I’ve been watching electric cars for some time and almost fell in love with a Tesla, but concluded it made little sense,
a few months ago. Recently, I had a chance to revisit this topic by
living through the experiences of a friend who had bought an electric
car. I still don’t think they are ready for prime time.
The other day I was going out for an outing with a friend who drives an electric car. He drives a Nissan Leaf,
which is both one of the more popular and more affordable examples in
this market and was going to meet me at the location in his new car.
About the time I was leaving, he called with a change of plans as his
car’s battery was nearly dead and he needed a ride. On the ride over and
back, I got a better sense of why the current generation of electric
cars isn’t for most drivers yet.
2011 Nissan Leaf
Non-Intuitive Range
We’ve come to know that, for gasoline cars, they get better mileage
when driven at freeway speeds and this mileage decreases dramatically
for city and especially in high-traffic driving. This poor mileage is
because the engine isn’t running at its optimal speed and is just
wasting power when stopping, starting, and idling. But an electric
vehicle is nearly the exact opposite. It uses no power at idle (except
maybe to run the air conditioner and internal electric systems) and the
motor actually gets less efficient the faster the vehicle goes.
This is what happened to my friend. Typically, he has bumper to
bumper traffic and that day there wasn’t any on his long commute and he
arrived with a nearly dead battery. This implies that folks that will do
the best with electrics, at least with respect to range, are folks that
have short or moderate commutes in heavy traffic or live in cities.
That brings up charging.
The Charging Nightmare
Apparently many charging stations have been under specified and run
on anemic breakers. In my friend’s case, this means two cars can charge
from the 4-station poll, but when an electric bike plugs in, it blows
the breaker and everyone arrives to undercharged batteries. If you live
in a city, running an extension cord out to the sidewalk parked car is
probably not a reasonable option and parking garages likely don’t have
charging stations yet. They don’t seem to have them here anyway, so
finding a place to plug in can be a nightmare. I have yet to find a gas
station with a metered plug and I’ve noticed that many of the store
based charging systems either have non-electric cars parked in the
related spaces or have damaged charging stations.
So, it is critical to make sure there is a place to reliably, key word being “reliably”, charge your new electric beast.
Hybrids or an Electric Bike May be a Better Choice
In a car the electric hybrid approach just makes more sense to me.
You can drive short distances on electric power alone but you can use
the engine when needed. That way you don’t have to worry about the
running out of electricity and you can always find a gas station. The Chevy Volt
is probably the best combination of price and capability in the market
currently in an electric hybrid (has a range of up to 35 miles on
electricity only). However, I decided to go the electric bike route
first and bought two E+ Electric
bikes for about $10,000. They have about 20 miles of range and are fine
for a nice ride or a quick errand. Even the most expensive and powerful
electric bicycle I’ve found is still under $15,000 – it is called the Optibike, but it was a bit too rich for my taste. There are some interesting electric motorcycles by Brammo (also under $15,000): I’ve been tempted, but I have my eye on a Can-Am Spyder Hybrid myself (for some reason I want one painted like the Batcycle).
In any case, if you are thinking about an electric car, you may want
to find someone in your area that has one to chat with and start with an
electric bicycle or motorcycle instead. That approach could save you a
ton of money and pain and you may find, as I did, that the cars just
don’t make sense yet.
Rob Enderle in Business Test Drives on November 17
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