James Hubbard wrote:Mike you tease!
Tell us more!
Well, the question I'm trying to answer is 'how do we make electric vehicles viable?'.
There are a number of problems. You need an electric vehicle infrastructure for support and maintenance of the vehicle, you need a range of vehicles that are desireable and that will do what people want them to do, you need an infrastructure of recharging points and battery swap out stations and you need to make everything affordable.
The affordability issue is down to batteries. Your average Joe in the street doesn't want to spend £20,000 on a set of batteries. He wants a vehicle that has a similar cost to buy and run to a normal petrol vehicle. Right now, that just isn't happening: a Microvek Fiat Doblo costs £25,000 to buy, compared to a regular Fiat Doblo costing around £8,000. The Microvek's batteries need replacing every five years at a cost of £6,000.
The difference in price - £17,000 - is enough to buy enough diesel to travel 141,000 miles in the Fiat. Unfortunately, the batteries only have a 1,500 cycle life which means you can never hit break-even point in the electric Doblo compared to the Diesel Doblo.
Factor in the fact that the vehicle is effectively worthless at five years old (because the cost of the batteries outweighs the value of the vehicle) and you've got a five year old car on the scrapheap.
That has to change - and that's the bit I'm working on...
