Want a plug-in car? Get in line - apparently they can't build 'em fast enough

The Volt draws 1500 watts when charging.

That is pretty much what a coffee pot, microwave or hair dryer uses by themselves.

If you want to reduce overall demand on the grid, have the water heaters coast while your car is charging.

 

That goes back to my original question when I was wondering if anyone knew what it took to charge these things as I had no idea. Thank you.

 

My former college roommate is a pretty big supporter of electric cars. He is very positively biased in favor of these cars but he did have some interesting points that I didn't quite understand about them. The two major factors in favor of these cars that I weren't aware of are these:

1. The cars would mostly car at night/overnight (you come home from work and plug it in or you would plug it in before you go to bed). Overnight, especially in California where he lives, there is a tremendous surplus of energy that is produced and then wasted. So capturing this electricity by putting it into electric cars won't put too much additional strain on the grid (Now, this also assumes that hardly anyone will charge their cars during the day which I do no think is completely true).

2. The other major benefit of electric cars is that you can now create cleaner air efficiencies/power generation efficiencies much faster. For example, if tomorrow we invent a way to reduce the emissions coming from a car's tailpipe by 40%, it will take more than a decade before every car on the road has this technology. However, if we upgrade a power plant to be 40% cleaner, suddenly every car drawing power from that plant is also 40% cleaner. So any money invested in cleaning up power plant emissions/findings greener energy has a much faster impact through electric cars rather than trying to make those improvements in gas cars.

Now, I still have concerns about the long term viability of electric cars but at least after hearing these two points I understand why electric cars are potentially better than hybrids.

 

I suspect in two or more car households, in the next five to 10 years, at least one will be electric. That car will be for the in-town work commute and the other gas or hybrid car will be for longer travel.

The car prices will drop and when people get ready to buy a new car, they'll go with the electric model.

That is very likely to happen at my house. The next new ride will be electric or a hybrid.

 

Chevy has claimed it will take an average of $1.50 a day to charge the Volt.

Like others have said, I question how long the battery will last, but this seems to be an important step towards reliable electric cars. I just hope Chevy is rewarded for its work. Instead, I think they'll be the guinea pig before Honda, Toyota and Hyundai perfect an affordable electric car.

Banking on hybrids seemed shortsighted to me, but then I realized that you might as well let Chevy take on the development costs as the government had them by the scruff of the neck. If you're Toyota, wait for a workable battery to emerge and then clean Chevy's clock.

Unless of course I'm not well enough informed on this and Toyota and Honda behind the scenes are running astride Chevy and I don't know it. That's certainly possible. It just seems they were all about the hybrid all along.

 

Can you buy additional batteries and keep them charged, when the first one is close to dead, swap it for the spare battery?

 

I'm not surprised by the demand. There was good demand for the EV1 before it was spiked.
The only surprising thing about the current go-round is the decision to intentionally limit the Volt's range.

 

I'm very happy with my ISDN line. It's the future of data I tell you.

 

No, for a couple of reasons — weight and packaging. The Leaf batteries weigh about 600 pounds and the Volt's is about 375. Plus, the batteries in electric cars are typically packaged in such a way (underneath floors and seats and such) that they're not easily swappable. And that's not even taking into consideration what a spare battery would cost.

The Volt's battery output is limited to extend the life of the battery. Also, more than a thousand EV1s were built and GM leased only about 800 of them over the four years.

 

Why couldn't, let's say, as the wheels on the car spin, they figure out some way to harness that energy to then charge the battery.

 

Shai Agassi, CEO of Better Place, has a different approach that may be gaining some traction. Better Place is promoting the concept of automated battery swapping where drivers will pull into a service station and exchange their depleted battery for a fully charged unit. The concept is similar to conventional refueling and reportedly takes less than one minute.

http://www.rationalwalk.com/?p=9759

 

that's really, really smart. But wouldn't that take the car companies agreeing to one universal battery? Or would the station have to keep like Ford batteries, Chevy batteries, Honda batteries, etc.?