| 777 | Date: Thursday, 28 Oct 2010, 14.17 | Message # 1 |
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| They’re still expensive -- too expensive for many drivers -- but modern electric vehicles and their more practical offshoot, the plug-in hybrid, are definitely good enough to be viable everyday transportation. And as with any early-adopter technology, expect prices to come down as manufacturers begin cranking out product on a mass scale; in this case, EVs and lithium-ion batteries from a slew of new factories around the world.
While in Manhattan on Monday, I drove the Nissan Leaf, the much ballyhooed all-electric hatchback that goes in sale in December, as well as a pair of battery-powered Ford prototypes: a Focus EV hatchback and a plug-in Escape SUV. The Focus EV, in both sedan and hatchback versions, will go on sale next spring and the plug-in Escape hybrid will hit showrooms in 2012 -- the same year that conventional Ford hybrids such as the Fusion sedan and Escape switch to stronger, lighter lithium-ion batteries. And Ford is already taking orders for its Transit Connect EV, a small van aimed at commercial customers.
From tangled New York streets to 70-mph traffic on the West Side Highway, the Nissan and Ford models delivered all the acceleration, handling, comfort and convenience of a typical gas-powered car -- but without most of the sound. The Nissan and Ford EVs can travel 100 miles on a charge for roughly $2.75 worth of electricity; the same trip would cost about $12 in gasoline for cars that get the typical 25 mpg.
While Ford, flush with the success of its 40-mpg Fusion Hybrid, is bullish on electric cars and hybrids, its global approach to electrified vehicles takes a long-term and conservative view. Riding shotgun with me in the Escape was Sherif Marakby, Ford’s global chief of hybrid electric vehicles, who said that beyond the first wave of early adopters, EV and hybrid buyers will want to know that their vehicle pays back its price premium in the form of fuel savings. For those who grumble that hybrids cost too much, the new Lincoln MKZ Hybrid, an offshoot of the Fusion, is priced identically to the gasoline model at $35,110, yet it tops 40 mpg city.
Ford’s strategy calls for keeping its EVs and plug-ins as affordable as possible. To keep costs in check, the plug-in Escape will use a relatively small lithium-ion battery -- though one that can still deliver about 30 miles of range in electric-only driving. But in contrast to the Chevy Volt, whose gas engine generates electricity to power the car once its battery runs low, the Escape plug-in will work like a conventional hybrid when its own electric range is depleted, with the gas engine and the battery playing mix and match to power the car.
Personally, I'm bullish on electric cars and plug-ins even while seeing their many shortcomings. EVs won’t be replacing gasoline cars for decades, but the writing is on the wall: Every automaker, even those like Audi that are most wedded to excellent clean-diesel technology, are moving quickly to electrify their fleets to help meet fuel-economy and emissions rules. Those rules, whether for carbon-dioxide emissions or smog-forming nitrogen oxides, are becoming so stringent that even the cleanest diesel engines have zero chance of getting their fleets where they need to be. By the way, that’s not my opinion, but that of the world’s best engineering and high-performance automakers -- Porsche, Ferrari, Audi, Mercedes, BMW -- which are now diverting most of their future-tech resources into electric cars. It's no publicity stunt: Manufacturers are going electric because they have to, and because it's the "greenest" technology available. Study after study proves that electric cars, even when powered by the dirtiest, old-tech coal plants, are still vastly cleaner than conventional gasoline or diesel cars. Here’s the worst example of anti-EV misinformation that floats around the Web: People -- including auto writers, who should know better -- continually compare an EV’s entire carbon footprint, including the pollution created by the electric grid that charges them, with only the tailpipe pollution produced by diesel- or gasoline-powered cars. That’s an utterly bogus comparison, as though gasoline magically appears in your tank without having to be drilled for, refined, shipped across the ocean in kerosene-burning oil tankers and then trucked by another exhaust-spewing semi. And let's not even consider the military and political costs involved. But use an honest “well-to-wheels” comparison, meaning a comparison that accounts for the energy used to create both gasoline and electricity, and it’s game over. Electric cars win handily, not just on greenhouse-gas emissions but in carbon monoxide, smog-forming nitrogen oxides -- the list goes on and on.
Now consider that barely half of the United States -- and less in other countries -- gets its electricity from coal and the anti-EV arguments really fall to pieces. If using nuclear energy or fully renewable geothermal, hydroelectric, wind or solar power, an EV delivers the dream everyone has sought for decades: the virtually zero-pollution vehicle. Mark Perry, Nissan’s director of advanced technology, notes that the entire city of Seattle, thanks to hydroelectric power, is already carbon-neutral on electricity. That means anyone who buys and charges a Nissan Leaf or other EV in Seattle will be driving a car that produces zero carbon-dioxide pollution as measured from the electric grid all the way to the asphalt -- and that is taking place today. A fossil-fueled car, even one that someday gets 100 mpg, can never make that claim. By the way, that plug-in Escape I was driving? It was returning the equivalent of 122 mpg.
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