Lawrence Rhodes via EV<[email protected]> wrote:
This is a report about the program. The average daily use was 10 miles perfect
for Lead EV's charged every day.
Mark Abramowitz via EV wrote:
This seems to confirm the thing that I've heard for years - it's not economical
because they go so few miles.
Actually, it appears that the vehicles *were* more reliable, and
considerably less expensive to operate than their ICE counterparts. That
despite all the problems with a limited production experimental vehicle.
Also, despite the enormous price quoted for the lead-acid battery (up to
$14,000). I wonder what Ford did to come up with that expensive a battery?
You can also see the "back pedaling" by Ford to get out of their EV
commitments once the CA ZEV program was rolled back.
From what I heard in some cases employees would simply drive the
vehicle till it wouldn't go another inch and ask for a tow...
That appeared in earlier trials. The employees didn't like the vehicles,
and so went out of their way to make them fail... with everything from
passive resistance ("forgetting" to plug it in) to outright abuse and
sabotage.
But this trial seems to have gone pretty well, without evidence of that
sort of abuse. There are some oddities in the data, though. Like some
stations that had essentially no problems, and others with massive
numbers of problems despite very similar numbers of miles being driven.
It's the most recent trial result I've seen, so maybe these vehicles
were a lot better developed and matched to the employees likes and
dislikes. They were built by Ford and Grumman, who have a lot of
experience in getting the various fit and finish details right, so they
wouldn't have seemed so "alien" to the postal workers.
Nevertheless, there were lots of problems with things that had little to
do with it being an EV.
--
We cannot waste time. We can only waste ourselves.
-- George Matthew Adams
--
Lee Hart, 814 8th Ave N, Sartell MN 56377, [email protected]
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