Electric Car, whats a good one that everyday citizens can purchase? no hybrid all electric?

Question

and do you really save on the cost? how much do you save?

are the controls any different if so what?

what the difference in maintenance to a conventional car?

instead of fuel, how much does it cost for batteries/recharge?

and can you go long roadtrips or do what a conventional car can do?

oh yeah i know its alot of questions, but the person who can help me the most and answers the most questions will get best answer =)

Answer 1

Whoah, there are some liars talking in this thread!

An electric absolutely does not cause more greenhouse gases by depending on electricity from normal electric plants. In that sense it still causes only about a 10th as much as conventional cars. The cost of recharging the car is ALSO a fraction of the cost of gasoline.

Electric cars are expensive to make because they have to be hand assembled and many parts have to be custom made. If they were made on assembly lines like regular autos they would cost the same amount (or cheaper). However, there are electric cars marketed at around 16,000 to 20,000. There are also electric SUVs at around 40,000. You just won't seen them in the US. You have GM, Ford and American oil companies to thank for that. Gee, what patriots they are and look what they have done for our economy!

The reason that electric cars ARE NOT made in the numbers that ordinary cars are has nothing to do with consumers at all. It is because General Motors DOES NOT WANT THEM to be. American motor and oil companies have even bought the patents for many of the technologies utilized in electric cars in order to  STOP manufacturers from producing them.  Specifically, oil companies bought nickle-metal-hydride battery patents and sat on them.

Many companies are producing electric cars in Europe and Asia, but the same companies have enormous difficulty selling in the US because the gas and car companies have their puppets in Washington pass legislation to block these vehicles from being sold in the US.

When Ford was leasing its EV-1's the company told the press that no one wanted them and they couldn't sell them, when in reality there was a waiting list with SEVERAL THOUSAND persons for these cars and virtually every person to lease the vehicle wanted to purchase it. Ford only developed the EV-1 to get around a law passed in California and when they got their puppets in the state congress to overturn the law they HAD ALL of the EV-1s destroyed. This is common knowledge.

Newer batteries being developed have ranges in the neighborhood of 60 to 200 miles on a single charge. The technology is in its infancy and will stay there until these cars are on the market and become common place.

Some people are so naive.  I have no respect for someone who believes propaganda when a little research reveals the truth.

Answer 2

A purely electric vehicle has long been dismissed as being uneconomical to the user. Modern day hybrids are stepping stones to fuel cell hybrids which will be more ubiquitous in the future.

Fuel Cell electric hybrids use a fuel cell engine/battery with an electric motor for propulsion. The cost of these vehicles will go down as the technology matures and as they become more commercially available.

Maintenance issues will be very different from regular IC engine cars. It's difficult to talk about the costs right now. But the whole philosophy of engineering is that the cost of new technology must be comparable with existing technology.

*EDIT*

About the vegetable oil idea, Brazil has a very large fleet of cars running on ethanol (from sugar cane). They have the infrastructure to support that. If you are American, perhaps you can obtain such a car, but maintaining it will be costly. For one where are you going to fuel it? It's not as simple as putting vegetable oil in the tank.

*EDIT*

The answerer below raised a point about electric vehicles. What do you mean by purely electric? If you accept a purely electric vehicle as one that is powered by a gas turbine, then can you see how that is not purely electric?

*EDIT*

One answerer below is suffering from acute paranoia. I would recommend that he read some solid engineering books, in addition to the sensational news stories he's been following.

Answer 3

An electric car isn't a good alternative because the socket you plug it into is (in the U.S) is getting 50-70% of its poweer from coal burning power plants and they produce more greenhouse emissions than hybrids which charge the batteries with the gasoline and then produce less emissions.  The best alternative out so far is a conversion to vegetable oil engine which burns clean and gets 50MPG in hybrid form.  Inquire in your nearest big city for the conversion

Answer 4

As the Tesla's car (mentioned above) cost $90,000 plus, its not exactly one "everyday citizens" can buy.  Electric cars I have found out about include:  Feel Good Car company operates under the name of Zenn Motor Co.  Zenn stands for Zero Emissions, No Noise.  They currently have a car with a top speed of 25 mph and a 30-40 mile range.  For the fall of 2009, they plan to sell a car (using EEStor's untracapitor) with a range of 250 miles, a top speed of 80 mph and a recharge time of less than 5 minutes.

Phoenix Motorcars (www.phoenixmotorcars.com) makes electric pickup trucks using Altair Nanotechnologies's NanoSafe battery packs (1st generation packs were not safe, the 2nd generation re-designed packs are safe).  Phoenix hope to soon have a highway-speed car with a range of 200+ miles that could recharge overnight at home and in 10 minutes at "recharge stations."

Zap Cars (www.zapworld.com) and UQM Technologies (www.uqm.com) are also in the electric car business.

It seems to me, Zenn Motors has the most advanced, useable "everyday" car.

Answer 5

If you read the book Living like ED, by Ed Begley Jr.  it really explains (yes, he is an actor but he is also an expert environmentalist)  You can buy an electric car in the United States, but they do cost a lot more than a hybrid car.  When you charge one you can charge it not only by plugging it in, but by the use of solar panels or by wind power.  Ed Begley uses his solar panels on his roof to charge his cars.  If you charge  your car at night you are really really helping reduce the co2 in the air because electricity is wasted at night.  As much electricity is produced at night as it is in the day time and because most people are sleeping it all gets wasted, so by plugging the car in at night you are using that electricity that would have been wasted.  Also  you may live in an area that uses hydro dams and therefore it is a much cleaner electricity.

Answer 6

You are before your time.  Wait 3 to 5 years.

Answer 7

I don't think there is currently an Electric Vehicle (EV) that an everday person can buy right now. The Tesla is probably the closests, but at $98,000 that's not a normal person car.

A few facts that got misrepresented earlier. The Tesla, which is one of the only contemporary examples,  uses Power that could possibly come from coal in the US, but even at the worst level of coal burning it still saves 16%

http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/forecasting....

Those coal plants are undergoing transformation to reduce CO2, and coal is only one way to power the EV.

The cost savings is a bit over 3/4ths vs the ICE in every day driving.

The maintenance is much much less on an EV than internal combustion.

The next car that I see that will almost be what you're looking for is the GM Volt.  

http://gm-volt.com/

This is a pure electric car that has a gas generator on board. The range of the car is just the same as a normal car because it can power off the generator.

If you charge the car you'll get a minimum of 40 miles pure electric. That covers 86% of U.S. commutes.

Even if your commute is longer than the electric range, say triple, the car is efficient all by itself at 50 mpg, and 1/3 of that will be no gas use at all.

The car will cost somewhere between 30 and 40k, and average gas savings at $4/gallon will be about $3,000/yr

Answer 8

I don't think you can really buy a 100% electric car in the US. Some companies will convert your car for you. Still, it doesn't matter because you are just switching the polution from the tailpipe to the smokestack and reducing you range.

Answer 9

In China, right now they are buying Electric scooters instead of gas eating motorcycles.  They get about 40 MPCharge

Answer 10

At the moment the best is the ZAP Xebra:

http://greenhome.huddler.com/products/za...

However, in June Green Vehicles is set to release the first affordable highway speed fully electric vehicle, the Traic.  It will cost $20k, have a top speed of 80 mph, and a range of 100 miles per charge.

http://greenhome.huddler.com/products/gr...

http://www.greenvehicles.com/

There's a good list of EVs here as well:

http://greenhome.huddler.com/products/ca...

To answer your other questions:

1) Whether or not and how much you saves depends on the car and what you're comparing it to.  Consider that it costs about 2-3 cents per mile to recharge an EV whereas it costs 10 cents per mile to refuel a gas car that gets 40 mpg if gas costs $4/gallon.  You save a ton on fuel with an EV, so it just depends on the initial cost.

With the Green Vehicles Traic, since it only costs $20k to purchase, you'll save a ton of money.  If you drive 200,000 miles and it saves 10 cents per mile on fuel, you're saving $20,000 on fuel over its lifetime.  

2) EVs also have fewer moving parts (electric motors last forever), so you'll probably save on maintenance costs as well, assuming it's built reasonably well.

3) Batteries just depend on how long they last.  Lithium ion batteries (which is what EVs always use these days) last a long time.  I've seen estimates at 3,000 cycles, and if one cycle lasts 100 miles, that's 300,000 miles before the battery dies.  As I said earlier, recharge is about 2-3 cents per mile.

4) Most near-term affordable highway speed EVs have a range around 100 miles.  The CityZENN claims they'll have one with a 250 mile range next year.

http://greenhome.huddler.com/products/ze...