Greener Dawn

The Dawn of Electric Vehicles

February 5th, 2010 / 2 Comments

Now that hybrid vehicles have become a permanent part of the automobile landscape, the next step in the evolutionary process appears to be electric vehicles. In 2009, several major car manufacturers such as Ford, Nissan, and Fisker have revealed either plans or near production-ready electric vehicles to be introduced as early as later this year. To date, most of the media hype has surrounded Tesla Motors, the first manufacturer to prove it was possible to produce a fully-electric vehicle.

In the last few years, Tesla Motors has generated a lot of buzz surrounding its fully electric Roadster (retails at $109,000) and there always seems to be a shortage of supply when matched against demand. Just last week, Tesla announced that it was seeking for up to $100M in an IPO filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Two bits of data were interesting: Tesla has sold 937 cars to date and lost an accumulated total of $236.4 million ($30M in 2006, $78.2M in 2007, $82.8M in 2008, $31.5M in 2009). Of note is that most of the cars (~837) were sold in 2009. Tesla will be introducing a production level 4-door electric sedan (the Model S) for $57,400 in 2012 and thus far has garnered a lot of interest.

Two other vehicles of note is the Chevy Volt and the Nissan Leaf. The Chevy Volt is nominally an electric vehicle but it will only be able to run 40 miles on one charge of its battery. After the initial 40 miles, the Volt switches to a small 4-cylinder internal combustion engine (71 hp) to extend the car’s range to over 300 miles. For commuters that drive less than 40 miles per day, this car should be very practical. The Nissan Leaf has a driving range that extends to about 100 miles, which should be more than adequate for most commuters. The driving range should increase with every new iteration, so for those curious about electric vehicles but are wary of the problems of initial adoption, patience will pay off in a few years.

Posted by Fan Ding in Uncategorized