The best we have at the moment is the Tesla (Lotus) Roadster (Electric Elise).
It's full of carbon fibre and Li-ion batteries, i.e. very expensive things. They're not just out of the prototype stage either, so it's not like Tesla are paying a huge premium for brand new technology. So it's inherently expensive. Admittedly, Tesla have jacked the price up a lot because they know it's a rich person's novelty toy and/or political statement, but it's genuinely expensive to make.
Despite the lavish use of lightweight materials, it's still heavy. Despite being designed and built by Lotus, it still doesn't handle brilliantly.
The few test drives show a lower than stated range, unsurprisingly. It's ~230 miles if you drive it carefully and efficiently. 150-175 is more likely with normal daily use.
It takes 4 hours to recharge even with a specially installed commercial supply. 8-12 hours (the claims vary) on a standard UK domestic supply.
You must have a garage with mains electricty (obviously, you can't plug it in outdoors).
The range reduces every time you recharge the car and reduces over time even if you do nothing.
The running costs are far more than stated because you have to take into account battery replacement costs, which are extremely high. Tesla carefully avoid answering the question of price, which is always a bad sign, but you're looking at 5 figures for it. In pounds, not dollars. In the USA, with much cheaper petrol, it's uncertain whether or not it's actually cheaper to run than an Elise.
Nearly all of the problems are caused by the same thing - batteries.
People talk about electric cars as if they were a new thing, therefore rapid progress is inevitable. They aren't, it isn't. An electric car is essentially a car (not new) with an electric motor (not new) and something to store electricity, almost always a battery (not new). Even the package put together into an electric car isn't new - there were electric cars 100 years ago.
Even with nano-titanate-based lithium batteries and their much lower charge time (about 10 minutes), there's still the problem of delivering the power to the car from the mains and the problem of generating and transmitting it. Large-scale use of electric cars will greatly increase electricity use. That 10 minute charge time will have to be at at 250KW or more, a lot more if a bigger range (and therefore a higher-capacity battery pack) is used.
I'm not convinced they're viable now. Maybe with new battery technology, a lot of resources put into increasing the capacity and resilience of the national grid and a lot of resources put into increasing generating capacity, they will become viable.
It's full of carbon fibre and Li-ion batteries, i.e. very expensive things. They're not just out of the prototype stage either, so it's not like Tesla are paying a huge premium for brand new technology. So it's inherently expensive. Admittedly, Tesla have jacked the price up a lot because they know it's a rich person's novelty toy and/or political statement, but it's genuinely expensive to make.
Despite the lavish use of lightweight materials, it's still heavy. Despite being designed and built by Lotus, it still doesn't handle brilliantly.
The few test drives show a lower than stated range, unsurprisingly. It's ~230 miles if you drive it carefully and efficiently. 150-175 is more likely with normal daily use.
It takes 4 hours to recharge even with a specially installed commercial supply. 8-12 hours (the claims vary) on a standard UK domestic supply.
You must have a garage with mains electricty (obviously, you can't plug it in outdoors).
The range reduces every time you recharge the car and reduces over time even if you do nothing.
The running costs are far more than stated because you have to take into account battery replacement costs, which are extremely high. Tesla carefully avoid answering the question of price, which is always a bad sign, but you're looking at 5 figures for it. In pounds, not dollars. In the USA, with much cheaper petrol, it's uncertain whether or not it's actually cheaper to run than an Elise.
Nearly all of the problems are caused by the same thing - batteries.
People talk about electric cars as if they were a new thing, therefore rapid progress is inevitable. They aren't, it isn't. An electric car is essentially a car (not new) with an electric motor (not new) and something to store electricity, almost always a battery (not new). Even the package put together into an electric car isn't new - there were electric cars 100 years ago.
Even with nano-titanate-based lithium batteries and their much lower charge time (about 10 minutes), there's still the problem of delivering the power to the car from the mains and the problem of generating and transmitting it. Large-scale use of electric cars will greatly increase electricity use. That 10 minute charge time will have to be at at 250KW or more, a lot more if a bigger range (and therefore a higher-capacity battery pack) is used.
I'm not convinced they're viable now. Maybe with new battery technology, a lot of resources put into increasing the capacity and resilience of the national grid and a lot of resources put into increasing generating capacity, they will become viable.
)
![[TW]Fox](/data/man-of-honor/2009.png){kind=avatar}
(i would love his job of driving cars though
)
