KPMG: Electric cars not accessible 'in next five years'

[strider]

At the risk of siding with the troll, Tom's probably right. If battery technology and prices were to stay approximately where they are today, then BEVs will never achieve a really substantial market share. Consider that hybrids collectively have never broken 4% of sales.

If gas prices hit $10/gallon your statement would be false. BEVs at current prices and technology would massively take off - everyone would switch to them and rent (or keep a backup) ICE for interstate trips (well, Western states ).

With Peak Oil arriving I can say that gas will hit $10/gallon with just as much confidence as tomgray the troll says battery prices will never come down. No one knows the answer but per my note above, BEV costs don't necessarily have to come down to become mainstream.

 

[ChadS]

BEV costs don't necessarily have to come down to become mainstream.

I agree that it's not necessary for costs to come down.

Would lower costs help? Absolutely! But already 75% of Leaf buyers say that saving money was a primary buying criteria. A $350/month Leaf or Volt lease doesn't sound like a screaming bargain (though it's not too bad), but once you subtract the average fuel savings of $121/month, the comparison to a $230/month gas car is pretty good. Sure, there are cheaper gas cars; but they aren't nearly as nice to drive.

I do agree that mainstream America doesn't do the math; instead they just dismiss BEVs out-of-hand because of the initial cost. Especially given that they don't realize how nice they are to drive, so they are comparing them to the cheapest gas cars. But while a lower initial price is an easy and obvious fix, I don't think it's the only one; I think consumer education can do the trick as well (and of course I'm hoping both happen). Some of this education will come naturally as BEV owners talk to their friends and neighbors. Various organizations (Plug In America included) are working on campaigns to spread the word.

 

[Teslawisher]

The articles headline is...

The majority of global car executives do not foresee a reasonably priced electric vehicle being available on the mass market in the next five years, a survey has suggested.

What is "reasonably priced"? Who's to say we aren't there now with the S? I'm sure most would say we're not... you know the point I'm making. Then, if the Bluestar stays on track (released in 2015?? I think is what they are shooting for right now?), is the $30,000 car "reasonably priced". Articles like this tick me off when you can make the entire subject so ambiguous, it might have well have not been written in the first place.

 

[vfx]

... for example, LCD screens were initially expensive, small, had narrow viewing angles, slow response, etc., etc. It took a while, but by now CRTs have pretty much disappeared. ...

And partially because of the pressure to stay updated. A restaurant chain here in CA Islands has a dozen or so TVs on the ceiling with videos of surfing, snowboarding, mountain biking,etc. Recently they changed out all the perfectly good 30" CRTs to slightly bigger flatscreens. I really don't think it was a screen improvement, but it just made the restaurant seem less dated.

Will be interesting when the (first group) tech company parking lots reach that same peer pressure point of if you are not driving an EV then you are so pre 2010...

 

[Norbert]

All true, yet a critical factor is: what drives battery development and improvement of cost-effective manufacturing?

The success of the Model S can be a major factor not only in creating automotive-specific demand at Panasonic, but also in conveying to the public in general, and to research/manufacturing in specific, the understanding of the significance of battery development, and the benefits, possible and real. It doesn't all happen automatically, it requires people to see the point and be inspired for lack of a better word. Plus, the process needs to start at some scale and grow exponentially. Obviously, we can't just wait for battery prices... if we did, nothing would happen. To us, that seems obvious, but that's exactly the process which critics don't understand or try to dispute the logic of, at each point in that chain of argument., coming up with arguments such as 'there is no future because you can't predict it'.

 

[Norbert]

And Tesla can't do anything about that.

That's the part which is crucially mistaken.

 

[TEG]

As has been posted elsewhere, "tomgray" is probably "ubertroll" (or maybe event "astroturfing bot"), and I plan to ignore.

Regarding adoption and battery costs:

We keep hearing year after year about "game changing" breakthroughs. Actually I am a bit surprised we haven't had the ultracap or carbon nanotube ultra lithium that just leaps ahead by now.
But, even without the ability to turn the lab breakthroughs into production, we are still seeing substantial year to year improvements on the basic old lithium technology so the electrification of the auto seems destined to happen even if gas prices somehow managed not to go up anymore. I am still expecting we will get breakthrough improvements in costs / capacity / and cycle life "any day now" that will make adoption accelerate more quickly. At some point we may start to get into more of a debate over calendar life as that could still be a concern for a while. And each manufacturer needs to make sure they do everything right to engineer in proper safety...

Once all those battery concerns are put to rest, I think the quick charging situation will be the next frontier to get settled.

 

[Norbert]

But, even without the ability to turn the lab breakthroughs into production, we are still seeing substantial year to year improvements on the basic old lithium technology so the electrification of the auto seems destined to happen even if gas prices somehow managed not to go up anymore.

Yes, we see it from many battery manufacturers nowadays. We also see it from solar panel improvements. Each year, the progress involves innovations which could not have been predicted. History is full of innovative new products which started out expensive before they became mass-marketable. In, I think, most cases, the ball needed to start rolling. The "trolls" have affected mainstream media in a surprising degree with their pseudo-logic, and this can't just be ignored, even though specific appearances of virtual personalities are ignorable.

 

[EVNow]

We keep hearing year after year about "game changing" breakthroughs. Actually I am a bit surprised we haven't had the ultracap or carbon nanotube ultra lithium that just leaps ahead by now.

Battery technology will evolve more slowly - even the breakthroughs take a lot of time from lab to the showroom. Even the recent IBM touted Li-Air break-through will take almost a decade to become commercial.

 

[ChadS]

‎"The ordinary 'horseless carriage' is at present a luxury for the wealthy; and although its price will probably fall in the future, it will never, of course, come into as common use as the bicycle."

-- Literary Digest, 1899

 

[hcsharp]

...
We keep hearing year after year about "game changing" breakthroughs. Actually I am a bit surprised we haven't had the ultracap or carbon nanotube ultra lithium that just leaps ahead by now.
...

I talked to a materials scientist recently who said his company had a nanotube product that was well beyond the lab stage. They had also developed a manufacturing process and that the batteries they could build would last about 4x longer and have more than double the storage per unit of weight than current Li ion. He recently managed to get a meeting with some of the top engineers and execs at Tesla to discuss his product. You don't get meetings like that unless you have something real. He said it's not 10 yrs or even 3 yrs away. He said if somebody seriously committed to it they could mfg large quantities within a year.

 

[dsm363]

I talked to a materials scientist recently who said his company had a nanotube product that was well beyond the lab stage. They had also developed a manufacturing process and that the batteries they could build would last about 4x longer and have more than double the storage per unit of weight than current Li ion. He recently managed to get a meeting with some of the top engineers and execs at Tesla to discuss his product. You don't get meetings like that unless you have something real. He said it's not 10 yrs or even 3 yrs away. He said if somebody seriously committed to it they could mfg large quantities within a year.

That's awesome. Hopefully he's as far along as he says and that Tesla can hook him up with Panasonic.

 

[Robert.Boston]

Ahhh, don't tell me these things! Life on the bleeding edge of early adoption is too precarious; hearing more news of "cheaper/lighter/bigger/faster" around the corner doesn't help!
:biggrin:

 

[Norbert]

They had also developed a manufacturing process and that the batteries they could build would last about 4x longer and have more than double the storage per unit of weight than current Li ion.

"current Li ion" is a flexible term...

 

[Trnsl8r]

Five years... the article is from January 2011 which puts us at January 2016. "Accessible" could be argued to be in the $30k range (think Bluestar), could also be argued to be readily available (i.e. not a year-long waiting lists), and could be argued to be viable (i.e. decent range, not Leaf).

I don't know... think five years could be about right... I hope it would be sooner, maybe some of the majors are developing behind doors more closed than Tesla's, but if Tesla is still going at it alone and have just some minor delays... five years sounds fairly realistic.

 

[VolkerP]

I think Tesla is well advised to stay out of battery/cell/chemistry development. It involves huge amounts of capital and you may bet on a loser. This is stuff for the big guys. Tesla then can pick the winners.

 

[Doug_G]

I think Tesla is well advised to stay out of battery/cell/chemistry development. It involves huge amounts of capital and you may bet on a loser. This is stuff for the big guys. Tesla then can pick the winners.

Tesla can best push battery development forward by being a large customer for them. Ultimately demand is what will drive the price down.