If you lease the battery then you better sell the shell as I like to call it really cheap. The problem is that a lot of people now can pick up a small fuel efficent car for about 10k, so telling these people that you need to pay an extra 10k + 300 a month to lease the battery is a no sale.

You need to provide a complete lease of the car at a good price, or sell the shell really really cheap, i think under 10k for small models then work out a decent lease package.

I spend about 2000 euro per year on my car (not including depreciation), so if I can get a car that costs me about 3k per year on lease, then I am willing to buy it.

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Pay no attention to the facts behind the curtain.

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Forgetaboutit. Even in Europe more economical ICE's will be the norm, except for "sponsored" niches.

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Any new disruptive technology is going to be more expensive at first. For every case, the solution is to start with the *early adopters*, make them happy customers and then move to a larger group so you don't run out of customers. It worked for the iPhone & for Twitter & in fact for the personal computer when they were first introduced.

Even if Better Place's business doesn't work out, Shai Agassi has made many politicians and public administrators into *early adopters*, just waiting for the first few cars to appear. That's exactly what EVs need.

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Range extended EVs will do the job without any new infrastructure.

And its probably too early to standardize batteries for swapping.

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It's true that in EU oil is more expensive. On the other hand cars here have way smaller consumption than in US. With my 6 years old JTD Fiat Stilo I have no problem driving 1000km on one tank (about 55l). So paying 50-100€ for a battery lease would be my max.

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Shai Agassi is a conman. His agenda is to make electric cars fall into a business model that favours the corporations over individuals. To make something that should be cheap, pratical and durable into something expensive, obtrusive and with programmed obsolescence (in the battery lifetime).

This is just an expression of the oligopoly trying to take control of electric transportation through biased technology and needs to be denounced for it.

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I'm going to have to totally disagree with this article.

I believe EV's, especially range extended EV's like the Volt, WILL be cheaper first generation overall when put against a comparably equipped ICE car; and no i'm not referring to the cost benefit of not having to "secure foreign oil sources".

I've made a similar post before, but lets compare my $20,000 (when i bought it new) 2002 chevy malibu with the purchase of a $40,000 Volt.

Do you need to save $20,000 in fuel and maintenence with the Volt in order to break even and justify your costs? No! (but most people answer yes to this)

Lets say we buy the Volt and the Malibu on the same day and start tracking their costs. We keep both of them 8 years and drive both of them 15,000 miles per year.

Costs of the Malibu:

15,000 miles at $2.50 a gallon and 20 MPG gets you a 1 year fuel cost of $1875 and an 8 year fuel cost of $15,000 even.

8 years of 15,000 miles is 120k miles, and 40 oil changes. I've always paid about $30 for an oil change, but i'll be comservative and say $25. So $1000 in oil changes, and by 120k miles you would need to have already performed a spark plug change and a fluids change of pretty much every kind of fluid that goes through the engine. So $1000 in maintenence by 120k miles seems very fair.

So a pretty good estimate of $17,000 to fuel and keep your ice car running over the course of 8 years.

Don't forget that my 02 malibu is now worth $3000, so add the cost of a $17,000 loss in value, to get a total 8 year cost of $34,000 for a $20,000 purchase price automobile.

Does a $40k Volt make you lost $34,000 over the course of 8 years and 120k miles? I haven't been to the future, but probably not!

Let's look at what the Volt's financials will be like.

$40,000 after tax credit is $32,500.
But wait! The article says " The other element that drives down the "apparent cost" is government incentives for EVs. Of course, this too is a fallacy, since we are paying for that in taxes. "

This is a fallacy? Show me on your taxes where it will say "EV credit tax". If your taxes were never raised to pay for these $7500 tax credits, then using the argument that a tax credit on your EV is now somehow meaningless doesn't make any sense. They'd otherwise be inefficiently spending your tax dollars on something else that has no affect on you; so if your taxes didn't go up, then no, you're in fact not in any way paying anything out of your pocket for an EV purchaser's tax credits.

So you've got your $32,500 Volt. Since vehicles with newer technology and that last longer tend to hold their residual value much better than regular ICE cars do, (like hybrids), which also make great financial sense because everyone forgets to figure in their higher residual value.

How much does it cost to upkeep a Volt for 8 years?

15,000 miles would net you only 400 miles of ICE use if you figured 40 miles a day of EV mode, but real world conditions would net you about an 80% useage of electric over use of the 50 MPG that the ice will get you. So that's 12k electric miles and 3k ICE miles. 3000 miles at 50 MPG gets you 60 gallons per year of gas, and at $2.50 a gallon, thats a one year fuel cost of $150 and an 8 year fuel cost of $1200.

How much is 12,000 miles of electricity? How much is plugging in a plasma tv for 8 hours a day going to raise your total electric bill? The Volt has a 16 KWH battery, but you'll only be charging 8 KWH per day.

The average electric rate in the US in June was 11.91 cents per KWH. Source: http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epm/table5_6_a.html

So an 8 KWH charge per day costs 95.28 cents per day, and $347.77 per year.

So your yearly Volt upkeep costs $347.77 plus $150 in gas for a total of $497.77 per year and 3982.16 over 8 years, or about $4000.

The Volts ICE will need very little upkeep since it is only a generator. But if you're using it 3000 miles a year, assume 1 oil change per year at $25, or $200 over 8 years, and it will have only 24,000 "miles" on it after 8 years. (even though the engine will most likely last very long due to its simplicity and impossibilitly to redline or treat harshly)

So $4200 in 8 year fuel and upkeep compared to our "frugal" $20k ICE car with an 8 year fuel and upkeep cost of $17,000.

Since the total loss on the ICE car is $34,000, the Volt, after it's cost of fuel and upkeep of $4200, still has $29,800 to play with. I'm no psychic, but will a car that you paid $32,500 for lose $29,800 in value over 8 years and 120k miles? Will a Volt only 20k miles over warranty that still has a 35-40 mile range (and will take about 10 more years to get down to below a 20 mile EV range) with an ICE that only has 24,000 miles on it, that at purchase, you paid $32,500 for, now be worth $2700? Again...I'm not a psychic...but no, it won't be worth anywhere near that little.

I think (and this is just me) that realistically, an 8 year old Volt's far maket value will be $15k to $25k.

Even if its only worth $15,000, A Volt is roughly $10,000 cheaper over the course of 8 years when compared to my modest "affordable" $20k malibu.

A Volt makes financial sense from DAY ONE, as will some but not all other EV's.

The article:
"Here in the U.S., regular gas is only $2.50 per gallon and the numbers simply don't add up."

IMHO you're wrong.

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An 8 year 100,000 warranty shows that a company is confident in their product.
Your realistic range of 32 miles came from your crystal ball.

They wouldn't tell the public 40 if they indended to under-deliver,especially with a program they're so proud of and so public about and so "our reputation is riding on this and we know it!".

You can pretend an ICE car never needs an oil change and the numbers still work.

There's no way an automotive-grade battery will be DEAD and NEED replacement soon after the warranty expires. They said the window of battery useage will slowly open as the years go by, keeping to the 40mile AER range at then end of warranty life, and slowly degrading over thousands more cycles. A 15 year old Volt that has never had a battery replacement will probably get about 20 AER.

Also, assuming the battery NEEDS to be FULLY REPLACED at 15 years,what will 15 year old battery tech cost to replace? What, maybe $2000 for the same battery, brand new? by then, there will be 60, 80, and 100 mile AER options on the market. The cost of replacing your battery in 15 years with the same one you put in will be negligible, when comparing a Volt to an ICE car. I'm sure you're familiar withthe cost reduction forecasts that many experts have made about li-ionbatteries...or are you not?

The numbers still work just fine, it seems.

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I've said it before, and I'll say it again - sometimes to my own clown-faced reflection in a cracked mirror (illuminated by a single, dim, non-CF bulb that has somehow survived as long as the peeling wallpaper, with a sway as perpetual and ghostly as its power source):

"If the true price of gasoline was displayed at the pump, factoring in war, health, environment, blah blah blah... the calculations would look a little different." Stick that in your Volt and smell the sweet ozone.

It constantly amazes me that intelligent citizens, who, rightly so, believe in talking snakes and gravity-defying deities, cannot grasp the concept of a level playing field.

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The cost of batteries will come down substantially and probably more quickly than predicted. Electric cars have enormous advantages over ICE vehicles.

But this battery swapping thing is moronic. This guy just oozes snake oil and smarm. The next battle is about the electric car being OWNED by somebody who gets some form of residual income from it. Proprietary battery modules, only available from the manufacturer, proprietary drive trains, again, design and parts all under control of the manufacturer, you will get mass produced quality electric car designs just about 10 minutes after they figure out how to enslave you with it.

Meanwhile, you can convert any car that suits you to electric drive with off the shelf components available from multiple sources, commodity prismatic LiFePo4 cells from China that are already getting cheaper and offering better performance than a year ago, and be in control of your car, your fuel, and your replacement parts.

It's just not that hard. You replace an engine with 2500 moving parts, with an electric motor that has four terminals and three moving parts if you count the bearings.

You rip out the exhaust system, the cooling system, the fuel system and you DISCARD THEM ENTIRELY.

You install some batteries, a controller, a DC-DC converter and a few bit parts to make your heating and air conditioning work. These are rapidly approaching the level of putting together stereo components.

As to swapping out the batteries, it's entirely impossible unless you all want to drive this guys car design, and sign up to this guys retirement program. And you don't need them any way.

The batteries we've got now can be charged in 20 minutes, and the devices and power needed to do that cost LESS than the "swap stations" he's proposing. Basically just a large bank of batteries with some heavy cable connections to the car. The CHARGERS limit the charge rate, NOT the battery cells. If you charge off another battery bank that can put out the power, you can charge a LiFePo4 battery pack in 20 minutes.

Jack Rickard
http://evtv.me

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