Japan discovers electric cars. Is it doomsday for EV start-ups?
Subaru, one of the more popular car companies with the green set, is going to show off an electric car prototype at the Tokyo Auto Show later this month in what could be a prelude to coming out with a car commercially.
The G4e concept is a triangular-shaped thing, but it has four wheels (unlike the triangular three-wheeled Xebra from Zap.) The G4e will accommodate five passengers, and the batteries will be stored in the floor.
Subaru's G4e concept car.
(Credit: Subaru)The lithium-ion batteries in the car will carry it for 200 kilometers, or 125 miles. That puts it in the same sort of range as cars coming from Think, Miles Automotive and some of the other electric car start-ups.
Subaru has not said whether it will come out with the car or not. Rival Nissan, however, has said it wants to start mass producing electric cars in 2011 or 2012. Like Subaru, Nissan is looking at economy cars, rather than sports cars, when it comes to electrics.
No one knows yet whether consumers will go for cars that go under 200 miles on a charge. In fact, getting consumers to understand, and act on, the town car concept is going to take a lot of marketing and work, Minoru Shinohara, senior vice president and general manager of the Technology Development Division at Nissan, told CNET News.com during a meeting last week.
Electric cars "are not a replacement of traditional vehicles," he said.
Still, the bad news for Think, Miles, Zap, and even companies noodling toward sedans like Tesla, is that the big manufacturers are interested. There's more to making electric cars than designing batteries. It also involves building huge, expensive factories, setting up a dealer network, and getting volume discounts on things like plastic electric window switches. These are the kinds of logistical problems that big manufacturers have down cold--and that start-ups will have trouble matching.
Then there are the crash-testing procedures. There's a lot of expertise in the established manufacturers there. Both Tesla and Phoenix Motorcars have had to delay releases because of testing. When customers walk into a showroom, will they be more comfortable getting behind the wheel of a Subaru, or some car company that just got formed a few years ago? Think about it. These are some of the many reasons you don't see new car companies popping up all the time. Two words: Rosen Motors.
Granted, large manufacturers move slowly and can get tied up in bureaucratic knots. But when it comes to those grubby mundane issues like distribution and cost-cutting, they are going to be tough to beat.
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Unlimited long distance $24.99/mo
http://www.gm-volt.com
40 mile range from the batteries plus 600 mile range range from the gas generator.
make the start-ups lay down and die. If anything it provides
validation for the EV concept. People who weren't sure if this
whole EV idea made sense are now going to say: it makes sense
to Nissan and Subaru and Mitsubishi. There must be something
worth pursuing.
As for whether start-ups can compete. . . The barriers to entry
in the car business have never been lower, and start-ups may
even have some big advantages. The article mentions
distribution -- but established car companies are locked into a
painfully outdated and inefficient dealership system. Companies
like Tesla have an opportunity to bypass that system completely.
There are many things about EVs that are fundamentally different than gasoline cars-- but nothing that will keep the public from flocking to EVs even if they cost more initially.
EVs are more expensive, but cost far less than internal combustion engine (ICE) cars to operate-- typically a tenth to a fourth as much-- and require far less maintenance. It is easier, simpler and far more convenient to take two or three seconds at home to plug an EV in than to stop for ten minutes at a time to refuel at a gas station every 200 miles or so; when you plug your car in, you do not have to wait around until the charge is complete as you do when you are at a gas station waiting for the tank to fill.
Perhaps Mr. Shinomura is so out of touch as to think that all EVs take hours to charge-- true, the Tesla and some others take hours to charge, and that can be significant on rare occasion, but battery chemistries that require more than a few minutes to recharge are doomed: the Altair NanoSafe battery, the A123 Systems battery, and supercapacitor formulas from several companies can be recharged as quickly as one can refuel a car.
So even if there are some EVs about to enter the market with slow-charging batteries, by the time those same EVs need their batteries replaced, quick-charge batteries will replace them... and those replacement batteries will last much longer and will likely be much cheaper as well.
There IS nothing stopping EVs from replacing ICE cars almost completely, and very quickly. There will be some diehards that will want to continue to drive ICE cars out of stubbornness or because they are irrationally attached to the burble of an exhaust, but nearly everyone, when they see the enormous benefits of EVs, will abandon ICEs as readily as they abandoned floppy drives a decade ago.
EVs will need no extensive and expensive infrastructure the way ethanol, fuel cells, and other alternatives would require-- we already have home electrical service that can handle nearly all the charging needs any of us will ever have-- just a few dozen fast chargers scattered over a city can handle the few local drivers that will need immediate recharges. We'll also need just a few more between major cities for cross-country drivers.
I am quite sure Mr. Shinohara does not personally use an EV. If he did, he would certainly notice differences in the way he drove, but he would just as certainly notice that driving an EV is actually much more convenient and practical than an ICE car could ever be.
Lastly, if Mr. Shinohara is under the illusion that EVs will somehow increase the need for more power generators, he needs to google "V2G", or vehicle to grid-- he'll be surprised to see that EVs will actually REDUCE the need for power generators rather than INCREASE them.
Do your homework, Mr. Shinohara-- and start driving an EV so you understand the issues from a personal perspective.
But even better for many of us in multiple car families is to have at least one "regular" car (preferably a hybrid -- plug-in when they become available) for longer trips and then one or more EVs for commuting. So for now replace *one* of your cars with an EV.
My guess is that if all multi-car families replaced one of those cars with an EV, that would still be a huge market for all the EV companies. And would make a huge difference in pollution and greenhouse gases.
So I really hope the car companies, old and new, stop waiting for the car that can replace all cars and just give us something with enough range for most commutes and a little extra for an errand or two. We'll buy that now.
The demand for cleaner cars is already large; real zero-emission vehicles will sell in the millions per year, when petro-fuels will top five dollars per gallon by 2012.