€12,000 Electric Car — Bollore Bluecar

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Reposted from EV Obsession:

Electric cars keep getting cheaper and cheaper, fast. Of course, one easy way to drop the purchase price of an electric car is to drop its battery pack. Naturally, an electric car needs batteries to run, but if the batteries are leased rather than bought, the market opens up to a lot of people who simply don’t like shelling out a lot of cash up front (even if doing so means big savings down the road – no pun intended).

bluecar bollore electric car

Bollore, which feeds carsharing service Autolib its Bluecar electric cars, is apparently going that battery leasing route. It’s going to start selling cars for €12,000 (US$15,695) and will rent or lease out the battery €80 ($105) per month. By the way, that’s for unlimited mileage.


 
bollore bluecar

The Bollore electric car undercuts the price of the Renault Zoe, which comes in at €13,650.

Other notable details regarding the Bollore include that it:

  • has four seats
  • has a range of 155 miles! (on a full charge)
  • can travel up to 75 mph.

Not bad, not bad at all.

I know that battery leasing hasn’t exactly taken off. However, it seems odd that people would have any significant aversion to it. We have a similar payment system for:

  • homes (whether we rent them or pay a monthly mortgage)
  • cell phone service/plans
  • internet
  • satellite TV
  • and other things.

But hey, I’m just the blogger. What do you think?

Image Credits: Bluecar

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Zachary Shahan (2300 Posts)

I'm the director of CleanTechnica, the most popular clean energy website in the world, and Planetsave, a leading green and science news site. I've been covering green news of various sorts since 2008, and I've been especially focused on solar energy, electric vehicles, bicycling, and wind energy for the past few years. You can also find my work on Scientific American, Reuters, Think Progress, GE's ecomagination site, several sites in the Important Media network, & many other places. To connect on some of your favorite social networks, go to zacharyshahan.com or click on some of the links below.


  • Otis11

    I know my personal reservation against battery rental is the payback period. Now this may have changed (actually, likely has changed) but when I ran the numbers a while back, I came to realize that the battery rental costs were actually slightly more expensive than the savings due to fuel and maintenance on a comparable car for an average driver.

    This made an ROI never occur so it was not in their economic interest to get an electric car. That has likely changed for the majority of drivers, but it still does cut into the payback period.

    For me personally, I’ve averaged 6k miles/year over the last 5 years… so no change in cars provides an economic incentive, and to my knowledge, there isn’t a car that fits my needs that makes an environmental incentive either. (Except maybe the VIA truck that I can’t afford and isn’t yet for sale to the general public… but even that is questionable on the carbon cycle payback at 6k miles/year…)

    • Bob_Wallace

      Some of us are small niche drivers and it will be some time before our EV/PHEV needs are met.

      Even though a round trip to town is around 120 miles for me I still only drive about 6k miles a year. And I have to have 4wd. That makes it impossible to justify moving to electric fuel at this point.

      Build for the masses. Sales/manufacturing volumes need to be high in order to bring prices down. They’ll get to the rest of us later.

      • Otis11

        Absolutely… But I still have about 7 years or so out of this truck. I suspect it will be a different story by then.

        • Bob_Wallace

          I just bought a used Toyota 4wd Tacoma with over 150,000 miles on it. With the amount I drive my PU (<2,000/year) I figure it's good for at least another 20 years.

          Even though I'm a major supporter of EVs I might be one of the last people to buy one. I put less than 6k on my other vehicle. It would be very hard to justify buying new for a while.

          Probably what will happen is that self-driving cars will become standard about the time I no longer am safe behind the wheel. That may be when I get my first EV.

          • Otis11

            Haha, yeah – that’s about my situation too.

  • yulianov

    hi “blogger”. The report is so good. I like it. Personally I think it could be a worldwide isssue and all green cars around the world will be fast in our cities.

    • http://zacharyshahan.com/ Zachary Shahan

      hi, “commenter.” thanks.

  • Madan Rajan

    Excellent. This car has not only Lithium Polymer battery, but also supercapacitor for faster regenerative energy capture.

    http://www.bluecar.fr/fr/pages-bollore-pininfarina/puissance-deux-groupes.aspx

  • Ronald Brakels

    My discount rate, how much extra you’d have to pay me to accept a dollar in a year’s time rather than right now, is 9%. I am unusual in that my discount rate is fairly constant. For most people it varies according to the situation. But we can still pretend that people have a single discount rate as long as we don’t forget that this is a simplification and start thinking people are machines rather than clever monkeys. My parents’ discount rate is probably around 5% and for some people it is 15% or 20% or higher. People with high discount rates will be attracted to leasing as it means they will have more money now and people with low discount rates will be attracted to owning batteries as it will give them more money later. There are a lot of people with high discount rates and so lots of people who will be attracted to leasing. Personally, I would crunch the numbers and work out which choice is best for me. (The fact that I crunch the numbers before I buy a pencil is probably why my discount rate is fairly constant. Not knowing what a discount rate is usually indicates that it’s not constant.)

    • http://zacharyshahan.com/ Zachary Shahan

      Awesome. Love it. :D

      Might even want to do a piece on discount rates!

      • Ronald Brakels

        A piece on discount rates is possible, but you’d better have the smelling salts ready. It such an exciting topic people tend to pass out when reading about it. (I know I do. Or maybe that’s just because this “Study Juice” my friend sold me is actually whiskey.)

        • http://zacharyshahan.com/ Zachary Shahan

          I’m sure that wouldn’t be the case with one of your pieces. Especially if it includes my little pony pics. ;)

  • http://twitter.com/tamikenn57 Tami Kennedy

    Not bad if they don’t get into warranty games.

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  • Sean

    Makes a big difference as the capital cost on cars is huge

    It also makes the fuel cost comparable with petrol cars, you pay the fuel cost at the time of use.