Electric Cars for the Middle Class
Joanna Schroeder, June 26th, 2009, http://gas2.org
It appears that companies are realizing that zero emission electric vehicles should not just be for the “rich”. In May, Nissan announced that it would begin electric cars in the U.S. to be available in 2010. This week, they announced they would mass produce a zero-emissions electric car by 2012 that would be affordable. However, during a Nissan shareholder’s call Chief Executive Carlos Ghosn refused to speculate on the sticker price.
According to an Associated Press article, Ghosn said, “If it’s not affordable, it’s not gonna work. We are not going to come with a very high price. We are gonna come with a reasonable price,” he said. “We are here to mass market them.”
What I want to know is what the company will consider affordable now that America’s economic turmoil continues to spiral downward.
Nissan plans to produce an electric vehicle for Japan this August and then set its sites on America. Ghosn did confirm that Nissan plans to have the zero emission vehicles manufactured in America. This is great news for all the skilled auto workers who are out of work.
Now while all electric vehicles are seeming to gain traction in the U.S. it appears that hybrid vehicles are beginning to gain some traction overseas. The Indian company Tata Motors is capitalizing on success with the petrol-efficient Nano to build electric and hybrid cars with their first electric car to be sold in the Netherlands.
In addition, Hyundai and Kia, both Korean car makers, are also planning to compete against Toyota and Honda by entering the hybrid and electric market. Mitsubishi recently announced it will begin mass producing the I-MiEV and is expected to hit the market next month.
With oil prices trending upward, and worldwide government incentives on the rise for alternative vehicles, especially utilizing electric and hybrid technologies, it looks like the race is on to see who can mass produce and sell the most electric and hybrid vehicles the fastest.
It appears that companies are realizing that zero emission electric vehicles should not just be for the “rich”. In May, Nissan announced that it would begin electric cars in the U.S. to be available in 2010. This week, they announced they would mass produce a zero-emissions electric car by 2012 that would be affordable. However, during a Nissan shareholder’s call Chief Executive Carlos Ghosn refused to speculate on the sticker price.
According to an Associated Press article, Ghosn said, “If it’s not affordable, it’s not gonna work. We are not going to come with a very high price. We are gonna come with a reasonable price,” he said. “We are here to mass market them.”
What I want to know is what the company will consider affordable now that America’s economic turmoil continues to spiral downward.
Nissan plans to produce an electric vehicle for Japan this August and then set its sites on America. Ghosn did confirm that Nissan plans to have the zero emission vehicles manufactured in America. This is great news for all the skilled auto workers who are out of work.
Now while all electric vehicles are seeming to gain traction in the U.S. it appears that hybrid vehicles are beginning to gain some traction overseas. The Indian company Tata Motors is capitalizing on success with the petrol-efficient Nano to build electric and hybrid cars with their first electric car to be sold in the Netherlands.
In addition, Hyundai and Kia, both Korean car makers, are also planning to compete against Toyota and Honda by entering the hybrid and electric market. Mitsubishi recently announced it will begin mass producing the I-MiEV and is expected to hit the market next month.
With oil prices trending upward, and worldwide government incentives on the rise for alternative vehicles, especially utilizing electric and hybrid technologies, it looks like the race is on to see who can mass produce and sell the most electric and hybrid vehicles the fastest.
Tags: Kia, Nissan, Toyota, electric, hybrid, hyundai, vehicles
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Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Luane Todd on -
Here's an interesting and provocative article I just ran across. I changed your reference to 'customer' instead of 'consumer' but I like Romm's idea even better.
Stop calling Americans “consumers”.
I was at a small meeting on peak oil Friday - Executive Summary: We’re peaking now!
James Kunstler, author of The Long Emergency, was there. He is in the Mad Max/Lovelock/Wall-E school of dystopia, and so I have a number of disagreements with him (see “Why I don’t agree with James Kunstler about peak oil and the “end of suburbia”).
He did, however, say one thing that really strike a chord. He said we should stop calling Americans “consumers.” It pigeonholes all Americans and also becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
That seems to me a reasonable point, and I will endeavor to make a change. Indeed, I had previously blogged that the U.S. savings rate was on the rise, it looks like U.S. carbon dioxide emissions peaked in 2007, President Obama was making a big push toward making America a nation of creators as opposed to consumers, and I asked “Is the U.S. consumption binge over?”
The Bureau of Economic Analysis announced that personal savings rates rose again in May. Americans saved 6.9 percent of their after-tax income last month, the highest rate in 15 years.
Is that impressive? Not particularly, at least in historical terms. In fact, it’s about equal to the average savings rate of the last 50 years:
Doh!
Well, I’m a glass-is-half-full type of person - or, rather, like my old friend Amory Lovins, I’m a glass-is-twice-as-big-as-it-needs-to-be person. So rather than focusing on the past, I’ll stick with Obama’s optimism about the future from his big speech on science and R&D last month - “Our future on this planet depends on our willingness to address the challenge posed by carbon pollution,” vows “we will exceed [R&D] level achieved at the height of the space race”:
I want us all to think about new and creative ways to engage young people in science and engineering, whether it’s science festivals, robotics competitions, fairs that encourage young people to create and build and invent - to be makers of things, not just consumers of things.
I would also note that in Dale Carnegie’s uber-bestseller How to Win Friends and Influnce People, in Section Four “How to be a leader: How to change people without giving offense or arousing resentment,” he has a chapter titled, “Give a Dog a Good Name.”
Bottom line: People live up - or down - to expectations, and the naming of things matters. [Yes, I know, calling ourselves “homo sapiens sapiens” didn’t take.]
So, while it may just be a small thing, instead of using the term “American consumers,” I’ll just try to stick with “Americans.”
Courtesy of Joseph Romm, the editor of Climate Progress and a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress
One of the comments posted to the above story:
I would like to know the name of the person to rise in the USer Congress in the name of the American "consumer," instead of the American citizens.
And I would like to be able to time-travel, in order to throttle the son-of-a-b**** before he could utter the words...
Consumers are, indeed, trivial, and transitory. Citizens are substantial, and real. By transforming 'citizens' into 'consumers,' the discourse has stolen our dignity, and reduced us to ciphers in some vast economic calculus which we can never affect.
Citizens have rights, and powers. Consumers have dollars, and are empty nullities when the money's gone.
Story link: http://www.grist.org/article/kunstler-stop-calling-americans-consum...
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Permalink Reply by W. Dan Chance on -
You convinced me ... plug in cars are not a good choice for the traveling salesman that can't go back to a private residence with an available outlet at night until infrastructure is widely available. Wish we were making better progress with the refueling part of the problem for all alternative fuels. Natural gas is probably available within a few feet of other tanks right now but how many places is NG available in Georgia and Alabama? One in each state. Disgusting.
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Permalink Reply by John on -
Distance, recharge time, power, are all obstacles in the road of electric powered vehicles becoming main stream, but the future is further down the road and as we have seen in the past, technology has overcome many obstacles which seemed impossible and I believe that we will overcome all of these that relate to the electric car.
There is considerable amounts of money being invested in research to develop an electric powered vehicle, from many governments through grants, battery companies, car manufactures, chemical manufactures, scientists, ect… we will drive electric cars in the near future, you can bank on it.
Improved Batteries for Electric Cars Could Recharge in Seconds
Researchers may have found a way to drastically increase the performance of the lithium ion batteries that power everything from electric cars to laptops. By reconfiguring the battery to allow lithium ions to rush in and out about 100 times faster than before, researchers say they’ve created a prototype that provides fast bursts of power and also, crucially, recharges in seconds. A prototype of a battery made with the new technique could be charged in less than 20 seconds compared to the six minutes it took to charge cells made in the standard way [Australian
Link:
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beats/2009/03/12/improved-batte...
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Permalink Reply by W. Dan Chance on
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Thanks MDZ. I want to go read the article now. Did you see the newer post I did on fast rechare LI batteries-- like 2 seconds? Go take a look.
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Permalink Reply by W. Dan Chance on
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Hi Leslie, I followed your link and the short summary for each car made catching up on the trends very easy. Thanks.
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