Demand for electric cars climbs as gas prices soar

s10maniac said on March 4, 2011 at 5:13 PM

If you are a true American you would want to buy American so a true American would buy a fuel efficient or electric car. About 60% of our oil comes from over seas. That is not buying American. If you get an electric car then the electricity is being produced in American so you are buying America. Be patriotic and buy a small car.

kinison said on March 4, 2011 at 4:02 PM

Not sure on what the cost of a replacement battery will be for a Leaf, but for the prius, its nowhere near 10,000$. Ranges from 500 - 1,000$. As for production, yes it is slow, mostly because making the battery requires some rather odd elements. We call these Rare Earth Elements, and China does appear to have a lock on those exports. So its slow right now. "batteries need to be replaced, recycled, reprocessed, thrown away, " I think you contradicted yourself with that statement, if it can be reprocessed or recycled, then its clearly not something that is to be thrown away. It is true that most of the materials used to make batteries are toxic, but so is the rest of the car. Right now, were burning maybe 2 barrels of oil just to extract 5 and the harder oil is to find, the deeper we need to dig, the more energy (barrels) is needed to extract a single barrel of oil.

aziza said on March 4, 2011 at 1:29 PM

Hmmmm, lets see... I have a car that gets 35MPG and NO car payment. At what point would it be profitable to take on a car payment for a $20,000 car that still only gets less than 40MPG and you have to plug it in? I'm waiting for more practicality, lower price, and higher quality of technology before I would even consider it to offset rising gas prices. Until then, I can go "green" in other ways. Gas would have to get up to $15.00 a gallon before it would offset the actual cost. I only fill up once every five weeks anyway.

redmondchad said on March 4, 2011 at 1:22 PM

Answers to some questions (earlier try seems to have been lost): Nobody can know what a new battery will cost in 10 years, just like nobody knows what gas will cost 10 years from now. But battery prices were cut in half over the last 10 years, and most analysts expect that to continue. Meanwhile, even if gas only averages $4 for the next decade, the average driver will spend about $19k on gas in that time. Tesla pre-sells batteries more than twice the size of the Leaf's for $12k, so that tells you where they think prices will be a decade from now. Lithium is non-toxic, easily recyclable, and available from a number of sources. Car batteries may be replaced in roughly a decade after losing about 30% of their capacity, but utilties in CA are already setting up markets to buy them. They can be reused for many years in a stationary application after being taken out of a car. Most EVs go 3-4 miles on a kWh. In Seattle, that's $15-20/month for the average driver.

joeschmo2u said on March 4, 2011 at 12:07 PM

The USA has the most reserves of any country. We just have listened to so called greens for too long and have locked up too much of what we can drill for. The 'patriotic' thing to do would be for the President to start allowing drilling in the Gulf of Mexico to resume. Not only would this lower oil prices immediately but would provide many high paying domestic jobs. We can do it but the 'greens' are holding us hostage. Obama's goal is 1 million electric cars but that is not even 1% of the total cars on the road so we need to be serious and start drilling where we can. Besides, a true green would not own any car at all and surely would not be driving a electric car that is powered mostly by coal energy plants.

intell said on March 4, 2011 at 10:38 AM

Last time I filled up it was $3.29 a gallon. That was only one tank of gas ago.

slappywag said on March 4, 2011 at 10:37 AM

Write your legislators, folks. That is all.

redmondchad said on March 4, 2011 at 10:05 AM

By the way, I see some people assuming that only "greenies" buy electric cars. This is incorrect. Many owners are strong patriots that don't like seeing the US send $1 billion dollars overseas EVERY DAY for foreign oil. That's half of our enormous trade deficit. OPEC countries have 75% of all oil reserves, so guess where most of that money goes.
They also are concerned about the strategic implications of having a military and transportation system completely dependent on an OPEC product.
And of course, they are concerned about the large number of our young soldiers that are put in harm's way in the Middle East. If we used domestic electricity, we wouldn't have to do that.

redmondchad said on March 4, 2011 at 9:59 AM

Answers to more questions: It is true that very few Leafs and Volts have been shipped. However, this is due to slow production. Both have a couple of orders of magnitude more orders than they have shipped cars, so drawing conclusions about demand based on the number of cars sold is not warranted. Maintenance on EVs is extremely inexpensive. My wife has an EV that is more than 8 years old; we have replaced tires and wipers blades. The motor and transmission have one moving part each. No spark plugs, catalytic converters, emissions inspections, oil changes, belts, hoses...hundreds of parts from gas cars are gone. My dad, in the running for the world's most frugal man, just ordered his first-ever new car because of the low TCO: a Nissan Leaf.

garyrow said on March 4, 2011 at 8:27 AM

it's nice that these cars are here, but just how many can afford to buy one, check unemployment numbers. Why doesn't someone really find out why gas is so expensive, the cost of a barrel goes up and the price of the fuel in the stations tanks goes up, they already bought that i think. There's a station in Sea Tac, just off I5 that's been over 3.50 a gal for months, that's gouging in my opinion. What are we to do, the government isn't doing anything to help the common people. All we get are excuses, no action, does anybody really care!

alex206 said on March 4, 2011 at 8:26 AM

You arent some kind of god or special person if you drive a hybrid or a Leaf. Most people that buy these cars are too stupid to realize that the process it takes to make batteries damages the environment and that batteries need to be replaced, recycled, reprocessed, thrown away, which also hurts the environment. It also costs more to maintain a hybrid or electric car. skok cush is on to something too. Electricity doesnt just come out of nowhere. Do you think that it's always going to be "$12" to charge your pathetic Leaf. Hydroelectric, nuclear, coal, etc. isnt free, and soon electricity will be a more sought after commodity.

leglifter said on March 4, 2011 at 8:02 AM

The timing of this is funny. Sales figures for February were just released. Nissan only sold 67 Leafs in Feb and GM sold just 267 Volts in Feb. They are catching on like, well like not.

skok_cush said on March 4, 2011 at 7:55 AM

And so people actually believe CHarging cars is gonna be Free??? And do these greeners know where the majority of the electricity charging their Golf Carts comes from? Geez,

chuckstr76 said on March 4, 2011 at 7:35 AM

I'm not spending $40,000 on an electric car to save $3000 a year in gas. I just wont drive as much as I used to.

teufel said on March 4, 2011 at 3:51 AM

Nissan is also quick to let consumers know that they’re not sure of the cost of replacing the lithium-ion battery pack once the 8-year/100,000-mile warranty expires or the 3-year warranty on the in-home charging station expires. (All of the LEAF’s standard car features are covered on Nissan’s 3-year/36,000 mile bumper-to-bumper warranty.) While we may not know the price to replace the battery pack in the LEAF, we do know that with hybrids, consumer should expect to dole out several thousand dollars to replace the hybrid battery. I found the cost to be between $10,000 to $20,000. And what is it going to cost to dispose of these batteries that will potentially damage the planet?