Any GTAM'ers own an electric vehicle? | Page 18 | GTAMotorcycle.com

Any GTAM'ers own an electric vehicle?

All I hear now is "Buy a Honda hybrid that will burn TWICE as much gas as your newfandangled electric car!".

Since the facts don't seem to matter any more.

Whats your opinions on the Bolt, Sunny? Equally as negative I presume simply because GM beat Honda to the punch on a 350+ kilometer car?

Yes, I don't doubt that if it had a Honda nameplate on the door instead of a Chevrolet one it would have been the best thing since sliced bread, kinda like the Clarity you keep casually touting.
 
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SunnY S said:
Early adopters and electric car fan boys are great, but It's the market thats speaking and all that really matters....
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To a large extent, concerning current EVs (including the Honda Clarity), the market is speaking that they are too expensive and don't have enough range. Leaf ... Clarity ... Focus ... smart ... Fiat 500e ... Golf electric ... All same.

And there is a significant part of the market that got turned off by GM's lousy products of past decades and refuse to believe that anything has changed. For some reason a new manufacturer (Tesla) seems to have capitalized on the tech trend and captured plenty of customers despite quite a few teething troubles concerning quality control. It's a fickle market. I'm pretty sure GM's quality control is better than Tesla's! http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/20...illar-freshly-delivered-model-s/#more-1546697
 
Brian P said:
To a large extent, concerning current EVs (including the Honda Clarity), the market is speaking that they are too expensive and don't have enough range. Leaf ... Clarity ... Focus ... smart ... Fiat 500e ... Golf electric ... All same.

And there is a significant part of the market that got turned off by GM's lousy products of past decades and refuse to believe that anything has changed. For some reason a new manufacturer (Tesla) seems to have capitalized on the tech trend and captured plenty of customers despite quite a few teething troubles concerning quality control. It's a fickle market. I'm pretty sure GM's quality control is better than Tesla's! http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/20...illar-freshly-delivered-model-s/#more-1546697
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GM had to be saved by the govt bailout as a result of lousy products and quality.

That image will be stuck with them for a long time.


Teslas market cap is now greater than Ford. Clearly they are doing something right.
 
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SunnY S said:
Teslas market cap is now greater than Ford and GM. Clearly they are doing something right.
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This is what happens when people invest with their hearts instead of their brains. Tesla made a really smart play by releasing the great looking expensive EV first and then filling in the ugly affordable segment later. Most companies are starting with hideously ugly "look at me, I'm electric" cars (leaf,i3,clarity etc.) and then they are surprised that very few people want them.

Honda has made some great vehicles in the past, but I can't understand why they keep wasting so much money on fuel cells. The chance of them ever being useful beyond a very special purpose vehicle (eg taxi) is infinitesimally small. At this point battery technology is decent, the cost required to install hydrogen infrastructure completely kills fuel cells for general use.
 
SunnY S said:
Teslas market cap is now greater than Ford and GM. Clearly they are doing something right.
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In every other discussion sales figures seem to matter most to you, and Tesla is a dwarf really in that department.

And BTW, Tesla is still losing money.

Always read the rest of the story, not just the headlines.
 
The Honda fuel cell vehicle can't even be bought outside of California and comes with a laundry list of restrictions, not to mention impracticalties.

Using it as as an example of the future is, I agree, rediculous.
 
Tesla has a lot of "fanboi" customers because of who owns the company. I will fully grant that they did a lot of things right. Elon Musk realized that the reason people didn't want electrics is that they couldn't do long trips, so the charging infrastucture had to go hand-in-hand with rolling out the vehicles.

The QC debacle that I posted above is one of many. The Model 3 will represent a move into the mass market. Regular people who rely on the car for daily transportation are a whole different ball game from the typically rich early-adopter tech fans who have been buying the Model S (and whose cars are still mostly under warranty). Some things about how Tesla does business are going to have to change.

If your Chevy Bolt wears out a wheel bearing, you'll be able to buy a new one at your local GM dealer, and probably at a bazillion places online, because it's probably the same part used on a ton of other vehicles, and it will probably be cheap, and your friendly mechanic at the garage down the street will be able to fix it because it's built the same way as any other car.

If your Tesla wears out a wheel bearing, it's back to the official Tesla service center for both parts and labour. No one else is allowed to sell OEM parts for them and no one outside of official Tesla service centers has access to official repair procedures. That'll go down well once the cars are outside of warranty.

If you have an oopsie with your Bolt and it gets a scrape in the bumper, any body shop will be able to fix it.

Tesla ... back to the service center!

Tesla COULD very easily fix this. Publish the parts list with prices and let anyone order them just like everyone else does. Publish the factory service manuals. But will they?

The people who lined up to buy a Model 3 are the same people who line up outside Apple stores to buy a new phone every time there is a new model. Not me. I get a new phone when the old one stops working.
 
With the government rebates, GM's Bolt/Volt looks appealing.

Vehicles that fit right in with everything else on the road.

Making charging stations available and easy to find is going to help. Especially with DC rapid charging. Apparently GM is going to have charging stations at all their dealerships eventually.

Look, I quickly dismissed EV for many reasons but, I'm starting to see the practical and economic benefits make sense and take shape.

If charging stations become more available. Especially DC, it really can be a game changer.

I could stop for lunch, charge and carry on my way for another couple of hours.

It's so close.

If we hadn't purchased a second vehicle last year, I'd seriously be looking at an EV.

My wife took an interest while I was surfing the web. She asked if we were getting a EV.

Told her no but, learning more about where things are at now and what's to come. I think the electric car is here to stay and going to thrive.

Good news?

My cynical side says, watch electric costs climb and petro decrease as the battle takes place.






Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
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SunnY S said:
....Teslas market cap is now greater than Ford. Clearly they are doing something right.
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That's more of a future valuation though, not what is current value, it's betting on future worth. Might also have some good will from Space X perceived future worth.
 
GreyGhost said:
Honda has made some great vehicles in the past, but I can't understand why they keep wasting so much money on fuel cells. The chance of them ever being useful beyond a very special purpose vehicle (eg taxi) is infinitesimally small. At this point battery technology is decent, the cost required to install hydrogen infrastructure completely kills fuel cells for general use.
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I see where you are coming from, but there are some compelling reasons.... Hydrogen cars are basically electric cars and its only emission is water vapor. The benefit with a hydrogen car is that they have better range and you can refill it in 3 mins.

With pure electrics, you have to wait hours for a charge and park at a charging station. Also, lets be honest here, pluging in a car every night or at every stop is a royal pain in the arse. what about ppl with no garage? what about if the cords too short? too many annoying variables.

Several automakers are gambling on Hydrogen. I'm guessing they are taking the case of "if we build hydrogen cars, will you build filling stations?"

As always with new tech, the market will decide the outcome on whether hydrogen takes off.


Whatever the case, its slick technology, and shows these guys are moving ahead with alternative technology and fuels for the future, instead of a traditional polluting combustion engine tacked onto an electric car *cough* Volt.....



great link explains more.. http://www.businessinsider.com/why-hydrogen-powered-cars-are-better-2016-1


another neat concept they are working on, is being able to make your own Hydrogen from home. this would be awesome.... http://www.businessinsider.com/honda-clarity-fuel-cell-car-2015-10
 
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SunnY S said:
I see where you are coming from, but there are some compelling reasons.... Hydrogen cars are basically electric cars and its only emission is water vapor. The benefit with a hydrogen car is that they have better range and you can refill it in 3 mins.
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You can have emissions depending on how the hydrogen was made.

also you likely could make an EV like the volt with a hydrogen range extender, but regardless about how clean hydrogen is, if you don't have access to hydrogen it's a useless technology. you still haven't answered how far some one can go with a hydrogen car today with current infrastructure. hydrogen refuelling stations would require a critical mass of hydrogen powered cars to be viable, right now EV and plug in hybrids look like a safer bet of having the infrastructure available, like i've already seen charging stations at malls, can you name one mall in canada that has a hydrogen fuelling station?
 
CruisnGrrl said:
You can have emissions depending on how the hydrogen was made.
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A good point, and something that is commonly forgotten. Typically production of hydrogen involves consumption of fossil fuels, or electricity, so it's arguably a very "lossy" fuel vs just burning the fossil fuel directly, or consuming the electricity directly.

SunnY S said:
Whatever the case, its slick technology, and shows these guys are moving ahead with alternative technology and fuels for the future, instead of a traditional polluting combustion engine tacked onto an electric car *cough* Volt.....
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So when that hydrogen from the "Smart Hydrogen Station" is created via electrolysis using electricity generated in a coal fueled power plant (IE, a huge majority of the USA), yeah, your green argument is not so much - just putting the energy directly into a battery instead avoids all the losses inherent with the in between step of turning the electricity into hydrogen only to put it in a car and use it that way, vs just using the electricity directly.

And $63,000 USD? Good luck with that.

The Clarity EV has a meagre 80 mile (120K?) range which is a picture perfect example of that "range anxiety" thing you've been crowing about as well. But the Clarity is a Honda, so that doesn't matter, right?
 
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Just read this article on the Clarity Hydrogen:

http://www.greencarreports.com/news...-first-drive-of-hydrogen-powered-sedan/page-1

I LOL'd at this part:

The cost of hydrogen is an interesting question, though: our top-off of 1.2 kg of True Zero hydrogen fuel cost $20.46 for 66 miles of added range indicated.

That doesn't pencil out against even a 25-mpg sedan running on gasoline at $4 a gallon, let alone a 56-mpg Toyota Prius Two Eco, one of the most efficient non-plug-in cars on the market this year.
As for electric cars charged at home, costs per mile are likely lower yet.
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So, around $100 USD (so, say $130 Canadian using a simplistic direct exchange) for around 500 kilometers.

Sheesh, I was getting BETTER cost per kilometer driving my 9000 pound Chevrolet 1-Ton dually diesel! In order to get it down to 500K on a tank of diesel (110L) I had to be pulling my 12,000# fifth wheel travel trailer.

What a joke.
 
My wife went up north this evening to visit a friend and just got home.

Total K for the week was 553K and average fuel economy was 4.9L/100K.

Only about 1/5 of those K were on battery due to the distances driven and no charger at work yet.

Savings calculations based on $1.10L:

Volt burned 27L of gas and about $4 in electricity, total $33.70
The 300 would have burned about 68L in gas, total $74.80

So, we've already saved $41 across 3 days of ownership.

This weekends goal/experiment: Burn ZERO gas. Let's see a hybrid do that. ;)
 
CruisnGrrl said:
also you likely could make an EV like the volt with a hydrogen range extender
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That would be silly. If you're going to store any hydrogen at all in an EV then you store only hydrogen, not batteries, since its energy density is so much higher.
 
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