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)
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I don't imagine I'll be moving trading my Tundra in for an alternate fuel source vehicle any time soon.
Would you say the same thing when gas cost $12/gallon?
We are supposed to be in the worst economic recession in decades, and oil still costs $80/barrel. So where do you think oil price will be in a recovery?
I'd learn to say, "Make my hybrid a plug-in, please."
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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 curre
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As far as all electrical or even hybrid vehicles all my experiences with them tell me a few things, they don't have the same sort of get up and go power to them that a regular vehicle has in most cases and they are terribly expensive to repair.
Hmm, your Tundra can do 0-60 in under 4 seconds, and a quarter mile in under 13? A stock Tesla roadster can http://www.teslamotorsclub.com/video/3068-tesla-roadster-sport-nedra-record-12-643-1-4-mile.html [teslamotorsclub.com]
And a 1972 Datsun converted to pure electric is even faster. 0-60 in 2.9 seconds, quarter mile in 11.5 seconds. http://www.plasmaboyracing.com/whitezombie.php [plasmaboyracing.com]
That's an awful lot of get up and go power.
As for repairs, all indications are battery electric vehicles will be much cheaper to maintain
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Those are Li ion batteries, no? I wonder what it costs to replace them every two years. My laptop costs 150.
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The batteries in the hybrid cars don't seem to need replacing every two years...
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Well, they get heavier (batteries), and weight is the enemy of handling, so I'd think they'd be underpowered and bad handling.
In other words, BMW has figured out how to make an electric "Big 3" car.
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.
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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 ha
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Which is, in fact, the case in America today.
e.g., "Many two car families could replace one of the two with this. It boils down to cost effectiveness. [ecogeek.org]"
$850 a month?? (Score:2, Interesting)
This confirms what I've always suspected: the green fashion is for rich suckers first, then for the rest of us when oil runs out anyway.
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.
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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 hav
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.
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Ahh, another poor fool who thinks Tesla is about the environment. Hint: its a sports car with instant acceleration.
Oh, I have no doubts about that. But it gets tossed to the "green is a fad" crowd now and then as an example of a successful electric vehicle that is good for the environment, etc. IMO, it's trying to take advantage of a fad: give a cool sports car that gives celebrities the image they want... which, right now, is a feel-good "I'm Green!" image while not losing their "I'm rich and drive a cool sports car!" image.
But that may just be me. :)
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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?
Being greener without the electric (Score:5, Interesting)
Theater isn't limited to security. There's a lot of "green theater" out there, searching for rich suckers. One of the rich that sometimes gets suckered is the government. I regard hybrids and the Prius somewhat skeptically. It's fuel economy isn't all that great, actually. Manufacturers are still ignoring a lot of low hanging fruit. They haven't smoothed the undersides of their cars. The rims are not aerodynamic. Car bodies are closer to teardrop shapes than bricks, but there's still plenty of room for improvement. They're getting better with weight, but they're still using too much steel where lightweight composites or aluminum or lighter alloys could go. Until fairly recently, they wouldn't even use lighter oils (for instance, 5w20 instead of 10w30), one of the cheapest, easiest ways to get a little more fuel economy.
Much better than the Prius is the Ford Fiesta Econetic, a turbodiesel that gets 65 MPG, and it still doesn't cover all the easy ways to increase fuel economy. It's not a hybrid. Proof that a lot more can be done, and that manufacturers have yet to get really serious about fuel economy.
So where is the 100 MPG vehicle? I've heard of quite a few prototype vehicles that get over 200 MPG. It can be done, what's the hold up? Not enough competition in the automobile market, I guess.
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So where is the 100 MPG vehicle? I've heard of quite a few prototype vehicles that get over 200 MPG. It can be done, what's the hold up? Not enough competition in the automobile market, I guess.
So completely impractical as to be unsellable.
MOST people aren't willing to buy a super-economy car if they can't haul kids, groceries, climb hills a 45 MPH, etc. In addition, those super-economy cars frequently fail to pass US safety testing. Crumple zones,
The Smart Fourtwo is about as small as you can go to pass mu
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And the most frequent complaint that I hear about cars that implement fuel saving without compromise like the Aptera is that they are "gay as hell". Supplying good cars isn't enough if the demand is not there; and the demand will only come once fuel i
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The price of an item already does a pretty good job at estimating its cost to the environment. With the introduction of a system that properly implements carbon/polution credits this will only become more accurate.
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I guess I'll say it... (Score:5, Funny)
BMW initially had to learn about infrastructure of houses and electrical-regulatory agencies in introducing the electric Mini to the U.S., Steinberg said. A key problem was getting approval for the recharging plug, which was originally designed for the European market, according to the executive.
You Europeans and your superior plugs...you may have won this battle, but we will win the war.
BMW has it right (Score:2)
This should not surprise anyone (Score:2)
With product life cycle getting shorter all the time, products of late (in the past decade or two) are becoming less and less polished with successive generation.
Do the Google! (Score:4, Funny)
Call it a beta!
Of course, BMW's demanding a lot of money, so maybe the Google example isn't the best.
Do the Microsoft! Shell out your hard-earned money to be part of their QC team!
Flameage and massive negative moderation in 3...2...1....
Diesels (Score:5, Insightful)
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?
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I think another factor is that farming and trucking lobbies in Europe push for tax advantages for diesel fuel.
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.
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Not so much stronger as just different. Also gas is usually 2X or more expensive in Europe so a few mpg (or km/L) makes a bigger difference.
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:Diesels (Score:5, Interesting)
Good grief. Stop displaying your ignorance of economics, American diesel history and European laws.
You couldn't buy a diesel because when Detroit had tried to sell Diesels to Americans in the seventies and eighties, they did it by essentially repurposing gasoline engines. These engines were horrible - noisy, stinky, and with particulates large enough to qualify as dirt. Not to mention prone to breakdown. Combine it with expensive fuel, and there was no reason for anyone to own a diesel car in the US.
The emissions laws, by the way, are more stringent in Europe. The current US standards are equivalent to the EU standards of 1996, and way behind the 2009 EU standards.
That's why the latest diesel engines from Europe blow away any US diesel engine. The only problem is that the European advanced diesel engines are used to running on ultra-low sulfur diesel, which is only mandated for after 2010 in the US.
So really, the only legislative reason for the lack of European diesel engines in the US market is because US fuel is allowed to suck.
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: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.
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Maybe the startup time is worse. Hybrids need almost instant starting combustion engines. A steam engine, for example, would not work.
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Diesel engines cost more. North American consumers aren't generally willing to pay a few thousand dollars more for a diesel engine.
Europeans are.
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Hell, even the E92 M3 (v8) gets better mileage than a Prius. [youtube.com]
Stop the presses (Score:2)
Early adopters have to put up with the problems of an immature platform? Say it isn't so!
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Charging a battery, in cold weather or otherwise, is hardly new tech. All of these problems sound like they could have been avoided with some decent QA, save for the bulky batteries, which the buyers should have noticed before purchasing the vehicle.
Opt-in Evaluation Program (Score:5, Informative)
Drivers are paying $850/month (Score:3, Insightful)
Shouldn't a beta program be free?
Re:Electric car with problems? (Score:5, Funny)
Cnosidering the plolution caused by bruning stuff, I don't think bio feuls will slove all your porblems.
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But, I'm happy with my porblems, and I don't want them sloved!
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well siad!
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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.
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.
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There's actually quite a bit of power generation capacity going to waste by virtue of not being able to store that power effectively between times of high and low demand. Actually if we made use of electric cars as temporary stores of power they could help stabilize the grid. Besides, we'll probably need to build more plants anyway considering that we need more capacity and cleaner more environmentally friendly plants in the near future. As for resources, if Copper becomes too scarce, the price rises and
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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: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.
Re:Electric car with problems? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Electric car with problems? (Score:5, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium [wikipedia.org]
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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.
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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. 5
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.
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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:Electric car with problems? (Score:4, Funny)
Openning the window may help with that.
I'm unsure how should I respond to that :-) May I ask, have you driven a car in Canada, in winter? I suspect not, because you need an ice scraper to remove the *thick* ice from the glass (outside) before you can hope that the heat from the heater will melt the rest. Without the heater all the windows will be opaque in, say, 10 seconds after you get in.
But yes, opening a window is a popular way to look outside, and I did that more than once. That assumes that you *can* lower the window - and that is not always true. And in any case, driving with window(s) open in winter, when it is snowing, is not my standard of comfort. Note that in the car comfort often translates into safety.
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The theory behind biofuels is that they could be carbon neutral. While they would put C02 into the atmosphere when you burn them, the next crop would consume the same amount of C02
My beef with biofuels is that they compete with food for farmland.Call me crazy, but as much as I like driving, I prefer to eat.
Re:Electric car with problems? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Electric car with problems? (Score:5, Funny)
$75 for popcorn? You mean the theatres will give us a discount? Awesome!
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You just grow your fuel plants on land that food farms don't use. Algae farms are perfect for this.
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i just want you to know, that if you divide the population of the planet into families of 4, and gave each family a house with a yard (suburbanite america style) that we would all fit into a city the size of Texas.
And we'd all have one hell of a commute!
Anyway, I did some quick math, and I figure with a 30x30 meter lot (that's about 90 feet on a side, if you're non-metric), you would have about 745 million lots in Texas. Given that there are upwards of 6.5 billion of us on this planet, you wouldn't even have enough homes for HALF of the worlds population.
Of course, my math might be wrong, so if you'd show me your calculations that would be great!
Re:Electric car with problems? (Score:5, Interesting)
No surprise there. Corn is horrifyingly inefficient for producing Ethanol as a fuel. Ethanol is highly miscible with water making extraction of the fuel its self rather energy intensive to say nothing of the production of fertilizers etc being petroleum derived. Algae biodiesel and mycodiesel show much more promise. The mycodiesel can run off a cellulose feedstock which is handy because that's mostly what you have as a by-product of extracting the lipids from algae. The lipids are fairly hydrophobic so extraction from a liquid medium isn't that hard. The only real problem is efficiently breaking the cells and pressing the oils out of them. Another option is drying the algae and reforming the material using thermal depolymerization and fischer tropsch reactions to synthesize hydrocarbons among many other useful chemicals. There's even a patent on using a strain of bacteria that can produce ethanol from syngas which is a product of the thermal depolymerization. iofuels aren't dead, the important game changing ones are just ignored in favor of that failure named corn derived ethanol.
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The issue is one of investment.
Making algae farms that you can harvest from efficiently requires a major investment. Buying corn from a farmer who's already harvesting corn doesn't require such an investment.
Corn is terrible for making Ethanol. But currently, the WORLD has a corn infrastructure in place. The farmer is going to sell his corn crop to someone. It doesn't matter to him who's buying it - someone making tortillas or someone making Ethanol.
Corn is popular, not because it
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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: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? (Score:4, Interesting)
O RLY? The problem is solved? Exactly where can I buy these plant based fuels?
As the demand for biofuels causes competition with food production resources (land, water),
the cost of biofuels goes up. And they're not cheap now!
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:Electric car with problems? Try Hydrogen (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Electric car with problems? Try Hydrogen (Score:5, Insightful)
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O RLY? The problem is solved? Exactly where can I buy these plant based fuels?
Right now, every time you fill up. Gasoline at the pump contains 10% ethanol by volume.
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You must love 'up to 50% off' sales.
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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, 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:5, Interesting)
That was not a "mistake". The purpose of the "EV1 phase", as you call it, was to construct a demonstration designed to "prove" (or, at least, to create the impression) that the ZEV mandate in California could not practically be met, as part of GM's efforts to have that mandate altered. Once the mandate was altered, the overall purpose for which that program that the "EV1 phase" was part of had served its purpose, so naturally both the "EV1 phase" and the entire program were terminated.
Your mistake is thinking that the program was aimed at creating viable, production electric cars. It was a political maneuver that acheived its political aim, and then was terminated.
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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
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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.
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Let's see ... GM lost a bundle building them and leased them below cost. They could have sold them, you know, in exchange for money, to the drivers .... or they could have junked them, at cost. One way would have made some money, the other did cost some money.
No wonder the government likes them enough to bail them out. BFF when it comes to fiscal common sense.
Solectria Sunrise (Score:2)
An order of magnitude better than the GM EV1.
Re:Electric car with problems? (Score:4, Informative)
So, you just watched Who Killed the Electric Car? [wikipedia.org], didn't you? =)
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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: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.
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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.
I live in Canada. I would rather have an ICE over an EV because I understand all too well the problems of electronics and batteries when mixed with cold weather. Nobody heats with electricity, it's too expensive. Even if this came with an electric heating wand I can shove up my a$$ I still wouldn't want it.
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I think that an electric heating wand that goes up your ass would tend to decrease the cars popularity rather sharply, except perhaps in San Francisco.
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.
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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? (Score:5, Interesting)
Outside of such radical solutions as living in walkable neighborhoods, bicycling, and using mass transit for daily trips, there is one advantage that electric has over other fuels.
Electric decouples the power source (be it coal, gas, nuclear, solar, wind, geothermal, etc) from the vehicle.
So if we discover a practical cold fusion machine tomorrow, an electric vehicle infrastructure doesn't have to change. Instead we start replacing power plants.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Leave it to slashdotters to want to refactor our transportation infrastructure in order to make it more scalable :)
Re:Electric car with problems? (Score:4, Interesting)
Hey it's a good idea. Had we been on electric automobiles for the past 80 years the crossover between automobiles, portable computers, robotics, and space exploration would have been significant.
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I don't think living in walkable neighborhoods would do a lot of good. Most people's only long commute is to and from work. To walk to and from work you'd have to move pretty much every time you got a new job, and that's just us office dwellers. People with jobs where they actually need to be different places every day, or periodically change job sites, would still need to drive.
It already works in big cities (Score:3, Interesting)
Perhaps walkable is a stretch, but public transit makes it easier to do without a car for work commutes. Walkable neighborhoods do a great job of providing the rest of your needs. Nobody I know in this city without a car has moved due to changing jobs, they just switch train/bus routes or stops. Cars are rare enough that not much space is wasted with empty parking spaces, so within 15 minutes walk there are hundreds of restaurants, several major grocery stores, among other things. Rent is a bit more exp
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.
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early adopters of prototypes experienced problems?
I personally will wait until at lease the first service pack.
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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.
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Speaking of which TFA says Villaraigosa has figured out a way to give rich folks better parking spots too, no need to tip the valet.
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.
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And their point was absolutely true. If people stopped driving like their lives depended on getting to the next red light 3s sooner, overall, it would make a much bigger difference than going from a normal car to a Prius.