is that true electrical cars do not need as much repair so the net of people fixing todays cars will be changed a lot.
80% of the profit the carmakers get today come from spare parts and that will more or less be gone.
That is why the carmakers are not too happy about EVs and are trying to get people into Hybrids because they still have most of the drawbacks for us customers and the benefits for the carmakers.
The trend toward EVs is unstoppable and the only thing that they can do is try to postpone it as long as they can.
Plug-in-hybrids like the Volt are a good thing because it is part of the chain over to the true EVs.
It would actually make more sense to have a true EV and then for longer trips you could hook a trailer behind it with a combustion engine to produce electricity when you can not get it fro the powergrid.