> Nick wrote:
> Battery cost is not as bad as you think. The 16 batteries in my
> electric VW should last 10,000 miles at the very least, and it costs
> around $800 to replace them all. The car gets 2.5 miles per kwh, and
> where I live (CA central coast), a kwh costs about 15 cents. The
> total ($800/10,000 + $0.15/2.5) is around 14 cents per mile.
You make my point better than I did. By your calculations, replacement
batteries account for more than 50% of your total cost per mile. So If
your assumptions about battery life and/or replacement cost are (say)
20% optimistic, your cost per mile goes up by more than 10%. In any
event, you have an element of uncertainty about your operating cost
that owners of gasoline-engined vehicles do not face.
> Are you kidding?
> Because so much of the total resource consumption associated with a
> car was spent on its initial production, converting an old car to run
> on electric power is the "highest form of recycling"
> (www.seattleeva.org). Other than some ridiculous street-legal golf
> carts, the vast majority of "new" electric vehicles available today
> are converted old cars. (For some examples, go to
> www.austinev.org/evalbum and scroll down to the list of makes).
Comparing a recycled electric vehicle with a new gasoline-engine
vehicle confuses two very different arguments: (1) the relative
resource consumption of electric and gasoline power, and (2) the
relative resource consumption of new and used vehicles. I think most of
us would agree that keeping older vehicles on the road is
resource-conservative. Where we disagree is electric vs. gasoline. So
the relevant comparison is a recycled electric vehicle versus that same
vehicle (i.e., same model and vintage) not converted--simply maintained
and repaired as needed. Looked at this way, the electric vehicle starts
out in a hole (cost of conversion) and thereafter consumes roughly the
same resources per mile as its unconverted twin (by your calculations).
How does the electric vehicle ever climb out of its hole, resource-wise?
> My car's range is at least 45 miles in the hills where I live. My
> commute is 14 miles each way. The vast majority of people in the USA
> have a commute of 30 miles or less. If you need to go farther, take
> the other car.
Other car? So if my wife and I each need to travel more than 22.5 miles
from home on the same day once in a while, we need to own and maintain
four vehicles? Are we factoring the resource consumption of those other
cars into our electric vs. gasoline comparison? My reference to the
Road & Track test of the EV-1 (which you did not quote) was meant to
drive home (excuse the pun) the huge range difference between the two
systems. The market success of hybrids--which cost significantly more
than conventional vehicles but have no range limits--suggests that
range may be more important to most owners than cost per mile.
Craig Foch
San Luis Obispo, CA
1963 Triumph TR4
1988 Daihatsu Charade (991cc 3-cyl 43 mpg)
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