The following presentation is by a BYD executive in America talking about the company’s directions. I find his slides showing the ongoing trials in various cities in China make the company and it’s technologies much more concrete and real. China is also investing heavily to enable the charging infrastructure necessary for wide adoption of electric vehicles, not to mention the $18,000 (yes, that’s in USD) incentive for buyers.
Hidden Harmonies China Blog
As China Re-Awakens, Finding New Harmonies in a Brave New World...
silentvoice says
The US is very resistant to change because it is a democracy, it’s one of those trade-offs. It’s going to be drill-baby-drill for years to come.
TonyP4 says
Electric cars may have to depend on incentives and buyers from the government for a long while. The technology is not ready for prime time. It is not possible to use it to travel for long distance and the reliability is not good for the average consumer.
zack says
question: can a standard electric car from chevy or BYD go the same amount of distance as a petroleum fueled car on full charge/full tank?
TonyP4 says
@zack
Besides the driving distance on a full tank or charge, you need to consider how long you need to refill it and the availability. To illustrate, you may not want to drive an electric car from Boston to Florida.
Nihc says
If you need to wait for hours to charge an electric car, then no one will want it I am guessing.
Allen says
@zack
Most electric cars – using today’s batteries at a cost point that is acceptable to consumers – go 100-200 miles per charge. Standard gasoline cars go 300-400 miles per tank.
For most days, most people drive less than 50 miles per day – so electric cars should do well. As long as you can charge these cars parked at various places (markets, work, home, etc.) – as long as the infrastructure for “distributed charging” exists – electric cars should work fine for most people – even if they drive more than 50 miles per day.
If you really want to increase range, say on a long trip, you can always tow a battery pack, I suppose – and boost range to 600-700 miles or more.
@Nihc
Traditionally, charging would take 4-8 hours.
I am curious about the claim in the video that charging takes only a few minutes – without sacrificing efficiency or battery lifetime….
Anyways – some people have thought about battery swapping to get around the charging problem (a chemistry problem). Instead of charging stations, you get swapping stations.
Swapping would be fast, but batteries for electric cars are heavy – hundreds of pounds, at least for pure electric cars – so you need some kind of forklift like system to do that. Batteries would need to be standardized, but with performance of cars often depends on battery just as much as motors and other parts (with tradeoffs made and optimized for different market segments), that is not necessarily a trivial task.
Here are some ev specs that may be of interest.
http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/evtech.shtml
YinYang says
A fascinating plot of auto plants in the U.S. over the last few decades:
http://blogs.cars.com/kickingtires/2012/04/where-our-cars-are-manufactured.html
Clearly, Japanese and European automakers are unseating American ones.
Yide-angle says
@Nihc
Ultimately, people will make the adjustment and investment when the need comes. I went to school in Canada. In the winter you have to plug in to an electric outlet so the block heater in the car can keep the engine warm enough that it can be jump started. So every parking lot is equipped with outlets that you can plug in when you park there, and if you forget to do it, you really need to wait for half an hour before it can be started again.
So folks over there are forced to make the investment and the practice of plugging in is part of the life.
Same thing will happen when the gas becomes prohibitively expensive or our environment becomes totally screwed up…
You will have no choice then.