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."
Electric car with problems? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Electric car with problems? (Score:3, Insightful)
The previous attempt at practical EVs was GM's EV1. 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. So maybe there's more to it than a craze or fad...
Re:Electric car with problems? (Score:5, Insightful)
Am I the only one who doesn't understand the craze for electric vehilces?
I work on my own vehicles, which makes me long for EVs. No more fuel-soaked hands, for one thing. Just moving pollution controls from the car to the power plant is a huge win, too. If you wouldn't rather have an EV than an ICE given similar performance characteristics, you don't understand the problem. With that said, we are going to need battery technologies that are more useful if we're going to make the switch.
Re:$850 a month?? (Score:5, Insightful)
They prefer the term "early adopters" and without them we wouldn't see half the new risky products that appear on the market.
Re:$850 a month?? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Electric car with problems? (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is not solved considering biofuels are neither cheap, nor can you manufacture enough of them even if you covered the entire world in corn/soy. Switchgrass ethanol is too expensive, the manufacturing processes have lousy efficiency. Algae biodiesel theoretically could do it, provided anyone could actually do it in a large scale on the cheap. You can use biofuels for military and aerospace requirements, but it is too expensive for people's cars.
Even palm oil biodiesel and sugar cane ethanol are not good enough.
There is enough spare electric capacity in off-peak times to power several dozen million vehicles in the US alone.
Diesels (Score:5, Insightful)
Electric car with problems? Try Hydrogen (Score:4, Insightful)
One important problem of the electric car is the time you have to spend charging it.
However, this doesn't happen with an hydrogen car like the Honda FCX Clarity car.
And it is also cheaper than the electric Mini (600$ a month)
More info at:
http://automobiles.honda.com/fcx-clarity/ [honda.com]
Re:The dealer? (Score:3, Insightful)
Whether I "try" my Accord or Lumina's acceleration or not, both will still get me from one end of my state to the other on one tank. No one is going to appreciate babying their electric to make it 50 miles to work and back like they have to baby their Accord after crossing Nebraska and entering Wyoming at 2 a.m. ...
Make it usable and make it cost effective without artificially boosting the price of gas to make the ripoff that is electric cars appear viable. And quit trying to dupe the masses.
But I don't drive fifty miles to work and back. Frankly, an electric car that got only twenty miles per charge would be fine with me-- we're a two car family, and if I want to drive a thousand miles cross country, that's fine, we've got a nice roomy car that can do that, we don't need two. I'd love a little electric runabout that I can use to commute with, drive to the grocery store and around town.
What's a "rip-off" to one person can be a perfectly fine car to one million other people. Not every car has to fill every niche.
Re:Why? (Score:3, Insightful)
Think again. They drove the Prius as fast as they could on that track ending up with 17 mpg. No one in their right mind would drive that way in the real world. Sure BMW can make a car that can beat the Prius at 100+ mph but that isn't what the Prius was designed for. It was designed to drive at speeds commonly used by commuters. Under those conditions it does very well averaging somewhere in the 40's.
Re:Diesels (Score:4, Insightful)
I believe the major reason why you'll find more diesel engine powered cars in Europe has to do with the stronger emissions regulations in the United States. Ironic isn't it?
Re:Electric car with problems? (Score:5, Insightful)
Corn biofuel is extremely inefficient, and, depending on where you get your numbers energy negative. But there are other crops with far higher potential efficiencies. Biofuel is definitely part of the solution, but not if we keep letting fucking politicians and their corn subsidies determine science.
Re:Electric car with problems? Try Hydrogen (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:$850 a month?? (Score:3, Insightful)
But there's a difference. Walking (or biking, public transit, etc) due to finances is not done for the sake of being "green." It's done because you can't afford anything else (or don't want to afford something else, i.e., you're saving it).
The "green fashion," or as I call it, the green fad, seems to be a thing going on with rich people who feel that they are better than others because they are saving the planet. Ok, so maybe not the self-righteous bit, but they certainly aren't doing it because they have to do it. 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. If you take mass transit, walk, or bike instead of driving your existing car AND tell me you do it "for the environment," then I'll believe you.
In other words, I have a hard time believing people when the only difference between them NOT "going green" and them "going green" is the fact that they have enough money to throw away that they don't care about the extra cost incurred to them. If they couldn't afford to live the way they want and have luxury cars (or whatever the item is) that were green and thus went "back" to non-green luxury cars/items...
But I'm kinda anti-fad, so whatever. I drive large cars/trucks AND bike/take mass transit to work. Primarily for cost, though. May as well not pay for gas if I don't have to. If I was able to get an electric car for cheap enough that it'd actually be worth it, I'd probably consider it as a commute vehicle... but there's other issues, too. I'd like to eventually do more outdoors type stuff, sorta quasi-ranch style. Pulling a horse trailer with two or four horses in it isn't exactly a job for a Prius.
Re:Electric car with problems? (Score:4, Insightful)
Same could have been said for microwave ovens, computers. Somehow, demand causes all kinds of change. When gas hits a high enough cost, building an entirely new *anything* might be cheaper.
Re:Electric car with problems? (Score:1, Insightful)
You say "radical", but there's nothing radical about "living in walkable neighborhoods, bicycling, and using mass transit for daily trips". For instance, tens of millions of people around Tokyo live exactly this lifestyle (and Tokyo is not unique in this respect).
Yes, you trade off the huge McMansions, but in return you lose the stressful car commute and you end up fitter. Your carbon footprint is far less, and you save loads of money. While it is subjective, I'd argue that the quality of life in being able to walk to dozens of great restaurants, bars and entertainment venues is much higher than having to get in a traffic jam to go anywhere.
What's "radical" is distorting all aspects of life to fit around the almighty motor car.
Re:Electric car with problems? (Score:5, Insightful)
Somewhere along the line, someone didn't quite think this electric vehicle revolution through...
Pollution, smog, limited fossil fuels, accidents, traffic jams, gas supply problems, getting oil from 3rd world countries.
Somewhere along the line, someone didn't think this combustion engine automobile revolution through... yet it happened anyway just as the electric vehicle revolution might.
Here's hoping that whatever will eventually replace electric vehicles (if they ever become dominant) will be absolutely problem free.
Drivers are paying $850/month (Score:3, Insightful)
Shouldn't a beta program be free?
Re:$850 a month?? (Score:3, Insightful)
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...
So what? Is it not better that the people who can afford to subsidize the development of more efficient vehicles choose to do so instead of spending it on old tech like the infamous hummer or that $100K mercedes G-class suv that 99% of the buyers will never take off-road? And if if makes them feel better about themselves, isn't it deserved since they really are helping the rest of us out by paying for the development of tech that will eventually be useful to a much larger group of people?
Re:Electric car with problems? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Electric car with problems? Try Hydrogen (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Diesels (Score:4, Insightful)
That's the beauty of a hybrid drive - it doesn't matter what powers the combustion engine. For all the hybrid system cares, it could be pink unicorns and care bears. I don't understand why there isn't a hybrid diesel on the market.... Probably cost.
Re:Electric car with problems? (Score:2, Insightful)
I don't want to spoil you ignorance but right now we make a lot more CO2 than there are plants to use it. PLUS we are burning up the plants and destroying the jungles faster than they can be replaced. End result? WAY more CO2, fewer plants, fucked planet.
Re:Electric car with problems? (Score:3, Insightful)
More likely they'll just be plugged in when folks are home for the evening, increasing the demand for the "entertainment" hours. Drive it to the work parking lot/garage the next day so it can sit in the sun while businesses are using peak power.
Re:Electric car with problems? (Score:3, Insightful)
I disagree. It's popular because our overnmen has a fairly substantial subsidy on Corn based Ethanol. Without it the industry would collapse as it isn't terribly profitable. If massive several billion a year subsidies don't count as additional "investment" what does?
Re:Electric car with problems? (Score:3, Insightful)
When China has a monopoly on the lithium needed for the batteries, and is reportedly planning to reserve it for internal use?
Even if that were true (which it isn't) we're already working on developing batteries using different materials. Silver-zinc is one possibility. MIT's carbon-nanotube super-capacitor research is also pretty exciting. It's silly to assume that lithium-ion batteries are the best we'll ever be able to produce.
Re:Electric car with problems? (Score:3, Insightful)
At the time I believe a significant reason for the cars not being sold was the environmental regulations concerning the batteries. They contained lead. A pollutant that is tightly regulated in California. I do not believe any of the cars were disposed of in California because of this reason.
There were so many batteries in the EV1 that California called it a rolling toxic waste dump. GM wasn't allowed to sell any of them and I have no idea why this was never brought out in that documentary.
Nah, load balancing helps a lot (Score:4, Insightful)
A lot of electric power plants sit idle most of the time. They exist only for peak power demands. If most of those cars recharge overnight, you might not have to build a single extra plant.
I don't know stats. It may be that some would be needed. It may be that the peak power plants are the most inefficient and dirtiest. But it's not nearly as bad as you imply.
Re:Electric car with problems? (Score:3, Insightful)
Complete bullshit. Owners of EV1's liked them so much many offered to pay full value, even more then the original sticker price. As with any product the initial purchasers lower the cost for the next round, it wouldnt always cost 80,000-100,000 to produce.
Re:Electric car with problems? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Electric car with problems? (Score:1, Insightful)
is this a joke?