http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-11985866

Holy shite how expensive are they?
Was watching the piece about the Nissan Leaf thinking it would make quite a nice 2nd car (ignoring the fact that to charge it on the street I'd have to run a cable out of the house and suspend it above the pavement to prevent InjuryLawyers4U having me on speed dial when everyone trips up on it. And lets ignore the fact that the 100 mile radius is only true if you can find somewhere to recharge it at the other end otherwise it's a 50 mile there-and-back radius.

But how much? £30k! Okay £2 for a full charge seems good but thats 50 miles per pound. I do about 50 miles per gallon in my diesel tintop (average- lots of traffic round here)... So the cost difference is about 5.4-1=£4.4 per 50 miles.

But the car is basically a Micra which would cost £8k which means you're paying £22k extra to go electric which would take 170,545 miles to recoup if you factor in the £4.4/50 miles differential compared to a diesel tintop.

I'm out

You'ld think given the current financial situation the government would stop wasting money! It's a good thing the government doesn't organise New Years party at beer making facilities....

I'm interested in electric cars but only really in the technical aspects. I think the idea of them saving the environment is mostly bollocks. If the government wants to be more environmentally friendly they need to start encouraging people to cover less miles. The commutes some people do are ridiculous.

The batterys will have a life of about 9 years (thats what the prius is anyway) so you would need to average about 52 miles per day so perfectly doable but, that will only make it the same price as the Micra so you would actually need to do close to the whole 100 miles per day to make it cheaper

everybody must know its the way forward. but dont think this is particularly impressive tbh. the governments solution to everything just seems to be tax it or throw money at it.

There was a company at Exeter KC show that would convert a Mk5 Astra to an electric car. On top of the base car I believe they wanted 7k? Base cars start at about 2.5k so not cheap but more realistic than 30k!

And of course if you switch on the heating (cos it's bloody freezing at the moment) your mileage drops significantly. It's a real shame on the Leaf that they didn't utilise the waste heat created by the engine. But instead they went for a resistive heating system... It does seem a missed opportunity IMHO.

The inflated price is probably just that.... inflated. So the manufacturer gets a bigger return, but as its seen as being green (as opposed to actually being green) then they know the government will just chuck money at them. Pure fat cat mentallity.

Also a real missed oportunity here. An electric car needs to start with a blank sheet of paper. What you don't do is start with a crappy mass produced petrol car and adapt it to be electric. Surely the manufacturers should know that?

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Originally posted by balidey
Also a real missed oportunity here. An electric car needs to start with a blank sheet of paper. What you don't do is start with a crappy mass produced petrol car and adapt it to be electric. Surely the manufacturers should know that?

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Originally posted by nick205

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Originally posted by balidey
Also a real missed oportunity here. An electric car needs to start with a blank sheet of paper. What you don't do is start with a crappy mass produced petrol car and adapt it to be electric. Surely the manufacturers should know that?

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I agree entirely that it should be a blank paper approach to design. However a large part of the problem is us! By that I mean the car buying masses who won't rush to adopt alternative fuel vehicles and certainly won't rush to adopt something that doesn't look like our ingrained perception of a car - we're a pretty conservative bunch really.

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Crap innit? Lets go back a few years, nice clean electric trams, then trolley buses. The Coop milk man coming round in his (slow) but quiet clean float.

If they could come up with that technology in them days why are we expected to pay through the nose for what Nissan are trumping 'new' technology?

Anyone seen the film "Who Killed The Electric Car"??

Can you imagine, in 15 to 20 years time we will call these cars........ DONORS

The list of chimicals ( and precious metals ) in the battery that and until the electricity can be produces without focil fuels I belive it is all smoke and mirrors.

regards

Agriv8

Does anybody know the price of a set of replacement batteries for a Prius?

Just googled it and they are about £2k

[Edited on [1292323236R0=103131p: by philw]

Electric cars will be expensive for a few years - it's all to do with the cost of battery capacity, nothing else. The technology is there (any manufacturer can build a Tesla roadster tomorrow). It's how much one KWh of battery costs. And at the moment it's too high.

Why do you think diesel hybrids are low on the ground? Cause a Small hatchback with a hybrid installation has a premium cost (thanks, batteries!), and a small hatchback with a diesel engine has a premium cost (thanks, stupidly complex diesel engines!). Combine the two and you end up pricing your small hatchback WAY out of the market.


The leaf isn't a perfect electric car by any means, but if it gets the ball rolling, it'll have achieved what it set out to do. And their plan for having free recharge stations at Nissan dealers is a brilliant way of dealing with the infrastructure obstacles of charging leccies.

(No bias here as I work for another car manufacturer, and we're not releasing an electric car next year!)

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Originally posted by philw
Does anybody know the price of a set of replacement batteries for a Prius?

Just googled it and they are about £2k

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electric cars that you charge are not the way forward IMO, the car needs its own onboard generator before it will a viable petrol/diesel alternative

I think Jaguar are on the right (more realistic) track with their gas turbines which charge the batteries. That way the ratio of batteries can be reduced, making it lighter, cheaper to produce & replace. The turbines can be made to run on practically anything so the equivalent miles per gallon figure will plummet.

[Edited on 14-12-10 by RazMan]

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Originally posted by RazMan
I think Jaguar are on the right (more realistic) track with their gas turbines which charge the batteries. That way the ratio of batteries can be reduced, making it lighter, cheaper to produce & replace. The turbines can be made to run on practically anything so the equivalent miles per gallon figure will plummet.

[Edited on 14-12-10 by RazMan]

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just heard about it on the radio, 25% discounts, hell at them prices the sort of people that can afford them dont need the sodding discount

the rich will buy them get free road tax, dirt cheap motoring, while people like me will be stuck with huge fuel bills, massive road tax etc etc,

strange ol world

a 50 mile radius (or even 100 mile) between charges is hopeless! how am i supposed to get to my sisters in nottingham at christmas on that? and how long does it take to charge? it'll take days to get there. unless they can be charged in a few minutes (like filling a petrol tank) then it won't work.

I think it's a good idea. It's not the answer to everything but the simple fact is we're to dependant on petroleum at the moment for transport and electricity is the best way to power a car, people have known this since before the internal combustion engine, it's just you need the right storage and infrastructure.

I would guess the vast majority of people (UK population as a whole) do less than 50 miles a day so would really benefit from having an electric car to go to work in, plus the other benefits of free road tax, no congestion charge, instant tourque and power the list goes on.

Electric cars should need alot less servicing as there are few moving parts, and fewer oils and lubricants. Your drive train is literally a battery, some wires and some motors, and at the moment the batteries seem to be the only thing complex and expensive about them. When the batteries come down in price and complexity is when these things will really take off.

It does seem to me though that one thing people hold about electric cars is they never seem to be 'drivers cars' but it seems the reason for this is there is simply no market because the people who would by a car like that believe it's not possible. I also think if Mini put the Mini-E in to production it would sell.

I think the range extended cars will do better as people will have more confidence in them not running out of power.

If you want the biggest arguement against getting an electric car though, go and get an insurance quote for something with a huge number of expensive batteries in it...

It's true that most people do drive only a few miles a day but what about when you don't want to? Are we really supposed to have a "spare" car for longer journeys?

electric battery powered cars are a instant fail with current battery tech available
also batteries manufacturing is not very friendly to the earth.

electric motor tech is at a good level just need a better way of producing the power, hence the fuel cell idea which will imo
be what we will end up with eventually

imagine you are sat at home and the wife daughter,son rings and says i have broken down or had a crash or some other panic situation somebody close has been taken ill etc where you need to jump in your car and respond!,Hang on an hour or two until my car charges up! O and when i get to the dark country lane in the snow were the car has broken down and i have had my lights and heater on will there be a charging tree to plug it in!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Total waste of time,even in cities were these things may work every idiot/gipo and the like will be unplugging it for a laugh or trying to tap into it so they can wire there caravan up!!

I have had the misfortune of driving an electric Smart car today!

The company I work for has installed 5 charging points in store carparks in London and 1 in our head office in Leeds.

It takes 8hrs for a full charge and that gives you 60 miles travelling at a max of 65mph.

I was sh1t1ng it on the M62 today, constantly worried that I might run out of battery and concious of the wagons passing me when the little thing dropped to 45mph on the up-hill drags.

I would say that around town it was fine and actually quite nippy upto 30mph but the length of time it needs to recharge is very restrictive.

Mark

Government subsidies are just a waste of taxpayers' money. For example - I looked at converting a Rover 400 to LPG a few years back and found that the government grants could only be used at government approved installers. Guess what? The price differential between the local installer and the goverment approved installer exactly matched the level of grant!

Similar grant schemes to modernise household heating systems all seem to cost the householder at least as much, if not more than having it done by someone who is not part of the scheme.

Now they are talking of loans to improve the efficiency of your home, paid back over a long period through your utility bills. The increased bills will be passed on to subsequent owners of the house too. Once again the work can only be carried out by members of the approved scheme (read as "the exclusive moneymaking club" - why shouldn't I be able to have my own choice of installer or even do it myself and just have the local council's building control department sign it off as correct before releasing a grant to me? Our entire central heating system cost me less that £1500 to install, including separate zone valves and timerstats for each of seven rooms, an additional "zone" for water heating, timer and stat for backup/boost immersion heater (most items were bought as part of stock clearances, so very good prices), but a boiler can cost moe than that from a government approved scheme!

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Originally posted by sonic
imagine you are sat at home and the wife daughter,son rings and says i have broken down or had a crash or some other panic situation somebody close has been taken ill etc where you need to jump in your car and respond!,Hang on an hour or two until my car charges up! O and when i get to the dark country lane in the snow were the car has broken down and i have had my lights and heater on will there be a charging tree to plug it in!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Total waste of time,even in cities were these things may work every idiot/gipo and the like will be unplugging it for a laugh or trying to tap into it so they can wire there caravan up!!

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i'm team leader building an electric formula student car. we've not dyno'd the motors yet, but it should be pretty ballistic. 0-60 in 3.5ish, certainly no milk float

i used to think electric was daft, but for a commuter vehicle, it makes a lot of sense. once the price comes down to an acceptable level and the infrastructure gets on its feet, i'd happily buy in.

however, without early adopters, there'll never be a reason to develop the infrastructure. give them the incentives i say. the thing gordon murray's company were working on looked good

There is only one car that covers all the ticks

The Renault ZeroEmissions range os otherwise known as Renault ZE

The idea is to have electricity stations that you can drive in, change the battery cell in about 3 min and drive off.

The problem is that you will need to rent the batteries i think. Not sure on costs.

Other forms of transport would still exist anyway. If your car wasn't ready you'd take a cab or phone someone else. as someone else said this is the begining of this technology. I saw something in a magazine about a system where some roads such as motorways would have systems built into them so you'd actually charge the car as you were driving.

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Originally posted by morcus
..... I saw something in a magazine about a system where some roads such as motorways would have systems built into them so you'd actually charge the car as you were driving.

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