Electric Mini Cooper Has Rough Start 308
TopSpin writes "BMW's limited roll out of the electric version of its Mini has met with complaints from early adopters including less than advertised range, cold weather charging problems, bulky batteries and connection issues. Richard Steinburg, BMW's manager of electric vehicle operations, assures everyone that the manufacturer is 'learning quite a bit as we go.' Drivers are paying $850/month for the privilege of helping BMW learn how to build EVs, while also helping BMW meet alternative fuel mandates so that other models can continue to be sold in select markets."
Regular coopers (Score:2, Informative)
The dealer? (Score:5, Informative)
Also, when you "try" your car's acceleration, it's obvious that you will get a shorter range. It's true with a gas powered car, and so it is with an EV.
Re:Electric car with problems? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Electric car with problems? (Score:2, Informative)
As a Minnesotan, I'm pretty confident the batteries wouldn't work in our -10F weather. BMW would have to pay me $850 a month to drive one. I'm not even sure it would get me to school on one charge.
FYI - big plants are more carbon efficient than millions of little auto engines. Scale of economies and all that.
Why? (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Electric car with problems? (Score:5, Informative)
Apparently, their owners were mostly happy with the thing, despite its 1990s shortcomings and lack of charging stations, until GM decided to kill the program and take away all the vehicles, in typical GM-style idiotic managerial fashion
They were happy because GM leased the cars to them at a loss. If they were forced to pay retail rates for the vehicles I doubt many people would have kept them. Not to mention the expensive and frequent battery replacements (they used lead-acid batteries and given the EV discharge/recharge cycles, they weren't expected to last very long).
Only the most recent developments in Lithium Ion technology have made it possible to get good performance, life, and range out of the large battery packs you need in a vehicle.
GM's mistake wasn't killing the EV1, it was discontinuing the entire program after the EV1 phase was complete. If they had kept developing better batteries and EV technologies the entire time they would be much further ahead re: the Volt than they are now.
Re:Electric car with problems? (Score:3, Informative)
You just grow your fuel plants on land that food farms don't use. Algae farms are perfect for this.
Opt-in Evaluation Program (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Diesels (Score:5, Informative)
Not strict, just random. The US makes diesels in truck easier than diesels in cars, and the reason is that American makes made diesel trucks, and not diesel cars, to they made the requirements to help the US makers. The US had the worst fuel in the world (high sulfur) so that diesels would make more acid rain than anywhere else in the world, then regulated the sulfur out of the tailpipe after this was pointed out, but it was impossible to do because of all the sulfur going in. So then, the sulfur in the fuel was addressed.
But gasoline? It's been pretty consistent since unleaded was introduced, with just minor tweaks lowering allowed emissions.
Oh, and fuel is taxed and regulated differently around the world. In the US, diesel costs more than gasoline. In Europe, it's the other way around.
Re:Diesels (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.popularmechanics.com/automotive/new_cars/4284188.html [popularmechanics.com]
No doubt that the TD is a more established technology and has many benefits over hybrids, but it does lose out in mpg in a big way when driving in the city.
Re:$850 a month?? (Score:4, Informative)
If you can afford a $70k electric vehicle (or whatever Tesla things are going for nowadays), you qualify as being caught up in the "green fad" in my book... in more than one way, too.
Ahh, another poor fool who thinks Tesla is about the environment. Hint: its a sports car with instant acceleration.
Re:Electric car with problems? (Score:4, Informative)
So, you just watched Who Killed the Electric Car? [wikipedia.org], didn't you? =)
Re:Why? (Score:5, Informative)
I watched the video and the BMW was driven BEHIND the Prius at "speeds as fast as possible".
I think that favors the BMW significantly considering the how close the BMW was driven behind the Prius, the Prius was doing most of the work pushing the air out of the way for it.
What a horrible test on so many levels, its completely useless to base anything on it.
Re:Diesels (Score:3, Informative)
Diesel engines cost more. North American consumers aren't generally willing to pay a few thousand dollars more for a diesel engine.
Europeans are.
Re:Electric car with problems? (Score:3, Informative)
They were happy because GM leased the cars to them at a loss. If they were forced to pay retail rates for the vehicles I doubt many people would have kept them.
At least some of them would have, and many wanted to buy the car from GM after their lease expired. Instead, GM destroyed them. [wikipedia.org]
If they had offered the customers the option to buy it for retail price, and most declined, that would have been pretty strong support for your argument. As such one either has to suspect either they did self-sabotage, or that they were so stupid they crunched the numbers wrong, and even the EV1 would have been profitable.
But now that the US government owns a significant chunk of GM I'm SURE they won't make any more dumb decisions like that...
Re:Electric car with problems? (Score:1, Informative)
While I won't say that you don't have a point, the VW thing had a 'dino-fueled' heater in the model years prior to 1974. Being air cooled and rear engined, a conventional heater core wasn't an option. Just sayin'.
Re:Diesels (Score:4, Informative)
No, the major reason is that taxes on diesel are significantly lower than on regular gasoline. In the US, diesel costs more than regular gas - sometimes more than premium. In Europe, diesel is the cheapest fuel available - by a significant margin.
Re:Regular coopers (Score:2, Informative)
You think they'd be underpowered and handling badly.
If you get the chance: drive one of those Mini-E's (I have). Underpowered? Not at all, the acceleration is excellent, and the electric version has more power than its combustion-based brother (204 hp vs. 175 hp for the Mini Cooper S).
The handling is not bad either: the batteries are where the rear seats used to be (yes, that's another consideration), just in front of the rear wheels. This results in a good weight distribution, giving the car mid-engine-like handling.
Front wheel drive is a bit of a downer, but its short wheelbase would make rear wheel drive quite a handful to keep on the road with that constant, maximum torque.
Re:Electric car with problems? (Score:5, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium [wikipedia.org]
Re:Electric car with problems? (Score:4, Informative)
Actually, in BC electric baseboard heaters are fairly common. The advantages are that you can independently control each room and don't need to have a duct system. Thus you can heat only the bedroom at night, and turn the rest of the house down. Most newer houses are going with forced air heat pumps though as they're much more efficient when the temperature difference between inside and outside is relatively small (most of the year on the coast). The heat pumps are electric powered but move substantially more heat than they consume. Some of the more expensive houses are going with heat recovery ventilation too.
Re:Electric car with problems? (Score:3, Informative)
Why do you need the cabin to be above freezing?
Defrosting of the windshield (and preventing the water vapor from your breath to freeze on it again) is an important duty of the climate control system.
Re:Diesels (Score:2, Informative)
The emissions laws in the US are so stringent that, just a couple years ago, YOU COULDN'T BUY A NEW DIESEL CAR, ANYWHERE, FROM ANYONE, IN THE USA.
You're going to tell me taxes ON A CAR YOU CAN'T BUY is the most significant factor? And you managed to get a couple mods to buy-in on the idiocy as well, congratulations.
Re:Electric car with problems? (Score:2, Informative)
Well let's see..
1) E85 Ethanol can't be used in the vast majority of cars
2) The production capacity is no where near providing enough Ethanol for the country anyway (nor could it ever be)
3) The production of Ethanol is an overall waste of petrol that hasn't even broken even
Corn Ethanol is welfare for farmers. Always has been. Always will be. No amount of "additional investment" will ever make that scheme work.
Re:Electric car with problems? (Score:3, Informative)
No oil changes, no air filters, no greasy parts, no visit to a gas station, less moving parts, it only consumes energy (stored) when its providing power, its quieter and can be very powerful with great torque. Much cheaper to power down the road.
More then one reason to switch already, throw in the kicker for me personally: I would get better parking at work, and they would supply the electricity.
Re:Electric car with problems? Try Hydrogen (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Regular coopers (Score:3, Informative)
Your 60 month monthly payment on the Prius, at a 0% interest loan, is $366. You drive the typical 12,000 miles a year, which is 250 gallons of gas, or 21 gallons a month.. In your old car, that's 545 gallons of gas or 45 a month. . At a current price of $3/gallon...
Prius: 63
Old car: $135 a month.
Total monthly cost of Prius at current gas prices: 429 Total monthly cost of Old Car at current: 135
Now let's look at your theoretical $12/15*/20 /gallon:
Prius at $12/gallon: $618 / 681 / 786
Old car: $540 / 675 / 900 That means the break-even gas pricing of the car you purchased explicitly to save gas e is somewhere between $15-20 a gallon.
Alternatively, let's say you paid cash up front. In order for your new car purchase to pay for itself in gas savings (again, based on 12k a year):
$3/gallon: 309 months
$12/gallon: 76 months
$15/gallon: 61 months
Now, if you actually need a new car anyway, and you absolutely must have a brand new car instead of one that's a couple of years old (and much less expensive), it's definitely worth it. But if there's nothing wrong with your car... well, personally, I'll be sticking with the car I've already paid for (21mpg highway) for a good long time.
* If you got 4000 for your trade in, that would lower the break-even point to around $14/gallon.
Re:Electric car with problems? (Score:3, Informative)
Does that directly correlate to the number of people who have garages or electrical service where they park their car. What if I live in a condo or townhouse with a garage?
No, it is not. [teslamotors.com]
Except the Tesla charger is 70 Amps. Simple math: 240V @ 70Amps = 16,800 Watts. The Tesla battery capacity is 53kWh. 53,000Wh / 16,800W = 3.15 hours in an ideal world. Makes their claim of a 3.5hour full charge using the high power connector reasonable.
The average main service in the US is 240V @ 200A, not "less than 100 amp." My heat pump is on a 60A breaker.
You fail math. 9.6kW for 24 hours is 230.4kWh. You could charge the Tesla over 4 times with that. In the real world 240V @ 70A for 3.5 Hours is 58.8 kWh x 12 cents a kWh national average = 7.05 dollars to charge the battery from full dead. With an average 244 miles a charge that's 34.6 miles per dollar. Unless gas gets back down to a dollar a gallon you won't beat that. Also I pay 3.5c a kWh in my nuclear and hydro powered state so it would be 2.06 dollars a charge for me or 118 miles per dollar.
Also, perhaps the most important thing to remember is that the Tesla was not designed as an economy car but as a high performance sports car. Show me any car that can match the 0-60mph time (which is faster than many Ferraris and Lamborghinis) that costs less to drive per mile than a Honda Civic.