Aldo: Hi Mr. Posawatz. I will be buying a Volt and wanted to know if an extension cord could be used to increase the reach for recharging, or if we are going to be limited to the length of the cord that comes with the car. Thanks!
[Chevy Volt Vehicle Line Director] Tony Posawatz: The EVSE or charge cord will be about 25 feet and designed to all relevant codes. We do not recommend extension cords but rather that when you have your home inspection, you reposition your outlet/charging station approproiately [sic].
From a recent Fastlane livechat on the Chevrolet Volt, ironically titled “Making Electric Vehicles Attractive to Consumers.” Which would you prefer?
Actually, that’s not the equivocal message we might have expected from a University of Michigan study on electric vehicle (EV) viability [via Green Car Congress]. Instead, the money quote reads:
The data provide strong evidence that a combination of economic and social incentives may be most effective in successfully introducing these vehicles.
The study’s baseline shows that, given no increase in fuel costs, 42 percent of those surveyed would consider buying an EV. But with every doubling of a hypothetical price premium, the probability of purchase fell by about 16 percent. At a $10k premium, only 14 percent said they would consider purchasing an EV. Which is enough to conclude that the “social incentives” of EV ownership are enough to create a certain level of demand for even uncompetitively-priced vehicles. And that seems to indicate that breathless green marketing is here to stay. In fact, if the image after the jump is anything to go on, this eco-toehold in the minds of some consumers will likely be exploited with ever-more breathtaking shamelessness.
Congress has passed legislation qualifying three-wheeled vehicles for federal subsidies by classifying them as advanced technology vehicles. According to Automotive News [sub], the legislation has passed the House and Senate and should be signed by President Obama by week’s end. The classification is crucial for firms like Aptera to secure the federal Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing Incentive Program funds that have been critical for firms like Tesla, GM and Ford. Aptera has asked for $75m, but efforts to include the three-wheelers like Aptera’s 2e have been criticized by GM, which is waiting on $10b in Department of ATVM funding. So, on the one-hand you have self-interested, tax money-bloated firms like GM who want the money for themselves, and cottage industry EV freaks who call their three-wheeled designs “innovative.” But not only are three wheeled designs far from unique (they tend to show up in every major recession), they also aren’t cars. If the Feds are going to give money to to the makers of three-wheelers, which have to be licensed as motorcycles, they should have to allow electric motorcycle firms like Brammo and Zero to apply as well. After all, a $10k motorcycle isn’t any less ridiculous than a $45k Volt or a $40k Aptera.
The rise of electric cars has pedestrian safety and hearing-impaired rights groups worried about the accident potential of near-silent electric cars. And so the race to aurally differentiate EVs is on. Heinrik Fisker tells the New York Times that his company’s Karma EV will sound like “a cross between a starship and a Formula One car,” thanks to bumper level speakers pumping out a Hollywood-developed “exhaust note.” Others suggest exhaust notes may be downloadable, like automotive ringtones. Until now, the sounds our cars make has been a function of the engine (with some customization possible via enormous exhausts). Being given the option of making our future electric vehicles sound like anything we want creates a world of options. How to decide?
Let us begin with the money shot, courtesy BiofuelsDigest. “If it were up to me, I would put every cent into electric cars.” That would be the US Secretary of Energy, Dr. Steven Ch, at a meeting on alternative fuels, according to “a source present at the meeting.” As a part of an administration whose election campaign received cash and free jet travel from ethanol producer Archer Daniel Midlands—not to mention political support from farming states for whom the term “pork barrel” seems to have been invented—Chu’s remarks were, shall we say, politically inadvisable. And so the DOE’s Director of Public Affairs swung into damage control mode: ”I can’t verify the quote you are using from an undisclosed source at an undisclosed meeting, which is at best wildly out of context,” Dan Leistikow backpedals. “Secretary Chu talks about the potential of biofuels in nearly every public speech, as well as on Facebook and Youtube.” Thanks for the YouTube link Danny. Meanwhile, the only Facebook page I can find is “The fans of Steven Chu,” which celebrates “the erudite hotness of Nobel Laureate/eco-warrior Steven Chu.” Strangely, there’s no mention of the torrid subject of bio-fuels to be found.
A touching story of auto-industry love may be developing between Mitsubishi and PSA, reports All Cars Electric, citing Wards [sub] and French newspaper reports. It seems the French concern was deeply smitten with Mitsubishi’s $45k MiEV electric car and pursued the option for Citroen and Peugeot-branded versions. And apparently, the more PSA learned about the Japanese company, the more they liked. Did hands brush awkwardly over battery capacity charts, causing a thrilling moment of heart-fluttering eye contact? Executives did share the stage at the announcement of the EV-sharing deal, and now sources close to the deal say the new-found relationship could be snowballing towards a full-on R&D cost-sharing alliance.
The Tennesseean (and I raise you a Kentucky) reports that Nissan’s all-EV Leaf looks set to steal a march on GM’s electric – gas hybrid Hail Mary Chevy Volt. “With the rollout of Nissan’s first electric vehicles just over a year away in Tennessee, the race is on to figure out how to set up a network of charging stations swiftly enough to get ready. It won’t be easy. Thousands of chargers will be needed to satisfy Nissan’s ambitious plans to sell thousands of the clean-running cars in the first year as it strives to be the first automaker in the world to successfully mass market an all-electric vehicle.” In other words, the Leaf is going all-in with a close-to-base roll-out strategy. “Phoenix-based ECOtality Inc. has partnered with Nissan to set up the charging systems in consumers’ homes, as well as to create public networks in Nashville, Chattanooga and Knoxville and on the interstate highways between those cities.” And who, pray tell, is paying for all this? Well duh.
According to a post by Diarmuid O’Connell, Tesla’s Vice President of Business Development,
The Model S platform will also be used for derivatives including a minivan, cross-over utility vehicle and a utility van for fleets and other industrial or civic uses
The Model S sedan already claims seating for seven, with a third row of jump seats under its rear hatch. But hey, why not build other models on the same platform? Nobody shopping a Tesla is going to care about overlap, price premiums or branding issues. The EV business model is still squarely in the “set a price and hope there are enough early adapters out there” era, and more models will help differentiate Tesla from competitors like Fisker. Besides, Tesla has made it clear that they don’t want to be a luxury car maker forever. Elon Musk sees high-end products like the Roadster and Model S Sedan as cocoon from which Tesla will emerge as a fully-formed, mainstream EV manufacturer. And if you’re going to worry about the Silicon Kids on the basis of this one blog post, it should be because of the following syntactically-challenged sentence:
In case you couldn’t tell, I’m hardly the biggest fan of the Insurance Institute For Highway Safety. Corporate-backed safety nannies posing as quasi-governmental bodies with an ends-justify-the-means vendetta against speed, light weight and other admirable car qualities just rub me the wrong way somehow. But the enemy of my enemy is my friend (for at least a legislative session or two), and it turns out the IIHS and I can agree on something to hate: Neighborhood Electric Vehicles. Now, you might think that limiting an entire class of cars to 25 MPH is something the IIHS would consider a good first step, but you’d be wrong. A Wall Street Journal piece on the rise of these annoying little vehicles quotes an IIHS spokesman calling NEVs “souped-up golf carts,” and warning of the safety consequences of allowing them on public roads. In fact, the IIHS is threatening to perform another round of its patented “no shit, Sherlock” crash tests, “proving” that NEVs aren’t capable of protecting passengers in a collision with a real car. Despite the pointlessness of this gesture, TTAC wholeheartedly embraces the idea of NEV crash testing, purely for entertainment and schadenfreude-related reasons. If the portion of the video above (showing what appears to be a Chrysler GEM NEV) is anything to go on, this could be epic. Meanwhile, our suggestion to eco-freak “early adopters” is to skip the NEVs and buy a motorcycle-category three wheeler. You’re still going to die in a crash, but at least we won’t get stuck behind you going 25 miles per hour. Check out TTAC’s review of the Miles ZX40 NEV here.
Project Better Place founder Shai Agassi tellsAuto Motor und Sport that his firm’s EV versions of the Renault Fluence will cost €3,000- €5,000 less than the gas-powered Renault versions. The only downside is that you have to live in Israel or Denmark to qualify. Oh yeah, and then there’s the “batteries not included” issue. To actually use the car you need to lease a battery (“The batteries belong to us,” scowls Agassi) which will run you about €250/month for about 1,500 miles (30k km/year). Unlimited mileage costs about €350/month. “Try to make a deal like that with Shell,” dares Agassi. But behind the posturing remains the fact that Better Place’s battery-swap scheme wouldn’t work if the Israeli and Danish governments hadn’t bought in. Agassi admits that his cars would cost more than Renault’s gas-burners if they backing governments didn’t heavily subsidize them. But Agassi figures these incentives will merely bridge the gap to higher volumes. “Electric cars are like other electronic devices: every two or three years the price will go down by half.” Hey, if that’s what it says on the business plan . . . .
I have a lot of non-car-enthusiast friends. When conversation moves to my work at TTAC, one of the most common responses I get is, “I’m not all that into cars, but I love Top Gear.” To which my answer is usually, “Well, you should check out TTAC because you might develop a new-found appreciation for our four-wheeled friends.” But, self-promotion aside, Top Gear may be the best thing to happen to cars since the development of the V8. The British show has simply refined the formula for pro-car propaganda to perfection. Which is why The Jay Leno Show‘s “Green Car Challenge” is so galling. The segment manages to completely rip off Top Gear‘s “Star In A Reasonably-Priced Car” segment, while leaving out all of its most compelling elements. Top Gear‘s race takes place around a real track (developed by Lotus no less), making its results a compelling measure of celebrity racing ability. Plus, its use of truly pedestrian vehicles never smacks of product placement and provides an entertaining counterpoint to the pervasive images of celebrities in the latest, hottest whips. In contrast, Leno’s track is a pathetic excuse for a raceway, his car is a shameless plug for Ford and the whole spectacle is coated in an unnecessary layer of gimmickry resulting in wholly uncompelling results like this latest Rush Limbaugh-piloted run. Leno may be the closest thing America has to a Jeremy Clarkson, but his Green Car Challenge is an unmitigated travesty that does great dishonor to the comparison. Thumbs down.
Lithium-ion battery maker A123 Systems launched its IPO yesterday, and by end of trading its shares had soared over 50 percent making it the second biggest IPO of 2009. Founded on nanoscale electrode technology that emerged from MIT, the Watertown, MA-based firm counts BMW, Chrysler, SAIC and Delphi among its automotive customers (not to mention DeWalt power tools and other non-automotive clients). Despite its impressive customer list, Automotive News [sub] notes that A123’s heady IPO is “reminiscent of the frothy IPO market of a decade ago, given the company has never made a profit.” And a lack of profit isn’t the only issue facing A123. Bloomberg reports that in the midst of its IPO, A123 is trying to resolve a patent suit by the University of Texas and Hydro-Quebec alleging A123 designed its batteries around technology developed by the U of T’s John Goodenough. Which could mean post-launch Challenger, er, challenges.
If there’s a better symbol of OEM brain drain than Mike Donoughe, I’m not aware of it (but let me know in the comments). Eighteen months ago he was Chrysler’s “star engineer” tasked with leading development of much-needed Sebring/Avenger replacements. He left ChryCo in what appeared to be a clash with senior management, and we’re still waiting for new models to take the place of the gruesome twosome. His next stop was Tesla where he became the head of manufacturing and engineering in July 2008. Within months Donoughe had survived a vicious purge (by txt!), and probably began planning his exit. Having announced his plans to leave Tesla for product development firm St. Clair Consortium, Donoughe is leaving another OEM just as they appear to need him most.
It’s now been four months since I sent in my $5,000 deposit on a Tesla S all-electric four-door sedan. I still think it’s a cool car, but so far I’m very disappointed in Tesla’s communications with us S owners. After an initial flurry of messages confirming the order, assigning me a production number, and inviting me to the opening of the New York Tesla store, I’ve heard exactly zilch from the factory.
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