When Better Place launched their Visitor Center in Tel Aviv, the attending journalists’ fingers couldn’t keep up with all the numbers and the promises flogged by the company chiefs: tens of battery switch stations to be built, hundreds of charging stations to be deployed and a thousand cars to be sold to Israeli customers each month.
Just over a year has passed since these statements made air, and in typical Israeli fashion – most of the goals were not met. Despite promising to begin delivery of cars in the beginning of 2011, Better Place has not sold a single car over the four months that passed since New Year’s Eve. And the number of battery switch stations built in Israel was – you guessed it – exactly zero. Until now.
When, in a former life, I wrote speeches for top execs at Volkswagen, I never made my guy admit failure. Bad for his career and my business. The secret phrase for full retreat was: “This is one of the many options we are looking at. We are in a changing world and must change with it.”
I must have a less circumspect colleague at Ford. (Read More…)
Thinking about getting an EV? Better move to a balmier state.
“It turns out batteries are like people. They love room temperature,” Bill Wallace, director of Global Battery Systems at GM said at an energy forum at the University of Chicago. He had come under fire, ammunition courtesy of Consumer Reports which said its tests showed the battery’s range of the Chevy Volt would last only 23 to 28 miles in cold weather. (Read More…)
Take that, China. Japanese ingenuity has devised a way around the rare earth stranglehold the wicked Chinese use to stall worldwide progress of electric vehicles. A team of researchers from Japan’s Toda Kogyo and Tohoku University succeeded in making a magnetic material without rare-earth metals, The Nikkei [sub] says. (Read More…)
For years. American and Chinese companies have talked about bringing Chinese cars to America. So far, a lot of talk, little action. Even perennial announcer BYD has not progressed beyond the test phase. Santa Monica’s CODA wants to be the first one. Honestly now. (Read More…)
Developing a new car with traditional technology costs an arm and a leg. Add future technology, and you are starting to talk real money. You need to spread the R&D costs across a lot of cars. The trouble is, massive sales of EVs are still just a dream. What to do in such a dicey situation? You look for partners. Renault and Daimler hammered out a new agreement. “Renault will supply the electric motors for the Smart and Twingo, we develop and make the batteries for both models,” Daimler’s head of research and development Thomas Weber told his hometown paper Stuttgarter Zeitung in an interview that will appear today in the print edition. (Read More…)
No interview with a leader of the automotive industry is complete without the requisite question about electric plans. Porsche CEO Matthias Müller engineered a trick answer: (Read More…)
Here is some good news for all of those who are afraid that China’s ravenous appetite for cars will drive the cost of gasoline to obscene levels. The Chinese government is seriously attacking the infrastructure conundrum that plagues EVs: By 2020, China wants to have at least 10 million car parking spots for electric vehicles. (Read More…)
Fears of appliance cars finally manifest themselves. More car manufacturers that ever showed their wares at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, the fact that there is a Detroit Motor Show (opening Monday to the press) notwithstanding. Ford notably used CES to take the wraps off its 2012 Focus Electric car. (Read More…)
As documented here, German carmakers mostly talk about EVs, but build very few. Volkswagen’s Christian Klingler even said that customers don’t want EVs, only governments do. He’s sure right about the government part. The German government prods its carmakers to get on with the building of EVs. Germany’s Economy Minister Brüderle (the very same that said no to Opel help) demanded “more tempo” in the EV department. The German government wants to see a million EVs by 2020. The government is worried that the Germans are missing the (electric) train. Just like the automakers, the government is a lot of talk, and little action. (Read More…)
Major players in the industry think that EVs are a stopgap measure at best. Volkswagen declared that nobody wants EVs, except governments. In Japan, Toyota and Honda are talking louder and louder about hydrogen. There must be something better than plugins: A revolutionary technology that powers the car from a renewable energy source in an environmentally responsible fashion.
The first time I came to Houston, TX, was in 1986. The “reverse oil crisis” had brought the price of crude below $10, and Houston was a ghost town. In nearby Port Arthur, unused oil rigs piled up at the shore, and grass grew on downtown Procter Street. Now, Houston, home of the Petroleum Club (and some clubs the greater Baruth family would fancy), could become the model city for electric vehicles. According to plan, nobody will be farther away from a charging station than five miles, and you can charge up as much as your EV can eat for a flat monthly fee. (Read More…)
I’ve always maintained that despite green noises about electric cars, Volkswagen, deep in their Wolfsburg hearts, doesn’t believe in them. Because they don’t make sense. If they are too expensive, people won’t buy them. Volkswagen has ample experience in this arena, probably more than anybody else. Ages ago, VW built a fuel-sipping 3 liter Lupo (3 liter / 100 km, 78 mpg.) The press lapped it up. The greenies creamed in their pants. Focus groups swore they’ll buy it, no matter the cost. They lied. In the showroom, the 3 Liter Lupo was a dud: Advanced materials had made it light, but also expensive. Customer reaction: “Interesting. Now how about that red GTI over there?”
Now finally, someone high up at Volkswagen has the guts to say it: Volkswagen doesn’t build electric cars because the customer wants them. Volkswagen makes EVs because the government demands them. (Read More…)
Automotive News [sub] hasn’t received the memo that EVs need good news, badly. Instead, AN hammers the last nail into the electric vehicle’s coffin. If range anxiety, the lack of 220V outlets at your curbside parking spot, and high prices aren’t enough to keep you away from an electric car, how about “an Orwellian future where faceless international corporations track your every move. Drop by the bar after work, call in sick to go to the beach, visit your mistress’ house. The all-seeing eye of Big Brother knows where you’ve been.”
In the former millennium, if you had a fantasy in overdrive and writing skills, you wrote books. These days, you join a management consulting company, and you author future scenarios. Easier and far more lucrative than coming up with “The Hunt For The Red October.“ Your client will give you the desired finale, along with a lot of money. All you need to write is a halfway logical plot that leads to the desired finale.
Everybody has decided that the future belongs to the electric car. Expensive batteries, high cost, low range, long recharge times, short battery life, these are just distractions. What we need is a halfway logical plot that leads us to the finale where the electric car gets the girl, and the ICE drives over a cliff. In comes Frost & Sullivan. (Read More…)
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