Battery-Only Cars Make No Sense, But Still Find Investors
by Neil Winton (Detroit News) It’s a bit like those old Looney Tunes cartoons, when the Road Runner races off a cliff and it takes a little while for gravity to establish its case for the inevitable swift vertical descent. How else can you explain the fact that investors still take battery cars seriously, after the invention of the plug-in hybrid, not to mention the extended range electric vehicle (EREV)…
Battery-only cars lose out on every front. The batteries are hugely expensive — up to $15,000 a throw for the Nissan Leaf being launched later this year — much bigger and pricier than the batteries required for hybrids and EREVs… Batteries instill range anxiety in the occupants and lack flexibility. Plans to cure range anxiety with stocks of new, charged up batteries and quick replenishing points look economically and technically dubious. Environmental claims for battery power crash and burn at the first hurdle, which shows coal power will be the main provider, while the electric grid is hopelessly inefficient, wasting huge amounts of power between furnace and battery.
…The economics of Better Place’s idea of having huge stocks of spare engines hanging around waiting to be swapped, look poor. The technology of quick recharging is questionable. Some experts say if you overdo quick recharging, you quickly render the battery useless. READ MORE
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