troubledwaters wrote:
bob_nestor wrote:
Just about any politician will tell you, and the voters, that engineers are too stupid to advance technology and business leaders too greedy to market that better mousetrap all by themselves. It takes the leadership, vision and foresight of a Politician to make the hard decisions that will advance technology and force the engineers and business leaders to implement them. The engineering challenges and potential market profits by themselves are just not enough to motive advancements, at least according to the Politician.
I think you got it a little backwards. What if I was to tell you you could get a pickup today that would get 100 mpg. Would you buy it? Who wouldn't. But then, what if I told you that it cost $30,000.00 more (technology ain't cheap)? Well then you would pull out your calculator and determine that you could buy about 13,000 gallons of gas and at 16 mpg that's about 200,000 miles. Way longer than most people keep a truck. Now who would buy it? And a manufacturer ain't going to make it if they can't sell it and make a profit.
But when a politician comes along and says "Though shalt ..." well now all of a sudden you got buyers that have to buy it and pay for it whether they want to or not. Now the manufacturer can make it and make a profit doing it because you don't have a better choice.
I don't know about Canada but in the US the reason EV's are selling is because of the tax incentive. Take the tax incentive out of the picture then watch what happens. And guess who's paying for that nice little tax break? If they had to stand on their own - it would be a whole different ball game.
I think you are right to some degree. Places where they have started and then stopped the incentives have seen big drops in sales. However as the price differential narrows between the two types of vehicles that will obviously go away. For example. Most incentive schemes don't include TESLAS as they are over 75,000 dollars. TESLA builds about 80,000 cars per year and sells them all for around 100,,000 thousand. The only thing that competes with them are high end BMW's and Mercedes and neither of those two can touch the performance, acceleration or quietness or luxury of the TESLA. Plus the owners like not having to stop for gas as well as the low maintenance. Plug it in overnight once a week and the car is happy. The truck is to get those advantages into the 30,000 dollar cars which hasn't happened yet. Then incentives won't be necessary and the game will change.
One of our EV's is a Nissan leaf with the bigger battery. A nice medium range car. It is appointed as nice as my neighbours Cadillac with exeption of missing the power seats. Although his caddies rear sesrs are not heated and ours are. But the leaf is quieter and quicker than the caddy off the line for sure and has a nicer sound system. You can get a leaf for under thirty thousand without an incentive right now so it is getting close. The only draw back with a leaf is of course it is meant for the medium range market so although suitable for the long distance work commute doesn't work well for a cross country tour vehicle. It depends on the persons needs. Our car seems to be good for 180 to 200 km of mixed driving which is about double what we need. It does have a high speed CHADEMO charge port which can make it work for the occasional long distance trip.
I think the need for tax incentives will be gone in about three years. The incentives are/were worth it if helps to reduce fossil fuel usage. There is no down side to that.
