Electric Car
With options like the Tango T600 it's not hard to understand why Martin Ederhard calls most eco friendly vehicles 'punishment cars'. However Ederhard and Marc Tarpenning are looking to change that with the Tesla Roadster. A 100% electric vehicle that goes 250 miles per charge. It sounds like the ideal commuter vehicle, except it goes 0 to 60 in 4 seconds. Think Lotus or Porsche, but faster. (In all fairness, the new 911 Turbo is faster at 3.4 seconds)
Granted, it will probably have a price tag to match a Ferrari, but vehicles like this one will jump start production on the EV2 and others. Watch for the unveiling on Thursday.
Granted, it will probably have a price tag to match a Ferrari, but vehicles like this one will jump start production on the EV2 and others. Watch for the unveiling on Thursday.
posted by mattjustmull | 12:09 PM | permalink
2 Comments:
So you got a guess on how much that bad boy is gonna be?
I did some figuring on an Electric/Gas Hybrid conversion I saw an article about. It was $10,500 to do it.
I made these assumptions:
-You'd increase your fuel economy by 60 mpg (this was a very rough estimate)
-Gas is $3.50 a gallon
-You drive 15,000 miles per year
-Electricity is Free
Based on those 4 things (which obviously aren't true.. especially the Electricity is Free part), it would take you 10.2 years to pay back the difference.
Strangely enough, I don't think it'd be worth it. Maybe my numbers on mpg are way off, but otherwise, the industry needs to work on it. You'd think for 1.25 billion they could have come up with something.
Let's do some pseudo science. It's fun to guess.
An average driver puts 20k miles on their car a year, so we'll say 100,000 total. Your average car will get 23 miles to the gallon in town. That's 4348 gallons, or 13k you've spent on gas.
The EV1, a purpose built electric car, not a conversion costs roughly 35k. A new Honda Civic costs 17k. Even if electricity was truly 'free' the electric car still costs 5k more.
Now, GM wanted the EV1 to fail, so its price is inflated. It was designed and built in 1994, so technology has advanced significantly. The EV1 was the only car of it's kind so it's price was nowhere near the true market value.
I'd say that if a real effort was made by a car company today it would be worth it.
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