What is Digg?122 Comments
- anenokoji, on 11/25/2008, -1/+18This is so ***** stupid. Hmm, Toyota Prius, 24k$, ~40mpg, Volkswagen Lupo diesel 13k$ 75mpg(real world mpg, not manufacturer claim), not "fancy" green technology, but good old fashioned engineering and diesel. You can get better gas mileage with Biodiesel and be cleaner.
Fuel effeciency is here right now. Given the fact everybody wants it, now is the time to bring cheap diesels cars here.
Even Jeep models, here in the USA average low 20mpg, in Europe, they all have diesel models that get 45+mpg. - JackpotCity, on 11/25/2008, -0/+10It goes back to economies of scale and other factors. The more we learn and embrace the technology that makes these vehicles possible, the more progress we're likely to make in terms of driving down the costs, sourcing new materials to ultimately reach a point where these cars become commonplace, profitable to produce and reasonably priced for buyers.
It may still be a few years away, but at least we are heading in the right direction. - lovemorgul, on 11/25/2008, -0/+10But these costs are forcasts for the future.
- inactive, on 11/25/2008, -0/+8"That's why one of the mysteries about GM's plans to introduce the Volt in 2010 is how much it will cost to buy one. "What's the Volt going to cost? I would be happy to answer that if you can tell me the price of oil in 2010," said Robert A. Kruse, GM's executive director of global vehicle engineering for hybrids, electric vehicles and batteries. "I can tell you to the penny what it will cost GM, but pricing is much more related to market conditions.""
So, we get to choose between potentially ridiculously expensive plug-in vehicles or out-of-control gas prices? Fun times. - cle2105, on 11/25/2008, -4/+12"wah wah wah it's not our fault we suck wah" - GM
- duewydo, on 11/25/2008, -0/+8I thought I had seen some place that toyota was now turning a profit on each Prius sold?
- TheEngineer2008, on 11/25/2008, -3/+11What's inaccurate? Nothing in your link showed that GM could have produced the EV1 for a profit, which is the focus of the story. As for "perfection", the EV1 had a limited range (can't drive cross-country) and has only two seats. It was useful to some, but far from perfection.
- mojo8472, on 11/26/2008, -0/+7Funny, my 1.1l (59hp) peugeot could merge onto the motorway just fine. Maybe it was becuase I know how to drive safely and dont need to drive around a tank to feel safe?
- nullcodes, on 11/25/2008, -1/+8The success or failure of electric cars is entirely dependent on battery technology advancement. Another thing, if battery tech moves forward an order of magnitude, it's game over for the oil companies because global demand will drop by millions of barrels with a few years of releasing such a battery-- even strict oil output quotas won't save OPEC (because it's members will cheat and also we have other non OPEC oil sources).
- secrity, on 11/25/2008, -0/+6That is an insane amount of money to spend on a car, even if the charging electricity was free.
- TVarmy, on 11/25/2008, -0/+6That's cool, but it's not a production vehicle. It's a one year lease being sold as a systems engineering experiment to see what people would want in a production model. The $850 a month is silly, but I bet they're aiming for rich and highly visible people, IE celebrities, to get the cars and rave about them. The fact they're being leased to metropolitan areas confirms my suspicions. They want to get people excited, especially urbanites who travel short distances in stop and go traffic, which electric cars are best at. Consider you also have to fill out a 40 minute application to prove that you'll be useful for their data in live in either California, New York City, or New Jersey. Plus, the back two seats and part of the trunk were removed to make way for the batteries (which would be better integrated in a production model).
Also keep in mind they'll cover insurence and you don't have to pay for gas but instead cheaper electricity. It's not an entirely unreasonable lease, when you take everything into account. Consider it an early adopter fee.
With the data they get, I'm hoping they'll be making something truly useful and mainstream at a good price. Minis are small, light, and generally associated with being reasonably priced cars for the general quality and acceleration. Seems like what an electric car should offer in the best of all possible worlds. - allaboutdatiki, on 11/25/2008, -1/+7That's not what the utilities are saying ... they're saying bring it on ... they can handle the charging at night. We will need an upgraded grid down the road, but the electric transportation revolution can start right now, without a hitch ... as far as charging is concerned.
- allaboutdatiki, on 11/25/2008, -1/+7There is no hydrogen infrastructure, unfortunately ...
Batteries are heavy and expensive today, no doubt about that. The weights and costs will drop with increased development and production.
We have plenty of electricity to charge cars at night, when demand is low and there is a great deal of excess capacity. The electric utilities have been waiting for this for years ... - inactive, on 11/25/2008, -1/+6$850.00 a month? you can't be serious ! thats insane. I would buy a bad ass car if i had that much a month to throw away
- secrity, on 11/25/2008, -2/+7Batteries are still very expensive and contain lithium -- which is not plentiful.
- madmaxmedia, on 11/26/2008, -0/+5Plus where does that hydrogen fuel come from? The hydrogen is a fuel, not a source of energy.
- whatever01, on 11/26/2008, -0/+4Money. You have better profit margins on luxury cars than econoboxes. That's why the Japanese manufacturers started selling larger cars in the US when the US put import restrictions on them. That's why Tesla is starting out with a 100k car.
As on of my profs put it - a Cadillac might cost twice as much to produce as a Chevy, but you can sell it for three times the price.
Once the high end market, the early adopters, etc, have saturated, then you'll see the prices come down. - DarkShroud, on 11/25/2008, -0/+4At that point I might as well throw down money on a Tesla and actually own the vehicle.
- inactive, on 11/26/2008, -0/+4Green Fantasy vs Common sense Economics.
- Demos27, on 11/26/2008, -0/+4The hybrid vehicle is inherently inefficient, the more complex something becomes the less efficient it is. Why don't we just stick with diesels for the moment.
- Ultomato, on 11/26/2008, -2/+6guess what hydrogen cars are? theyre just electric cars with a hydrogen battery. hydrogen is just another battery tech even less efficient than current battery tech. so i wouldnt say electric cars would never work.
and ur forgetting that u can charge electric cars off the grid with solar panels instead of paying for hydrogen at a pump and im pretty sure people would rather charge their cars for free. - NonLeftistDiggr, on 11/25/2008, -0/+4it wasn't the production that made them unprofitable, that's beans compared to the cost of batteries.
- thedrue, on 11/25/2008, -0/+4Who decided that hybrids and plug-in hybrids ARE the car of the future? Is there no other promising technology? Honestly ill take an 80's civic any day over an outrageously expensive little car with more computers than my University's technology department and I'll still get the same gas mileage.
The problem is not burning gas its the regulation and rules that keep cars from shrinking down and becoming far more fuel efficient. Batteries will undoubtedly power cars of the future and we needn't stop developing them but for the moment I think the internal combustion engine has a fairly good life ahead of it if implemented correctly. - pstroll, on 11/25/2008, -3/+6The EV1 was far from perfect you dolt.
GM killed the EV1 as soon as California ended the subsidies. - nullcodes, on 11/26/2008, -1/+4The Volt needs to be below $20K.
- inactive, on 11/25/2008, -3/+6 Worse yet our electric grid is stretched to the max. No one is thinking about what will happen when a million people are charging their car in the evening. We need more power generation if we are going to start producing plug in vehicles.
- allaboutdatiki, on 11/25/2008, -0/+3Indeed, and the fact that they could roll 500 of these little beasts off the production line in a factory that runs 24/7 three shifts a day, says something about BMW's commitment.
It's an experiment. A wickedly fun experiment. Someone has to take the arrows in the forehead and the dings in the door. - Modestexcuse, on 11/25/2008, -0/+3http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/prius-profit-made ...
If they aren't now, they are with new models. - anenokoji, on 11/26/2008, -0/+3OH, I'm not saying diesel is the answer, but small fuel efficient cars are a quick fix to give greater time and flexibility in coming up with a new renewable energy source. Plus we have a infrastructure for diesel. So it's not a big deal for people to start buying them. Far from hydrogen/fuel cells and electric cars.
- TheEngineer2008, on 11/25/2008, -0/+3If it were that easy, every manufacturer would have one already.
My point was that the story is accurate, and that there is much engineering and development to be done to make a vehicle that will appeal to the broader market while turning a profit. That work is ongoing now, which is great. - TheEngineer2008, on 11/25/2008, -0/+3If it were profitable and GM didn't want to make it, someone else would have made a similar car.
- allaboutdatiki, on 11/25/2008, -0/+3Amen. 6 American made Chrysler products that Americans can't buy:
http://digg.com/autos/6_American_Made_35_MPG_Cars_ ... - wilf_brim, on 11/26/2008, -0/+3This article misses one fact now. Even sold at a loss hybrids are more expensive to own and run, unless you drive a ton of miles in town. I would love to buy a Chevrolet Volt, but I bet that it is going to retail for $45,000 or more AND be a piece of total junk. No thanks. I'd rather get a Honda Fit. Or better yet, why can't we get the cheaper, smaller, diesel engines that are in Europe.
- TheEngineer2008, on 11/26/2008, -0/+3EV1 info at http://www.popularmechanics.com/automotive/reader_ ...
Even today, the two-seat GM EV1 remains one of the best-engineered, best-working pure electric vehicles ever released to the public. With clever engineering throughout its aluminum structure, an incredibly aerodynamic body and a whole bunch of lead-acid batteries, the first-generation EV1 was able to go maybe 75 miles if driven with extreme care. The second-generation EV1 with nickel-metal-hydride batteries upped that range to about 150 miles.
The problem with the EV1 was that it was almost impossible to drive in traffic with anything approaching the ideal technique the car needed to stretch its range. So its real world range was often down around 40 miles and driving it was often a white-knuckle thrill ride as the driver tried to stretch out every last electron to make it to a charging station.
GM built the EV1 to satisfy a mandate from the state of California that 2 percent of a manufacturer's fleet sold there be zero-emissions vehicles (that number would rise to 10 percent by 2003). However, the EV1 and electric vehicles built by other manufacturers finally convinced the California Air Resources Board that the zero-emissions mandates weren't achievable by then-current technology. This led to the cancellation of the mandate.
So GM canceled the EV1, and when the leases on the 1117 it had produced ran out,GM took them back and crushed them. To the committed environmentalists who had leased one, that was completely unacceptable. And suddenly the world was full of conspiracy theories about why GM "killed" the electric car (see the movie clip below). If the Hummer H2 makes GM seem callous toward the environment, the way GM handled the EV1 makes the company seem downright hostile. It's been a public relations nightmare.
However, the experience GM gained by producing the EV1 may pay off in the long run as many lessons learned with that car are being ported over to the new 2011 Chevrolet Volt.
Sometimes even the darkest clouds can have shiny silver linings. - DarkShroud, on 11/25/2008, -0/+3The problem are the Diesel taxes and laws blocking the pure Bio-diesel from being sold at normal gas stations.
All of our McDonalds could fuel the country at this point. - Dauntless1, on 11/26/2008, -0/+3That's actually a stumbling block for new tech in electric-only cars, that companies couldn't charge you to drive them (gas, diesel, bio-diesel) since you'll just throw up the solar panel. You can't forget that these people aren't working to solve the energy crisis, they're working to switch to a more sustainable crisis so they can keep looting us at a lower level. It's called greed, and every company in America operates by it's principles.
- Dauntless1, on 11/25/2008, -0/+3And it's about time too. This retarded notion that spending more money than you have to in order to look cool needs to go. Spending 35,000 dollars on a car that cost only 5,000 dollars to produce makes you a tool. Yes, it's your money. Yes, you have the right to spend it as you please, since you earned it. And no, just because it's your money that doesn't make wasting it less stupid. And "wasting money" is not subjective.
- jbmcb, on 11/26/2008, -0/+3Wow, nearly everything you said was wrong. Must be some sort of record.
- alphanabla, on 11/26/2008, -0/+2Ok. The whole idea of having a product line is that overall there is a profit. You cannot gauge the profitability of a product in such a complex market by making a simple analysis of expected returns. Some products may not make sense if you just compare them while being inserted into a whole product lineup by keeping the rest of the business unchanged. The whole profit model for gas cars may not be suitable for hybrid or electric cars. Think of cellular phones: They are a replacement product for land lines, but they have a completely different set of infrastructures to make them happen.
Whereas in a typical phone business model, some (or sometimes) all advantage is gained by geographical coverage, in the case of cell phones such a restriction or advantage is not a factor in a given market.
Just like in the cellular business some main players in the game (in the early stages) were not exactly land-line telephone companies, in today's car scenario this industry changing innovations should be ushered in by outsiders to the industry who have no restrictions in terms of dealership concessions, a corrupt relationship with oil companies and have a completely different understanding of technology and customer service.
Some insight as to how to make a new technology profitable could be gained by looking at the cell phone industry history, remember how bulky, ugly, expensive and useless were early cell phones? They've come a long way haven't they?
Something interesting to think about is why haven't any upstarts in the private transportation industry have emerged? The whole technical limitations that are brought up over and over and over again are definitely not an issue as everyone who thinks that knows something is more than willing to let you know. But that is something that can be overcome. There are enough people with enough money in their pockets that could finance such research and development endeavors. Don't tell me that it wouldn't make more economic sense to pour some money into alternative modes of transportation than space travel in the short term?
Personally though, I would rather spend some (government) bucks in mass transportation. How many cities in the us have more than 2 million inhabitants and lack a mass transit system? Now that's another interesting thing to think about. - JHW539, on 11/26/2008, -0/+2It is a bit silly to compare a sub compact to a midsized car. You can't carry four adults plus a baby seat comfortably in a VW Lupo and, as my family's big car, that is what I count on the Prius to do regularly. Diesel is a great technology, albeit it with a number of draw backs you're ignoring (the significant pollution issues and the higher oil consumption per gallon of diesel fuel produced for example). But a woefully dishonest comparison (guess what - the Lupo sucks because you could just ride a motor scooter and get way better mileage!) is not a very compelling way to sell it.
- Dauntless1, on 11/26/2008, -0/+2The people who could do it are the ones afraid to try. Realizing that you can't rape the world forever without consequences isn't a popular opinion.
- madmaxmedia, on 11/26/2008, -0/+2The reason why it's tied to the cost of oil is that the Volt is likely a money-loser no matter what. But the more expensive oil is, the higher they can price the Volt and recoup more of their expenses. That's because the cost of ownership of the Volt improves as price of gasoline increases (relative to purely gasoline-powered cars).
A $40,000 Volt was still looking pretty good when gas was approaching $5 a gallon. But at $2 a gallon or below, no one is going to pay that much.
If they give a figure now, they will likely get shafted one way or the other later. Actually, things are looking good on the consumer end as gas has dropped to $2 per gallon- that increases price pressure on GM for the Volt. - NonLeftistDiggr, on 11/25/2008, -1/+3That's funny, what does it cost to buy a volt? Probably 10's of billions of dollars or you may never see one in a dealership. Wish I had better figures, but if the CEO of GM doesn't know how much money is needed, what chance do I have of finding an accurate figure.
- wakingrufus, on 11/26/2008, -0/+2most of the US does not have the population density to make this viable.
- Dauntless1, on 11/26/2008, -0/+2It's interesting that people want to say it's their right to be stupid with their money if they want, without realizing that stupid is always a bad thing.
- Dauntless1, on 11/26/2008, -0/+2I don't know for certain, but I've heard two of the reasons we haven't received those cars here are emissions control regulations, and consumer prejudice. For emissions control, Europe supposedly has somewhat different regulations than the U.S. I don't know if theirs are better or worse, just that under European regulations car manufacturers seem to consistently produce higher mileage cars. As for prejudice, most market analysts say the average car consumer wouldn't even consider a little 70 H.P. European car if they were in the market. In America, we're all about buying way more than we need, and unfortunately high power and performance usually detract from mileage.
- kooby, on 11/26/2008, -0/+2GM states that the Volt will cost upwards of $40,000+. Have you seen the features on the Volt? They are laughable, with things like fully touch-based console controls. Two LCDs (one for the GPS/Radio, another for the systems status), LED taillights, high intesity discharge headlamps, leather/suede interior, remote start, keyless entry and push button start...
Why the ***** cant they just make a standard vehicle, instead of some over-the-top techno-toy box? I mean, they could probably lower the price $10-$12,000. - zachary80, on 11/27/2008, -0/+2Developing countries, anyone?
- anenokoji, on 11/26/2008, -0/+2@allabout
Even w/o biodiesel it's still a better choice. - JHW539, on 11/26/2008, -0/+2"All of our McDonalds could fuel the country at this point."
I know you're making a joke, but the waste vegetable oil available is nowhere near enough to make a dent in current diesel consumption. It's only free because it's such a small waste stream it's not worth scaling up it's processing for transportation use. -
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