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Electric Car on Road to Recovery
By Kevin Harrison
I love anything and everything to do with cars and have most of my life. My car addiction is probably nearing an unhealthy obsession and I should probably think about checking myself into AA (Autoholics Anonymous). Or maybe the Henry Ford Centre.
But as much as I love cars, there are a lot of things that car companies have done over the years that really makes me question their sanity. I mean really, wood paneled doors? Chrome rims? Non-functional hood-scoops and spoilers? Seriously?
The latest ridiculous idea has to be cars that have an ‘auto-park’ feature. It allows you to sit back and relax, while your car parallel parks itself. Forget all the impending lawsuits that will ensue when the device inevitably malfunctions, what the biggest concern should be is why this device is needed in the first place. If you can’t parallel park your car, you shouldn’t be driving. But I digress.
Probably the biggest flop of the automotive industry is the investment in inefficient SUVs and pick-up trucks. This was a lucrative market over a decade ago, but now not so much. There was obviously no long-term planning, just immediate greed.
Car companies all knew about our depleting oil resources, yet chose to ignore it. This was evident in the 2006 documentary Who Killed the Electric Car?, which claimed that automakers and even the federal government managed to convince review boards that there was no demand for electric vehicles (EV’s).
It’s kind of like having ipod technology yet convincing the public that cassette players are still the way to go.
Today, Chevrolet, Ford, Dodge, Mitsubishi, Nissan, Volvo, Mercedes-Benz and BMW all have partial or full electric vehicles coming within the next few years. Go figure. In fact, brand new car companies that produce exclusively electric cars are now emerging such as Tesla, Fisker and Canadian car company, Zenn. (2011 Nissan LEAF)
If EV’s could talk, I’m sure they’d pull a Mark Twain and say, “reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.”
Having a car that uses significantly less or no gas at all seems like a good idea. We’d surely save a lot of money. But EV’s are illegal on Nova Scotia’s roads –at least for now. EV’s like the Zenn are considered low speed vehicles and are not safe for the highway. If an EV is able to handle both city and highway driving, then it would be allowed on our roads.
The Tesla roadster and Model S easily qualify (the former effortlessly achieves 201 kph) as well as the Chevy Volt, which is a reverse hybrid of sorts where the electric motor is the main method of propulsion and the gas engine is there to assist as needed.
The Volt is expected to start around $40,000 when it is introduced to our market in 2011. That’s not exactly cheap, but Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty has recently announced that his government plans on offering up generous rebates for plug-in vehicles like the Volt.
The rebate will be as much as 10 grand. That’s about three grand more than the rebate offered in the US.
It seems as if the government is finally coming around to EV’s. But apparently automakers still aren’t. It’s like it’s ‘Who killed the electric car?’ all over again.
Toyota USA CEO Yoshimi Inaba recently said, “we don’t see in the near future electric vehicles being mainstream… We don’t see the major breakthrough in battery technology.” To be fair, Toyota has the most hybrids available of any automaker and they see this as a more realistic plan for the next five years.
But both Toyota and Honda have publicly criticized this rebate with Honda Canada executive Vice President Jerry Chenkin accusing the government of Ontario of “deciding winners and losers”. Chenkin is referring to the size of the rebate, which is dependent on the size of the battery in EV’s.
That’s fair enough. If the public only gets four thousand back for a Honda Insight, but gets 10 thousand back for a Chevy Volt, I would likely feel a bit miffed if I was the CEO of the Volt’s competition too. But rather than criticizing a plan that helps Canadians save gas and the environment, how about using that as drive (excuse the pun) to build a better car that qualifies for the higher rebate?
In other words, yelling at the referee will likely get you nowhere - changing your game will.
It is the use of brand new technology which makes these vehicles costly to produce. Initial price will only decrease if EV’s are bought and accepted by the public. Helping us to buy these vehicles in a recession through sizable rebates should not be condemned just because a company’s product might be outdone by a newer product. The answer is to make more competitive vehicles.
But aggravated manufacturers aren’t the only barrier that EV’s face. Some are concerned that the amount of energy use it takes to charge EV’s is actually just as harmful to the environment as gasoline engine cars. This is a common concern here in Nova Scotia, since we rely on coal to power electricity.
However, opposing EV’s on this basis alone is counter-productive especially since evidence has shown that the amount of EV’s it would take to have a noticeable difference to the power grid is quite substantial. Taking the absolute moral high ground does nothing but hinder the process of achieving sustainable transportation. Having more EV’s on the road forces us to change to more renewable power sources, which should’ve been done a long time ago anyway.
In the end, getting EV’s to be more mainstream depends on a cycle that has potentially already started.
We now have the first step of car manufacturers moving away from gas guzzlers and are now investing in hybrids and EV’s. The government has also seemingly changed its tune as well and is now encouraging EV’s through rebates. And if we buy them, we will be the generation that revolutionizes the way we get from point A to point B.
So, how do we bring back the electric car? The last step is up to us.
