Quote:
Originally Posted by vwW12
Back in 1991, the Electric Car would have been a viable product, had it not been Killed a vast conspiracy pushed by the evil oil companies.
In 2009, the current U.S. government says that the Electric Car is not commercially viable.
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Do you think the 2009 Hummer H3T will be a viable item? I bet it sells fewer than Volt
if it comes out. In 1992 the Hummer was a hot commodity, but in the summer of 2008 the dealerships couldn't sell Hummers at liquidation prices. The local dealership still has tons of 2007's and 2008's sitting on their lot. So weather
you believe it or not, the
economy does have an effect on what's commercially viable.
As for the rest, the Volt is doomed to fail not because electric cars aren't wanted, but because of people misunderstanding what it is. People hear "40 miles on a charge", and assuming that's the car's
range limit. To be clear,
the Volt has an gas engine built into it. It's a
hybrid, not a pure-electric that just pulls over and dies after X miles. You can take a 500 mile trip in a Volt, but you're burning gas (to the tune of 40-50 mpg) for 460 miles of that.
Look at the pure electrics
without a gas engine, and you'll see a much better cost/distance ratio. The smartEV, produced in limited quantity in the UK, has 120 mile range and costs just over $42K. The EV1 had a cost of $60K and a range of 90 miles per charge in 1991, and was made by GM. Do you really think GM would make another electric car, 2 decades later, that can't even hit near the same ratio?
The Volt is a vast improvement, and a good middle step to ween people off of gas. I think
if GM survives
and markets it correctly (aka gets people over their own stupidity), that people will start to gravitate toward this type of hybrid and then on to pure electrics. Just like in Europe.
The problem is that GM
didn't want to do this in 1991, because it wasn't
as profitable for them shot term. Pure electrics don't follow the maintenance/replacement cycles, meaning less money for them to skim off the top. So they played the game, hyped the "beefy SUV", and raked in the profits. Problem is they didn't plan ahead at all, and got caught with their pants down when gas and the economy exploded unexpectedly. And now smaller foreign companies are going to eat their lunch.
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