Are Electric Cars Commercially Viable?

This is a poorly framed question.

I don't think that a market analysis is the rate limiting step here. The manufactures know what people want in a car. This is not a mystery and does not need to be relearned.

It is technology that is the limiting factor. That will take time and invention to bring a product that represents more value to the customer than the current lineup of cars.

GA - Technology plus adapting available tech to auto use where it is expected not to fail or even stutter for 10 years or so.

In the plants we accept minor malfunctions as part of doing business and have a maintenance staff for that purpose. With autos that is not acceptable to anyone.

Batteries are one area where we will see great improvements in the next 5 years and even greater in the next 10 years. General acceptance will be better with more range.

When mass production and competition really 'get going' we will see the prices drop rapidly and sharply. The early adopter prices of today are something I am not interested in.

Exactly. It is not so much a question of what to build, as much as how to build.

The hows will get worked out in time.

Actually I believe the OP was wrong in their analysis of the progress of the PC.

Competition took over early on and once IBM hit the market it was only onward and upward!

I remember my first PC well - 1982 - an Apple II+ with a 16k language card - Wow!

Batteries !! Batteries !!

It is here the buck (Buick) stops and the Price takes off.

I too join you in hoping that there will be a substantial achievement in STORAGE in next 5 years or so.

Is the mankind missing the point in not achieving this with all the technological advancements at hand?

Do we have to wait till the flash point when we have destroyed everything that nature has provided?

When LI batteries drop by about half there current price, the electric vehicle market will explode. And you will see all manufacturers scurrying for their piece of the pie - dropping prices. For instance, the Volt's batteries cost about $16,000, and the car is probably priced at a $7k-10k premium for early adopters. So at $26-30K it would be a good deal (IF, - if it is a good car) considering the fuel savings. Right about this time, I expect to see electrocution cases go up in the ER.

Batteries still have a HUGE weight to capacity issue for high mileage uses. Perhaps we may see "Storage stations" that can change out your battery pack for a fully charged one like they are doing now with propane tanks at Walmart.

However, I'm not yet on the bandwagon of worrying about destroying nature. It appears to me it just destroys cities so far (Los Angeles) :o). (Alluding to pollution from automobiles.)

The electrics will only appeal to a select group which appears to be of a viable number. My sevice fleet consists of 7 Chev vans and one baby made in Turkey Ford for trial. There is no electric option or even hybrid for us and if you look out your car window you will see alot of white vans traveling the roads. You also have the crowd that is embarrases not to have the SUV in the driveway and the group that feels the need for 400hp. The logical market seems to be commuters in urban-suburban areas. In the short term government could encourage installation of recharging facilities at palces of empolyment and shopping. It would not hurt to make a difference in the cost of insurance and licensing add to the equation. Seems the real problem is weight of the storage component.

"In the short term government could encourage installation of recharging facilities at places of employment and shopping."

Great! In a down economy, putting more financial burden on companies and retailers will worsen the economy and put more out of work. I guess if people do not have jobs they will not need to commute and that will cut pollution.

"It would not hurt to make a difference in the cost of insurance and licensing add to the equation."

Making non-electric vehicle owners subsidize the insurance of electric vehicle owners will not lower the overall cost of insuring drivers, it just arbitrarily shifts the burden. The more electric vehicles that an insurance company insures will raise his costs and lessen his competitiveness. The free market should decide.

"We remember, however, that the first PCs were expensive and unfriendly, but the manufacturers listened to the marketplace and were soon producing widely accepted products. Will the electric car makers do the same?"

The OP compares micro electronics with power electronics and falsely concludes that it was the marketplace that caused the PC to improve. Micro electronics follows Moore's law. Gordon Moore in 1965 observed the rate in which transistor density on a microchip had been increasing since 1959 and predicted that the trend would continue. With a microchip, the things that commute are electrons. Through improved processes, chip makers can reduce the number of electrons required to define a '1' or a '0'. And when the size of the commuter ('1' or '0') is reduced, the commute can also be reduced. It is an exponential improvement. With automobiles, commuters cannot be reduced in size. Although the distance they travel could be reduced, it involves many factors (housing, schools, spouse job, etc.) which ofter override the commute distance and commute time.

{Yes I know that improvements in software have greatly improved the usability of a PC. But it is the improvements in microelectronics, specifically memory that allowed allowed programs to grow in size and processor speed which allows the programs to execute quickly.}

The energy required to move a commuter from point A to point B is dependent chiefly on friction losses and the mass of the commuter and his vehicle. If we assume that the commuter is not going to diet to improve the efficacy of his commute, then the improvement must come in reducing the vehicle's mass and friction. For the electric vehicle, it is the energy storage device that has the most mass.

Moore's law was simply a statement of potential progress - competition was the driver.

Russ,

I concede. The driver for improvements in PC technology was and continues to be the free market which creates the demand and funds the improvements.

Prior to the invention of micro electronics, large mainframe computers with discrete transistors were used, and prior to that mechanical machines which performed simple math and printing were used. It was the invention of new technology, micro electronics (a.k.a integrated circuit) that facilitated the improvement in computing machines. Micro electronics have been around for less than 5 decades, but improvements are rapid, continuous and exponential.

Despite the fact that batteries have been around for hundreds of years and there has always been a need for better batteries, improvements continue to be slow, intermittent and fractional. Funding to improve battery technology has come from both the private sector and government programs. There have been many millions of dollars spent by government programs to study and improve batteries with little to show for the investment. I once worked for an engineer that supported his family for years while performing research on batteries. Although he didn't believe that he was going to make significant improvements, he was encouraged to continue to submit ideas to be studied. Although it paid quite well and there was no pressure to show results, he finally shut down his battery technology research company as his conscience finally got to him. He was scamming the USG and he was encouraged to continue the scam by the agency funding him as there was more money available for research than there were promising ideas to be funded. After all, the job of the government agency was to fund research. If companies did not take the funding, the government employee that handed out the money wouldn't have a job.

An old energy storage device that has been around for as long as the battery is the capacitor. Inherently capacitors are superior where many charge and discharge cycles are required. The big problem has always been that they have poor energy to mass or energy to volume ratios. Recently there have been significant improvements in the amount of energy they can store and these new devices are called ultra or super capacitors. Traditionally, improvements have been slow an intermittent, but recently energy storage improvements have been quite impressive.

A big concern that I have with switching to electric vehicles is that the stored electrical energy can be quite dangerous. Stored charge can discharge instantaneously with catastrophic results. Stored gasoline requires both oxygen and an ignition source to create combustion and a pressure vessel to create an explosion. Batteries are dangerous in the state that they are used.

I once was a strong advocate for electric vehicles and even considered building one with AC motors and inverters as my senor project back in the 1970's. I had a source for the motors, inverters, and an automobile chassis (1959 Renault Dauphine). I even had on campus access to the machines that I would need to fabricate the parts I needed. The big technological problem that I had was the batteries.

Whenever I think about electric cars, and read reports here on CR4, or other places about them, the battery problem is always something to think about.

While there might be some great battery just over the horizon, it aint apparently here yet to make cars act like cars. Cars aren't just about getting to work yah know, they are escape vehicles.

Many cars today must be refueled every 200 miles, or there abouts.

Recharging is at maximums of 200, and as low as 40 at a time.p] I begin to see the solution in systems, and not necessarily in the tech of the future.

Systems and infrastructure solutions for the Electric Car problem I like are battery stations where refueling is just like a battery change for an electric drill gun.

I am also for what I call The Electric Road. We pay plenty for asphalt roads, and I'm for some standard of road feed for electric motored vehicles.

Chrisg288 designed one back now years ago. It's sort of the sort of thing where the motor and how it gets fed are important pivots.

You got your old distribution systems, and your old distribution systems.

Yah want an electric car to be able to go non, or short refueling stops in the same amount of time, for the same money or less, as ICE cars and trucks can, and will be able to do, for at least another 20 to 50 years.

Yah know it wasn't that long that it took for companies to run a lot of wire and glass cable all over the place, and put up many a cell tower.

Historically your Livery Stable, where you put your horse, and got it shoed turned into a Gas Station. Everything breaks down. Many of us rent even when at the high end since we know Moores law means renting and leasing make a lot of sense when you need the best for the long haul.

There are some advantages to vertical integration. It was destroyed by the courts as far as motion pictures were concerned.

Anyway what you want is a great electric motor, and a system of batteries and electric roads to feed it. Disneyland is a private company that uses a great deal of cutting edge transportation options, and I would be inclined to study what they do, and how they do it, for lessons on what works, and what doesn't as far as electric vehicles are concerned.

Everybody says education isn't so much about knowing everything all the time, but knowing where to look for the answer.

P.S. I do not work for Disney, though I'd like the CEO position, and would sell Transcendia to them to capture an Adult segment of the entertainment and information market greater than what they got now. When they bought Marvel to get boys, selling Transcendia to them crossed my mind. If you know better places to look, let me know. I'll take a look.