What do you think the reason is that people do not buy electric vehicles?

Question

What do you think the reason is that people do not buy electric vehicles?

Answer 1

Cost. Also, you cant go overly far, and the battery takes awhile to charge. Companies are developing more powerful batteries Yay~!

Answer 2

Only millionaires can afford to buy what isn't for sale eg Tango T600 to George Clooney http://www.commutercars.com/

And the ones theat were leased have been taken away from satisfied drivers and crushed http://www.ev1.org/

the technology and infrastucture are available now to meet most of our daily personal transport requirements

- outperform a ferrari http://www.teslamotors.com, recharge in 10 minutes http://www.phonixmotorcars.com,

but getting into mass production and distribution is very very expensive and without the backing of GM or Toyota it is not going to happen.

Answer 3

High cost.

Short range.

Long recharge times.

Poor styling.

Answer 4

they cannot afford it. Have you ever heard of anyone selling an electric car for a thousand bucks? it never happens!

Answer 5

high cost

less range

power deficiency

old fashoined

look like plastic toys

Answer 6

The reason is simply that the technology is not yet sufficiently advanced for EVs to be very popular.

The best affordable EV available right now in my opinion is the ZAP Xebra:

http://www.zapworld.com/electric-vehicle...

It costs about $10,500 and has a range of about 25 miles unless you pay extra for a longer-range battery and top speed of 40 mph.  Basically it's an around the town commute car, so it would only be a second car in addition to your gas powered car.  Not a lot of people can afford this.

In the near future there will be some reasonably affordable electric vehicles with a longer range and higher top speed available.  My 2 favorites are the ZAP Alias and Miles Javlon:

http://autos.msn.com/advice/article.aspx...

http://www.autoneato.com/2008-electric-j...

When these cars become available starting in around 2009 we'll start to see more and more electric cars on the road.  With lithium ion battery technology becoming sufficiently developed, electric vehicles are now becoming a viable alternative to gas powered cars.

Answer 7

Multiple Reasons :

1. Cold weather is hard on the batteries.

2.  A Gasoline car will run normally with just empty tanks while an almost empty battery will be a dead goat.

3. Add an extra passenger and the battery drain increases exponentially unlike gasoline cars where increase is minimal.

4. Drive uphill and lose all the juice.

5. Limited range... cant take them on a drive on the expressway

Answer 8

b/c they not as fast and the way the car looks is another reason. people like to buy cars that have a nice look to it.

Answer 9

-Cost

-Not too powerful

-Not too roomy heavy and stable, looks like a toy

-Need to plug-in lots of KiloWattHours

-maybe safety (lots of batteries, what about side chock?)

Automakers are aware of this and trying to change this

The truly green person must think: how green is the electricity I will use? As of now still little electricity comes from sun or wind. This is of course changing as we evidence global warming

Answer 10

I think there are many reasons.

1. inconvenient

Right now there are only a handful of EV's offered for sale, and they're inconvenient. Long charge times, short ranges and slow speeds are common in current EV's. The Tesla is a sports roadster, and it doesn't have the speed challenge, but still suffers from range and charge time.

2. expensive

The Tesla I mentioned is $99,000, if you found a FREE car and wanted to convert it to electric you'd be looking at $4,000 at a minimum. What you'd get for $4k is about a 60 mile range, and you'd avoid hills. For a car that ran decently, with a decent range you'd need $10k at least just to get started.

3. size

Because weight means so much to performance of electrics you almost always end up with a cramped fit.

4 Availability

There are almost no EV's for sale, even the ones that are, like the Tesla, are very limited in number and location.

There is hope though, or at least in my opinion. The Chevy Volt is the first announced Plug in series Hybrid, and I think the first production plug in being developed. It has over a 600 mile range making it more convenient, Speed to impress the most motorheads with a planned 0-60 around 6 seconds and charging is optional, but easy.

The price on the car is also a pleasant surprise at under $30k, the average new car being just a few thousand less, and the fuel savings alone accounting for the difference it's an economical decision.

The downside is that it's a 3-year cycle, so you won't be able to get one 'till 2010.