On Nov 19, 2014, at 8:32 AM, Peri Hartman via EV <[email protected]> wrote:
> Range anxiety doesn't so much come from the range of the vehicle but the > ability to charge. That's a good point. You can argue all day about the relative merits of at-home and on-the-go charging, but the fact remains that American culture is largely built around on-the-go charging. It's what people know and how they think. To replicate all hypothetical (not common) driving scenarios, at-home charging would need to be able to provide enough range for a full day of non-stop freeway driving -- maybe even 600 miles or even more. Anything less than that, and _somebody_ is _sometimes_ going to "need" to either rapidly charge at some random point along the way or else use something that's powered by gasoline. Again, debates over whether it's worth it to retain the capacity for these sorts of options that are rarely and maybe never used, the viability of using alternates, and all the rest...in many ways, it's irrelevant. For many Americans, this is what they already have, and they think we're crazy for suggesting that they should pay more (up front) for less. The initial challenge is to either match what they already have (fast charging stations nearly as ubiquitous as gas stations) or offer them something so superior in exchange that it more than makes up for the perceived loss. Though Americans like to bitch about gas prices, for most people they're only a nuisance, and not worth the reduced range. Either gas prices will have to get worse or the _purchase_ price of EVs will have to reach parity with ICEs for people to even _consider_ an EV. Remember: individuals rarely, if ever, do lifetime cost analyses. Give them a choice between a car with a sticker price of $20,000 that will burn $10,000 worth of gas over five years and a car that costs $27,000 but only uses $1,000 worth of electricity over that same five year period, and they'll choose the $20,000 car every time as being seven thousand dollars cheaper, even though it costs two thousand dollars more. Next up is the convenience of charging at home overnight and starting each day with a full "tank" rather than having to stop somewhere for gas. That's nice a nice feature, but, for most people, on the level of having the proper number of cup holders. Closely related is the much reduced need for maintenance...but cars are black boxes that people already don't understand, and most of the things that break have nothing to do with the drivetrain. The _only_ thing that people _actually_ get excited about that electric vehicles offer that's _superior_ to their gas counterparts...is performance. Y'all know it as the "EV grin." And that's something that really could sell an awful lot of EVs to an awful lot of people who otherwise would think of them as a bad joke. As I keep writing, if Ford made an electric version of the Mustang and gave it a properly-sized motor, and if they marketed it as the fastest-accelerating production Mustang in history, they likely wouldn't be able to make them fast enough, _even_with_ a Leaf-style maximum range and a premium sticker price. Cheers, b& _______________________________________________ UNSUBSCRIBE: http://www.evdl.org/help/index.html#usub http://lists.evdl.org/listinfo.cgi/ev-evdl.org For EV drag racing discussion, please use NEDRA (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NEDRA)
