Apart from Tesla’s pricey sports car, you cannot go to a car dealer, or even visit a website, to buy a plug-in electric car in this country today.
A website promising a list of electric cars you can buy today in the U.S. turns up three cars: the Finland-made Fiska Karma, Toyota Prius (the plug-in version is not available in the U.S.) and the Chevy Volt, a car you cannot buy. Curiously, it does not list the American-made Tesla. Since General Motors put a plug-in electric car on the road in California in the 1990s (and the people who drove them loved them), what is the problem with selling electric cars in this country now?
This question was prompted by a recent news story, reporting that a Norwegian car company, Think, is planning a new manufacturing plant for its new electric sedan, the City, in Elkhart, Indiana, the former RV capital of the world. This European-based car manufacturer may do what American companies are too slow to do—use the car-manufacturing expertise and experienced workers in the Midwest to mass produce plug-in electric cars we can afford. Most maddening is GM, of course, is the one that put out that electric car in the 1990s.
GM talks endless about the electric Chevy Volt, as it has for at least five years. Yet, inexplicably, the car never appears on dealers’ lots. GM seems to pretend there never was a plug-in electric car or that there is some technical barrier to their production. Yet those who saw the documentary “Who Killed the Electric Car” know that GM put out the EV in the ‘90s. GM leased, rather than sold, the EV and at one point, took them all back (despite the wishes of leasers who wished to buy them) and then crushed them. Why not bring back the electric car? The official reason for discontinuing the EV was that it did not sell well. It may have been true in the SUV-loving ‘90s but times have changed.
There is a market out there, hungry for plug-in electric cars. While this excludes some potential car buyers—who reject the evidence for global warming or are not concerned about ever-rising oil prices or that our thirst for it keeps shoveling money to people in the Middle East who do not wish us well—that still leaves the rest of us, who would like to get off oil and go buy affordable electric cars.
We are just looking for a car manufacturer to take our money. Obviously, technology is not the problem. If GM could put the EV on the road with lightning speed in the ‘90s, what is the delay now? A new technology problem? Many people, even those who sell cars, seem to think electric cars lack power or can only travel at low speeds.
Wayne Garver, a University of Missouri-St. Louis physics instructor and staff member, can tell you that from first-hand knowledge. Garver regularly drives his plug-in electric car to campus. He converted an ordinary car to an electric one that runs on batteries, something that cost him in the $5000 range, plus his work and some mechanical expertise. Of course, this in not something everyone could do but you can buy conversion kits on the internet, even if you cannot buy the car. A quick glance at the stats for the Tesla, available online at www.teslamotors.com/performance/perf_specs.php, also clarifies this misconception. The two-seat Tesla Sport goes zero to 60 in 3.7 seconds, achieves top speeds of 125 and has a 236 mile range.
Their new sedan, Model S, due out in 2012, promises seating for 7, zero to 60 in 3.6 seconds and a 300-mile range. The issue is not technology but cost and economies of scale, like most green technology. The Tesla Sport is pricey but the new Model S will still cost about $50,000, not a cheap car either. If electric cars go mass market, they would be affordable.
But maybe not as profitable as an SUV. It seems that GM only wants to pretend to sell the Volt, a marketing ploy to make the company look “green” while they really pour their money into marketing more profitable trucks.
Electric cars could be a boon to a sagging economy. Would we not rather see an American company in the lead to meet the public demand for plug-in electric cars?
Cate Marquis is a columnist and A&E Editor for The Current.
