Author Archives: bwinsberg

Lack of Choices, Not demand are keeping people from adopting EV’s faster.

I find it interesting that people say that the Electric Vehicle (EV) will never become the norm. They cite how the GM EV1 failed miserably. Not if you ask it’s owners. Sorry, lessors. GM leased them and when the lease was up recalled every one and then crushed them despite the outcry from the people who had them.

With GM abandoning the EV enter Toyota. Toyota gave us the Prius. A car that turned out to be pretty popular but a hybrid. A part battery driven and part Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) powered. Actually mostly ICE driven. The battery doesn’t have much capacity, while it does get pretty good gas milage it runs on gas about 80% of the time unless you drive really short distances at really slow speeds.

Then Tesla Motors and Elon Musk decided to prove the concept that an all Battery Electric Vehicle (BEV) could be a reality. They built a sporty, fun and really fast car that could go over 200 miles on a charge. The Tesla Roadster. Not everybody could buy one at $100k plus but Tesla sold over 2400 of them.

Musk has said that he wasn’t sure if he would make money selling Tesla’s but the idea was to spur other car makers on to build BEV’s.

It worked. Next to enter the game was Nissan with the Nissan Leaf. The LEAF was a big gamble for Carlos Ghosn. While in my opinion the Leaf is not that pretty and not worth the current price tag if you want to go all electric and are willing to spend about $22k for an S Model after the $7500 Federal Tax break you could do worse For a while you could lease a top of the line Model SL for less than $200 a month. That was a smoking deal. I know two people who who got one and one still has his past the lease end and Nissan is still taking his payments at that price. He is also leasing a Rav4 EV. The other person turned his in and is now leasing a Toyota Rav4 EV as well

Now Tesla not wanting to stop at proof of concept developed the Tesla Model S. The Tesla S is the ectomorph of the auto world. Lean and hot. Can go miles on little energy but highly demanded by Alpha Males and comes at a really high price.

Tesla is no working on a Model X but they should probably call it the DD. It going to have a larger capacity to carry more passengers and cargo. The Sexy SUV.

Anyway I digress.

Another entry into the EV market with another concept is the Chevrolet Volt. Not really a hybrid and not really a full blown BEV. It’s pretty confusing to the mere mortal how it works but the engine pretty much runs of electricity that is provided by a battery or fuel powering a generator.  Sort of like how a GM Electromotive Diesel Locomotive runs. The big advantage of the Volt over the standard Prius type hybrid engine is that you can charge the batteries by plugging in the vehicle and the “generator” won’t run until the battery charge runs down to a certain level of charge. This means you will not burn fuel at all if you drive less than 38 or so miles before recharging your batteries. Then if you can’t charge or don’t have time to charge the engine starts and generates power to keep enough electricity in the batteries to run the engine.

This is not really new technology here. Over the past 100 years or so oil has been plentiful and comparatively cheap. As long as you don’t put a cost on pollution or damage to the land.

So now we have multiple technologies that provide efficient and clean transportation why do we have so few choices.

For years the Prius was the “Green” car of choice. Not sexy and not cool or fun to drive. Not much of a choice. Until recently. Kia, Ford and even Honda have gotten into the hybrid game. And people are buying them. Not in huge numbers but you see more and more every day.

Since the Tesla came out there have been more BEV’s to choose from as well. Not just the Leaf but now we have cars from Kia (Soul EV), VW (E-Golf) and BMW (i3) just to name a few. Actually there are over 10 pure BEV’s out there now and just as many hybrids.

And I’m saving Ford for last. Ford has sort of had a different approach. Ford has the Fusion Hybrid, much like the Prius and they also have Plug In Hybrids like the Prius Plug In. They allow you to drive a few miles on pure battery power before the gas engine kicks in and drives the wheels. Still not enough miles to run most the average drivers day all electric. It’s the really safe route to dip your toes into the electric vehicle market. In my opinion a waste of resources.

Then Ford has the Focus Electric. An all electric vehicle. Actually one of the nicer ones at a reasonable price. The one I bought. So I guess I have a bias, but a very carefully thought out bias.

That’s why I’m picking the Voltec engine in the Chevy Volt and the pure BEV’s like the Tesla,  Leaf, Ford Focus to win. Hybrids and Plug in Hybrids are just the gateway drug.

But here are the current problems. Most of the pure BEV’s are either compliance vehicles sold in only a handful of States and produced in limited numbers. The Leaf is a car with a body only a very few will find attractive. The Tesla is for the top 5% on the economic ladder. That leaves the Volt. GM tried selling the Volt Tech to Cadillac Buyers. And they tried to charge $75k for it.

People who can afford an Escalade are not going to buy an EV especially a Cadillac EV. They are going to buy an Escalade. They could care less about the cost of gas or the environment.

The rest of the Cadillac customer base doesn’t know why the radio has more choices than AM stations. And the new Corvette is so much cooler. So please GM, don’t take your mistake as a given that people don’t want EV’s. The Volt would have sold much more if you had 5 seat belts even if the car doesn’t really fit 5 people. Uber won’t approve a car with less 5 seats. Neither will a Taxicab Company. Have you seen how many cabs and Uber’s are Pri-i? It will also help if you offered a model that doesn’t win CNET’s tech awards. Offer a cheap trim as well as a maxed out model. Look to how Apple markets iPhones.

For those of you that are still naysayers. Look in your pocket or on the console in front of you. 30 years ago that cellphone was so big 5 pounds of it was in your trunk and only the handset was in the passenger compartment.  It cost $1500 and about $100 a month for 30 minutes of airtime. I know because I had one in my super cool 1986 MR2. I remember telling a girlfriend that she could wait till later that evening to bitch at me cause what she had to say was’t important enough to pay a dollar a minute for.

Then just a few years later I had one of those big Motorola Bricks that you could carry around with you and look really cool. You know the one. That phone that probably gave a whole generation brain cancer. Later followed by the Flip and then the Razor only to see an iPhone or Droid in most everybody’s pocket. Even people who by Cadillacs.

What we are not seeing is a Sat Phone in everybody’s pocket. That is where Toyota and Honda are going to end up with a Hydrogen vehicle. The infrastructure that needs to be built is about as expensive as sending things into space.

Investors and car manufacture, don’t get caught with your pants down like the local phone companies. Yes, there will be a few people who still want an ICE car just like a few people still hang on to their landline. But they will be very few. It will be a lot cheaper for gas stations to add Superchargers than Hydrogen tanks. If nothing else people will still stop for a Big Gulp and 2 hot dogs for a dollar.

Maybe the Post Office should install Supercharges. Elon? A new partnership maybe. I hear email has hurt their business.

The electric utilities are already trying to make solar less attractive. Join the party. Don’t fight it. But that’s another 1500 words.

 

 

Volt headed for the dustbin of automotive history?

“The Chevrolet Volt, meanwhile, seems headed to the dustbin of automotive history, like GM’s original EV-1 and the entire Saturn division.” At least that’s what Alex Taylor, III of Fortune Magazine says. To read the entire article Click Here.

Actually I think he has that part all wrong. While the volt is heavy and slow and pretty much everything else he says about the car, it’s not going away anytime soon as long as GM doesn’t get cold feet.

Yes they stopped making the old Volt and have reduced prices to sell what they have left. That’s what technology companies do. And the Volt is technology as much as it is car.

But where the next Volt will succeed, it will not be in beating out the Tesla, because sorry folks, it’s no Tesla. What it is, a Prius Killer. That’s right, you heard it here first. Why spend $30k for a Prius Plug In that can go a whopping (sarcasm) 11 miles on the battery before you need to plug back in. And then it gets the same gas milage as a regular Prius, about 50 MPG.

The 2015 Volt gets 38 all electric miles while the 2016 is projected to get 50 miles on a single charge. That’s enough so most people will rarely if ever put gas in it. I should know. I currently drive a Ford Focus EV and rarely do I drive more than 50 miles in a day and I hardly ever drive more than the average 80 mile range.

Sorry but Toyota better watch out. And Tesla, they aren’t even in the sub $50k market, at least not yet.

This is a place where thanks to Tesla American Car Manufactures have the potential to really shine.

Toyota is betting that Hydrogen is the next big thing. Wrong. That’s why the Prius doesn’t get better, only bigger (Prius V) and Smaller (Prius C). They gave up on the Rav 4 EV. A car loved by almost everybody that has one. I know 3 people that have them. Sadly that’s actually a lot of people to know with an electric car. Two of them cut their EV teeth with a Nissan Leaf and one still has his.

The Prius is pretty much everything Alex Taylor, III says about the Volt. Heavy, drives like a washing machine. My mother has a Prius. I like riding in the back seat a lot more than I like driving it. Maybe that’s why cabbies or at least their passengers like them. (Edit) And as one person who read my post stated. The Volt is very responsive from 0-30 MPH. Actually most EV’s are. It’s fun to beat most cars from 0 to the posted speed limit of 45 or less. Be careful though.  You would be surprised how many kids in a Camaro or Mustang don’t like that.

By the way, I said the Prius was slow and heavy, Alex Taylor, III said the Volt was slow and heavy.

Tesla will continue to build the “BMW” of electric cars, at least as long as BMW keeps building half ass EV’s like the i8 and i3. Cool but not Tesla cool. Both way to expensive for mere mortals.

The Ford Focus EV is the only real EV Ford makes and it’s just a compliance car. Try to buy one out of a Compliance State and you will come up empty. The rest of the Fords are just Hybrids and Plug Ins and no better than Toyota. They need to redesign the Focus so the batteries don’t take up all the cargo space. Maybe they should ask Tesla for some help. The battery pack, the rear view mirror (needs HomeLink) and no moonroof are my only complaints. And that’s only because when my son farts in the car I have to roll down the windows to get fresh air.

Sorry Alex, The Volt is a great car technologically and is getting better in the next model. Greater range, both gas and electric. 5 seats instead of 4 and some more advanced driving safety options as well.

And, I almost forgot the best part. The price. It’s going to have a sub 30k price tag after the tax credit. That puts it smack dab in Prius territory. If you have ever talked to a Volt owner they rarely ever use the gas engine.

Right now I own one American Car. The Focus EV. While it’s heavy it’s actually fun to drive.  If the Volt handles as well and is as nice inside as my 2015 Mazda 6 I will without a doubt consider putting the Mazda to the curb and I love the car. It is everything Car and Driver says it is. Actually it would be really nice if it could have a Tesla conversion. Elon? The Volt may just do it. Make me want to sell my Mazda.

Then the only car to get rid of is the Honda Pilot my wife drives. The 18MPG wonder. With gas prices headed back up and global warming becoming more of a reality every day Honda better hope Elon doesn’t figure out how to make a sub $50k SUV.

Americans may have finally figured it out. Nissan may be the Japanese’s best and only hope. They have sold the most EV’s of anyone. And they are actually really good as well. They are just to expensive still.

The Volt is here to stay. If not we will be stuck with Pri-i. Is that what you call more than one Prius?

Remember when the German’s bombed Pearl Harbor?

 

I hate CNBC

Ok, it’s not just CNBC but pretty much all so called news outlets They don’t report news as much as sell you something.

I was on Yahoo.com doing some financial research on Tesla. While I’m looking at the research there is a video from CNBC with some talking heads and a so called expert from Garage Monkey  or some crazy name telling people that we will never give up our loud sounding big horsepower muscle cars. Or at least he won’t. We love the sound and the smell. Just look at how many classics are still around.

Well, yeah, there are lots of classics still around. In garages and museums. Unless you count the thousands that are rusted out and decaying in the barns and backyards of America. About the only place people still drive Classics everyday, Cuba. And I doubt that’s because they want to.

I remember the days of my youth riding in my fathers ’67 (maybe ’68) Dodge Charger. I remember what a cool car it was at the time. It was also a real piece of crap. It always had trouble starting and it didn’t have air conditioning . The sad part is I was to young to drive it. Had I drove it I surely would have never look at a classic ever.

In the late 70’s and early 80’s I got to drive classics like the Chevette, Chrysler K car, and Nova. There are more as I drove a lot of real junk back then. They sure didn’t make them any better. I can’t or don’t want to remember all those really bad cars of the day.

But like many folks in their late 40’s and feeling flush with cash after the market boom of the early 2000’s I went out and bought not just one but 2 classic cars. A 1967 Chevy Chevelle SS. Wow, what a cool car. Well not really. It would make a lot of noise and sounded really neat but it really drove like crap. It’s amazing people drove those things more than 10 miles a day even when they were new.

But being a glutton for punishment I bought a more luxurious classic car. A 1964 Chevy Impala. Also the SS version. This was a boat. I should have driven it before I bought but I got it sight unseen off eBay.

What these cars did most of the time was sit in my warehouse. I had to move them every time I got a delivery. After the market crashed in 2008 I decided they were just to much trouble to keep moving. They were so crappy that I never wanted to drive them. They were pretty to look at though. If I want to do that there are plenty of people who have them in garages all around me. My best friend has a 1964 Corvette sitting in his garage. He’s not a big fan of driving it either. He’s afraid that if he leaves it parked to get something to eat that someone might steal it or crash into it. It’s around 64k of wasted potential. While it keeps going up every year if he had taken the 22k he paid for it ten years ago and bought almost any decent stock it would be worth twice what it is now. And instead of parking his Kia Soul in the driveway he could fit it in the garage. That’s right, he’s driving a Kia Soul. At least when he doesn’t need his big Dodge Diesel for moving motorcycles everyday. He buys and sells them.

So as long as we are giving opinions, here are some of mine.

Just like people hated answering machines when they first came out or cellphones (the people who didn’t have one yet). The technology and price of the electric car gets more attractive every few years. It might take 10-20 years to get to the point where that’s what people want or can afford but there is no question that the technology is here and if automakers actually build them and sell them in every market people will buy them. As more people get them, more people will want what everybody else has. Just like the Navy Converted from Coal and Wood to Oil back in the day.

Used cars will hit the market as well. Just like some people wait for last years iPhone before they buy it there will be people buying 5-8 year old electric cars and loving them.

No buying gas. No oil changes. No filters to change. The scheduled maintenance is pretty much rotate the tires every 10,000 miles.

I have about 2000 miles on my Ford Focus Electric and there has only been one day where I was afraid to take it on the trip I had planned. If I had known I was going to be where I was for as long as I was it wouldn’t have been a problem. They had a charger there and in 2 hours I would have been good to go. I was there all night.

While todays ICE (Internal Combustion Engine) cars are really pretty good, O.K. really good they still burn gas. A product that we fight wars for. A product that we have no control over the pricing or production since most of it is imported. We use almost 80-90% more than we produce. And while people still debate if fossil fuels cause global warming there is no debate that they cause pollution. Oil spills cause catastrophic losses to wildlife and livelihoods.

Do we want to go back to the days where air pollution was so thick in many cities you couldn’t see more than a couple miles. Do we want Los Angeles or Chicago to look like Mexico City or Shanghai. Should we go back to the days where Lake Erie is dead and the rivers of Ohio burn when you light a match?

The price of gas in Phoenix is over $2.70 a gallon again. Up more than a dollar a gallon in less than 4 months. The cost of my electricity is down. At least between midnight and 5 AM. The electric company wants me to charge my car at night. They need people to use all that excess capacity that’s available at night when people are sleeping and the temps are cooler so the AC doesn’t run as much.

Another thing is there are no refineries in Phoenix using a ton of electricity to turn all that crude oil into gas. Yeah, it takes a lot of electricity to make a gallon of gas. Then it takes a lot of diesel to truck it to the gas station. Then it takes more electricity to pump it into your car.

Almost everybody in the U.S. now days has electricity already coming to their house. It doesn’t take any more modification to get it to your car than it does to hook up an RV.

The only reason I go to a gas station now is to buy a snack and use the washroom.

The Tesla Power Wall

Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla has been talking about uses for the batteries in his Tesla Cars and other electric cars after their useful life for quite a while now.  But it appears he isn’t going to wait for them to be available from used cars to get this idea going.  Just a few days ago he announced the Tesla Power Wall.

While this is not a new idea, using batteries to store electricity you either gather from your own solar panels or even buy from the electric company at night while power is cheap and use during the day when its not.  He’s now making it a commercial reality. One where just like his Tesla cars the production is sold out for months to come.

After I bought my Ford Focus Electric I had wondered if, when you are not using the car to it’s full capacity every day, if you could run your house from it?  After all, The average U.S. house uses 32KWH per day. In AZ most of that is AC. And in the summer that peak demand goes up to about 18 cents per KWH from the 6 cents per KWH I pay at night. My monthly bills go from about $100 a month to $300 a month. Being able to buy at night rates would save me quite a bit. Even when it’s not summer. I could probably lower the bill another $50 a month by doing that.

I had even thought of buying a used Nissan Leaf with a degraded battery to achieve the same thing. The Leaf has a 24KVH battery or double to triple what Tesla is selling. A first year leaf can be had for around 9k.

Nissan has even developed a car to home power convertor that they started selling a while ago. They developed it after the tsunami.

Once again Elon Musk is challenging the status quo in areas where entrenched ideology makes it almost impossible to bring new ideas to market.

I’m almost beginning to think that one day in the not to distant future their might actually be people not only going to but living on mars.

I think it’s a pretty good thing that he chose the U.S. to immigrate to, illegally at first. We might have to get his permission if we want to immigrate to mars.

Nissan Leaf to Home Power Station.

Tesla Power Wall.

My favorite line from the video. We don’t need to win the Darwin Award.

Hydrogen Fuel Cell (FCV) and Plug In Electric (PEV) meet in the Thunderdome

It occurs to me that the best answer is always the easiest answer or the “KISS” principle. Keep It Simple Stupid!

And the simplest answer, Electricity not Hydrogen. I’m sure most of you who follow my posts (all three of you) already new that but why.

Well lets look at all the Mad Max movies. OK, I haven’t seen the latest one yet but I doubt they are fighting over solar panels and wind farms. I doubt they are fighting for the last Tesla when you can drive a bitchin’ transformers type super truck with the latest fossil fuel burning super loud engine. We all find a growl to be better than a whine.

But lets look at the PEV supply chain in it’s perfect world. You have a few solar panels attached to a Tesla Power Wall. We only need the Tesla Power Wall because we plan on driving in the day, that day and every day. If not we could charge one day and drive the next. Or even use the car to run the house for a day or two we don’t plan to drive. And for those days there is no sun or places where there is no sun we could have a wind turbine as a backup. No need to fight over who makes “fuel” no having to run down to your closest Bartertown and fight the simpleton with the dwarf genius telling him how to fight.

And in the current civilized world we just plug in if we don’t have our own solar panels.It takes no more effort to plug in a car than an iPhone. I have my Ford Focus plugged in at night and pay just 5 cents per KWH. Today I drove 30 mile. Pretty much an average day. I used less than 10Kw or about 50 cents worth. In my Mazda 6 that would have been $2.60 at the current gas price. In the time I’ve had the Focus EV  there has only been one day a week where I chose to drive a Gas Burner over it. And I really don’t have to drive the other car. I just choose to do an activity that requires a car with a 200 mile range. I have to find reasons to justify keeping the ICE.

So now lets look at the Toyota FCV. After all, they are getting ready to roll it out real soon, or at least that’s what their website says.

You pick up the car and drive it around a bit, probably a lot since you are going to want to show your friends how cool you are. How cool the car is. And it is cool, looking. Even I will give them that one. But then so was the Betamax when it first came out. You make a youtube video or two and go home and park it in your garage. Now what? Well the coming apocalypse happens. Mad Max in San Francisco. You can’t just plug your car into your Tesla Wall Battery. You have to go find someone who can make you some hydrogen. It sounds like you are going to have to make that trip to Bartertown after all. LOL I hope you’re as buff as Mel Gibson 30 years ago and not in the same shape he is today. But odds are your about as buff as Bill Nye the Science Guy. I mean you did just lease a hydrogen car and not a Ford Raptor.

OK, the world didn’t come to an end but you do have to go out and buy fuel from somebody. In the beginning there will be only a few fuel stations where you can fill up. While Toyota will pay in the beginning what happens to the price in the future. And if you think it’s hard to find EVSE outlets on the road what are the odds the FCV ever makes it out of California without really and I mean really big subsidies from somebody. That is unless the Oil Companies really see these FCV cars catching on big time because they are cheaper than a Yugo.

Why is it that Government and most Private Industry don’t want to get behind the PEV?

Could it be because it’s really hard to tax a distributed energy model. Governments like things they can track and tax. They like putting the production in the hands of the few and regulating any thing they see as a threat to that model out of existence if one or a few of the law makers don’t own the technology. Solar power is like the moonshine of the power industry. The sun is cheap and abundant and shines on just about everybody at least 30% of the time. You can make electricity on the roof of your house and store it in your garage. And I will bet you they didn’t see Elon Musk coming. They thought Tesla and Solar City would never get passed the failure stage. Now he probably has them really worried.

In Arizona my Utility SRP has added a surcharge if you put up solar panels. They could offer to put them on my roof for me and charge accordingly like Solar City but they are stuck in their centralized distribution model where they can manipulate the prices. Where they try and control the supply or tax the “moonshine” coming in to my house. No stills for you. Think soup nazi when you say that.

And that, my friends, is what the car companies want to do as well. They want to build cars where you have to go to someone to buy your fuel. Where there is a supply chain model and you are just a consumer of their technology. Buy from a dealer. Service done by the dealer. Buy fuel from a “supplier”. Consumers are far more compliant than producers.

If you really think that the Mad Max scenario is a possibility you should be buying and electric car and putting up solar panels. You should be pushing for more solar and wind energy and greater government investment in it. Drilling for oil and fracking for gas will just prolong the dependence on the good will of others and the benevolence of corporations and government. You won’t need as much gold or have to buy as many bullets. After all, no self respecting bad guy is going to jack you for that nerdy electric car of yours. As long as you don’t have gas the’ll go on to the next guy to fill their Raptor.

And while we are at it. It’s probably not a bad idea to start building homes with grey water systems and water catchment containers as well. We have the knowledge and the means to build fairly self sufficient homesteads and cities. I digress, that is for another day.

Today is the day to start insisting that companies build enough electric cars that everyone in every city and state who wants them can buy them. That places stop putting restrictions or fees on adding solar power to the grid.

If they wan’t to develop Hydrogen for trucking or shipping then by all means go for it. But lets not kid people and try to convince them its better and cheaper than a battery electric vehicle. It’s not and it won’t be anytime soon. Electricity powers almost everything, except cars. If you don’t think so then just flip off you circuit breakers for a day or two. I’ll bet many of you wouldn’t even know how to get your car out of the garage if that happened. Go somewhere there has been a hurricane or tornado. Try to get gas pumped or use your credit card to buy something. No electricity means no business.

Let’s go all in on electric. This is where Elon Musk is the Steve Jobs of today. Lets not take 20 years to figure this one out.

Here are some links to videos I find that support my case.

http://www.teslamotors.com/powerwall

FullyChargedShow BMW i8

Toyota Mirai

Boy was I wrong says the USA Today

The other day I posted about how Americans wont be fooled again, buying gas guzzling SUV’s because fuel prices are at a relative historic low, as are wages.

But instead of being proven right I read an article just days later that we are not buying hybrids or high gas milage vehicles but once again the sales of SUV’s are on the rise in the  April 22 USA Today “Earth Day or not, hybrids take a hit”.

The article states that many electric or hybrid owners are less likely to trade their current vehicles in for another hybrid but would get an SUV instead.

The article goes on to say that “For better or worse, it looks like many hybrid and EV owners are driven more by financial motives rather than a responsibility to the environment,” says edmunds.com Director of Industry Analysis.

Although the impact on the environment does have a cost though we choose not to quantify it. It’s an unaccounted for externality that makes the Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) Vehicles look cheaper than they actually are.

I question who the sample size or who these vehicle owners are.  Just a look around the streets and highways of Phoenix, Arizona (where I live) you will see lots of hybrids. And many of those are older cars from the first generation Prius as well.

From the looks of things, hybrid owners don’t replace their cars that often. In the last year, as well, I have seen many new model (2014+) hybrids on the road. My mother just bought one, a 2015 Prius V. So in my opinion, any car company that forgoes hybrids and BEV’s or PHEV’s and builds lots of SUV’s is doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past that allowed Japanese car makers to take much of the US market share that they retain to this day.

As long as car makers let fuel prices decide what they build instead of sound long term strategies the shortsighted idea of current fuel prices staying low forever will lead car makers off the cliff of bankruptcy over and over.

Efficient cars should lead fuel prices lower instead of low fuel prices leading to cars that consume more fuel which has historically lead to higher fuel prices.

Innovation leads to success. Henry Ford was an auto industry innovator. Maybe the last one. Why? Because many of the innovations of the auto industry in the last 50 years were forced on them by regulation. Seat Belts, MPG requirements just to name a couple biggies. For the most part the auto industry is like your grand parents. Dragged into the next century kicking and screaming if they don’t die first.

The article also states that GM has temporarily halted production of the Volt. Well, considering they announced that next year they will have the Volt 2.0 that’s going to be significantly better, who’s going to pay full price for last years technology. They might as well keep dropping the price till the last buyer wants it so cheap it makes more sense to donate them to a charity for the tax break.

People who can pay full price for an iPhone don’t go running out once the timeframe for the new iPhone is near. Which is why Steve Jobs kept the next big thing a big secret till it was ready for sale.

And while car dealers give rebates and incentives on last years model all the time cars like the Volt will be much more sensitive to new model announcements. Many of the people buying these cars want the latest and greatest tech. This will also become more common on all cars as things like blind spot monitoring, adaptive cruise control and a host of many other technologies become more prevalent in cars of all trim levels.

The USA Today article also talks about dismal sales of Plug in Toyota hybrids being down 61%. That might have something to do with the fact that it’s hard to find one on a dealers lot if you don’t live in a CARB State.

Toyota only sold their Rav4 EV in California. Yet I personally know 3 people who bought one and brought it back to Arizona. They love that SUV. Even though it’s sort of a bastardized RAV4.

Honda only sold their Fit EV in AZ for a very short time and then only leased them. And then discontinued making then shortly there after.

I’m not sure car dealers like EV’s much, especially BEV’s as they require so little maintenance. A large profit center for dealers.

When I was car shopping with my mother earlier this year their were no plug in Prius’s to be found in Arizona. How can someone buy one when dealers don’t have them to sell?

And when I went shopping for my Ford Focus Electric (FFE), you couldn’t find any of those in Arizona either. At least  The dealers sold them all 20 minutes after they hit the lot. I had to go to California to buy mine. And the economics made sense. And they still make sense as gas prices are actually 15% higher than the day I bought it. The price of gas would have to go to 70 cents a gallon to equal the price of electricity per mile. And since most of the electricity produced at night is from nuclear the amount of carbon per mile is much lower.

The tags in AZ for the equivalent Ford Focus are $500 for the first year. The cost of the tags for my Focus, $60 for 5 years. Access to the HOV lane. I would say you can’t put a price on that but you actually can. There are people who can no longer get a HOV access plate with a new hybrid car who are leasing plates from prior Prius owners for $1000 per year.

If people are buying SUV’s and trading in their hybrids it has nothing to do with the economics. It has more to do with the emotions.

Hybrids for the most part are pretty boring and very utilitarian. The Toyota Prius does make a great Taxicab though. It has a very large back seat with lots of legroom.

The fact that hybrids are so boring is why Tesla is so successful. Their cars, while quite expensive are actually fun to drive. They don’t handle like a box truck. They aren’t the bottom of the line trim levels. But the VW Golf E, The Kia Soul E and Ford Focus E are actually very nice cars as well and at the top trim levels can be had for less than 30k after the tax credit.

Had Ford not dropped the price of the FFE to 32k and the dealer not also dropped another 2k off the price I would have probably bought a Volkswagen Golf Electric. Another car maker who chose to go top of the line trim instead of bottom of the line trim. Just like the FFE. That’s what swayed me away from the Leaf. In order to have the price make sense the only Leaf would have been the S or bottom trim level.

One other thing car makers need to do, not just in their EV vehicles but all vehicles is stop selling expensive Nav packages with old useless tech. Almost everybody today has a smartphone. All they need to do is put the necessary interfaces for people to use their smartphones. At least Tesla chose to make their tech an improvement on current display tech vs using 3 or 4 year old tech in the average new car.

Like 15 or 20 years ago nobody new they wanted let alone needed a smartphone and that they would become as ubiquitous as watches were just 20-70 years ago. In 10-20 years the Electric Vehicle that primarily drives itself, will be the new iPhone. All it takes is some leadership and vision from an industry that has a dismal track record of predicting the future.

Elon Musk will be seen as the next Steve Jobs but just like Apple it took companies like Google, Samsung and LG to join in on the road to the future we now know. Maybe it’s time those companies take their huge stockpiles of cash and start building cars while the current car companies fade into the sunset and stop perpetuating the myth that bring hydrocarbons is good for the planet.

While GM got it’s bailout, like Chrysler before it, this will probably not be the last time we see a big automaker in need of a financial lifeline. It’s time they stopped being pretending to be experts. The last thing they need to do is build the next Hummer. If they can’t lead they need to follow or just get the hell out of the way.

This time if we support innovators with the bailout money instead we can transform our society into the future sooner rather than later.

Don’t let low gas prices cloud your judgement.

I was born in the 60’s. When I was 13, I wrote a report  for my eighth grade class on how to invest in the stock market. I was a budding young republican just like Alex Keaton (Michael J. Fox) on Family Ties.

In my report I chose to invest in a company called Tyco Labs. Why? Because they had this budding new technology that was going to free us from the strangle hold that Middle East Oil and the damage price spikes created by OPEC were doing to our economy. They went bankrupt a few years later.

This promising new technology, solar panels. That’s right solar panels. The solar panel of 5 years ago was barely changed from the one in 1973. In the 1970’s $1 a gallon gas was considered outrageous. Yet, that $1 in 1973 would buy the same amount of goods $6 buys today. So when gas topped $4 a gallon just a couple of years ago it was still cheaper than it was in 1973. And today at less than $2.50, well gas is a bargain.

So why go solar. Well, in the 1970’s it cost about $100 to produce a watt of electricity using a solar panel. Today that cost is less than $1.

So why is gas so cheap? They would have you believe that it’s because they keep finding new and vast supplies of oil. Yet, they have to drill and dig deeper or travel farther into the wilderness to get it. And at what cost? An Exxon/Valdez, BP’s Deepwater Horizon. That sounds more like a horror movie than an oil rig. Well, it was actually a horror story that is still unfolding.

We pump water and toxic waste into our land to fracture the earth so it give up natural gas. Again at what cost to the environment, our food and water. Then we burn it all and release more toxins into the atmosphere. Coal isn’t any cleaner either. Just look at China. Take all the environmental protections off burning coal and you get barely breathable air and lots health issues.

But’s it not cheap. It does bring down the cost of oil. At least the direct cost of oil. Only because of competition, not because there is a vast supply. The price is based on the alternatives. So when alternatives threaten the cash flow, oil companies and oil producers lower their prices.

They stifle technology and innovation. For years, in the case of solar, almost 40 years. So why is solar finally coming of age. Well, not because of U.S. innovation. Because other Countries are not making clean energy a political wedge issue. Other Countries don’t subsidize fossil fuels by allowing the cost of waste and by-products to be hidden in their national budgets. They tax the crap out of fossil fuels. They make the indirect costs part of the price through taxation, not hiding it through subsidies.

So why should we subsidize alternatives? Why should there be tax credits for solar panels and electric vehicles? Well to a few (very few) that’s pretty obvious. Because we already subsidize fossil fuels either directly or indirectly. Through tax credits for depletion or through military campaigns to protect our “interests” in foreign lands.

When you add up all the costs associated with fossil fuels, EV friendly power generation is far cheaper and far more efficient in producing electricity and propelling personal transportation than fossil fuels.

So don’t let the price of gas today cloud your judgement. The future price of fossil fuels is far more costly than it appears to be.

A good conservative takes advantage of every tax break available. They also conserve resources. Natural and economic.

A smart conservative will actually look past the industry sponsored “research” and find the facts.

It’s time for the U.S. to take back the lead and finish what we started almost 40 years ago.

 

Finally, an affordable Electric Car that isn’t ugly.

The Ford Focus Electric.

The 2015 Ford Focus Electric Car has a list price of $31,990 with Leather Seats,  Without leather seats it’s almost $1k less.

If you are in a Compliance State they have many of them and not so many buyers.
They should have more buyers but people fear all electric cars. They shouldn’t.
If you live in a non-compliance State like I do they sell for a premium. That’s why I went out of State to get it. Actually I never left my house to get it. It was all done using email, phones and FedEx.

I bought this car in March.
Sticker Price:                 $30,990.00

Ford Focus

2015 Ford Focus

Negotiated Discount:   $-2,057.40
Price before Rebates:   $28,932.60
Sales Tax and Title:       $ 1,428.23
Out of State Delivery:   $   300.00
Ford Rebate:                   $-3,500.00
Total Out the Door:       $27,160.83
Federal Tax Credit:       $-7,500.00
5 years of tags:               $    60.00
Price after Tax Credits: $19,720.83

Or about $60-80k less than a Tesla S. To get the max tax credit you have to have paid at least that much in Federal Taxes in the year you purchase the car. Check with your accountant to make sure you qualify. It might make more sense to lease if you don’t get most if not all of it.

In Arizona the License Plates are only $30 a year and you have access to the HOV Lane. In California the plates are more but they give an extra $2500 tax credit which more that offsets that. There are other incentives available depending which State you are in.

To find currently available Federal Tax Credits Click Here. For current incentives and tax credits in you State Click Here.

I did get the windows tinted with SunTek CXP for $370 plus a set of wheel locks for $35 off eBay so I guess I have a few more bucks in it but I still consider that a smoking deal.

That’s a lot of car for 20k. Try and find a used one for that price let alone a gas model Focus with the same trim level.

And to date I have never got home with less than 20 miles of charge left on it. Thats running the AC in the Arizona Sun. I’m also not hypermileing.

My utility company also has a EV value charge plan where midnight to 0500 is 6 cents a KWH and I’m averaging 4 miles per KWH so 1.5 cents per mile. The average car in the same class as the Focus gets 30 MPG.

So if my math is correct, 30 miles in this car costs 45 cents. Compared to a gallon of gas today at $2.19 I’m saving the equivalent of $1.74 per gallon.

That’s almost 6 cents per mile. I doubt gas is going much lower. But even if it did, I haven’t seen 45 cent gas since 1971.

If gas goes back to $4 a gallon then I’m saving close to 12 cents per mile.

Should we see $1 gas again then it’s still a savings of $3k over 100k miles. $2 gas,  $6k savings and $4 gas $12k savings at 100k miles.

And don’t buy the BS that an electric car will be worthless in just a few years. After 3 years the car will be worth at least 14k. Even if the battery loses 10% of it’s range. The odds of that are slim. The Ford Battery is liquid cooled unlike the Leaf.

My 2011 Miata which cost $25k out the door sold 3 years later with 31k miles on it for $14k An $11k loss. It also needed 3 oil changes during that 3 years and only got 26 MPG with $3 a gallon gas average.

Any car should easily get 100k miles and if taken care of 300k miles or 15 years before repairs cost more than its worth..

The Focus Electric is much more practical than the Miata with room for 4 and some Cargo space. The back seats also fold down. I have put a bicycle in the back with both wheels on it.

In the 3 years I owned my Miata it only went more than 70-80 miles in a day twice. Those two times we could have rented a car. It went 600 miles in 3 days and it would have made more sense to rent for those trips.

If you are interested in a Nissan Leaf you won’t get as much car for the money. I spent about 2 weeks negotiating on one before I decided it wasn’t a sound financial decision. At least not yet at their current prices. A fully loaded Leaf is almost $6k more than a Ford Focus. A bare bones Leaf S is comparable in price after dealer incentives but with far less luxury.

Thanks to Justin Tezano at Santa Monica Ford for making this deal happen. Mossy Ford in San Diego and Frankie Musilli had the deal first but their F&I guy got greedy and blew the deal.

A version of this post is in my other blog at www.imreallycheap.com

Are you in charge of an airport parking lot? Or any parking lot.

Parking at the airport

Parking at the airport

This is the employee parking lot at the airport where I work.

It might be a little little hard looking at it but can you tell me what’s wrong with this picture?

Well, for starters the space I’m parked in has a sign that says you can only park here for 72 hours. The space opposite says the same thing. The next two spaces adjacent to me and also opposite of them have 10 hour parking limits on them.

So lets start there. As a pilot I can be gone for up to 4 days at a time. Yet the limitations on the space are 3 days, not four. Another thing you might notice is that I’m the only EV parked there. Now I’m being a bit unfair with that statement because when I took this picture the spaces had just opened up. There is also special parking for Hybrid and Electric Vehicles in a  parking garage at the terminal. Probably not for long though as these spaces are very new. At the other garage there are no charging stations. This parking lot is far away and nobody wants to park here. It’s not covered and it’s not protected. It should also have lots of solar panels as this is the desert. But that’s another issue. Then you could charge all the EV’s you wanted to for free.

But lets get back to the other problems with the picture above. My car and most EV’s don’t take days to charge. Generally only hours. From 2-18 depending on the amperage of the charger.

The best way to install Car Charging Stations.

The best way to install Car Charging Stations.

My vehicle only took 3 hours to charge since when I parked there I was half way charged already. So now I’m there just taking up valuable real estate for another 2-3 days while somebody else could be using it. Had they placed the chargers like this picture at Target, when I was done charging someone else could park next to me and take over the plug I was using.

 

The next issue. The odds of all the 10 hour spaces getting used here are pretty slim. There should be far more 72 hour spaces than 10 hour spaces. Most of the folks working at the Burger King are not going to have Electric Vehicles. Hybrids maybe. Most of the people parking here are going to be Flight Crew. That will change in the future as the price of EV’s comes down but right now EV’s are generally second vehicles and the median family income of EV owners is 100k a year.

Another thing you should do as an Airport Parking Manager is make the spaces next to the ev-carsregular electrical outlets in the parking garages EV only spaces. Most of us have the equipment to plug in our cars just like all the people in the airport who plug in their cell phones and laptops. And over the course of the 3-4 days we are on a trip our cars would charge up in plenty of time for when we return. If my car was on empty when I got to the airport it would only take 15-18 hours to charge off a 100v outlet. A Tesla on empty would take maybe 36 hours.

While I do appreciate what you are doing for the EV community by installing these chargers, there is no question you could do more for less.

It doesn’t take a lot of money to make your business or workplace EV Friendly

Maybe you have been told that you need to install expensive charging equipment to charge Plug in Vehicles. You see these charging stations many places now days. They cost about $3000 each plus installation.Blink Chargers in front of a business

Notice that there is only one charge station per space. This is actually a big waste of resources. If you are going to install chargers like this you should place them where they can reach at least two spaces or if it’s not to expensive to run the wiring to place them where they are accessible to up to four spaces at once. Like the picture below.

The best way to install Car Charging Stations.

The best way to install Car Charging Stations.

Some cars may only need 30-minutes to an hour to charge and others may need 2-3 hours. If these were at a mall one driver might be getting coffee while another might be seeing a movie. By putting the charger where more than one vehicle could access it the movie goer might be charged before the movie is over and another driver could unplug and start charging their vehicle.

A portable charger for an electric vehicle.

A portable charger for an electric vehicle.

 

But why install expensive equipment when all many EV’s need is a plug. Many of us have our own portable charging equipment like the picture to the right.

Most if not all Electric Vehicles come with a portable charging cord and adapter. Most if not all work on standard 110v power outlets.  The one you see here has been upgraded to not only use 110v power but 220v as well. So if your business has a standard power outlet or can install a 220v outlet or two near a parking space or two, you are now an EV Friendly workplace or business.

RV Plug Enclosure

RV Plug Enclosure

You can buy an outlet and waterproof enclosure like this at Home Depot for as little as $60 and they can be installed for as little as $100 in many cases.

Save the money on the expensive bling (sorry, Blink) and let your employees or customers charge for free. Let your EV customers know that you have a plug and they will more thank likely spend more time and money at your establishment.

Another thing you can do is if you have 110v outlets scattered around your parking lot, designate the spaces near them as EV Spaces. Just like you see people at the airport plugging in their laptops and cell phones to the nearest outlet, EV cars would be able to do the same thing. And at the speed a 110v outlet charges they will be spending far more than the 25 cents an hour or so in electricity they might be using. Even if you let them charge on a 20-30amp 220volt outlet the most it would cost is about $2.50to fully charge the vehicle.  If you sell high ticket items or even charge $20-30 for an average meal the extra business you would get would be worth the expense of catering to the EV market.

EV driver are also among the top earners. Even hybrid drivers are usually far above median income earners. This is a pretty good customer base for any business.