The price of the Leaf would be essentially the same whether it has a 75 mile range or if it had a 125 mile range. The latter would be the low drag car – so BOTH the initial cost would be lower and the running costs per mile would be lower with a low drag design.

That is why I’m building my open source design CarBEN EV5: my intent is to have a 5 seat EV with a 50-55kWh pack that can go 300-400 miles on a single charge.

That will be a beautiful car, I think.

Neil

I disagree. Cost per mile is what will move people to EVs. To make that movement significant we need a threshold range of about 180 miles. That with <20 minute, 90% recharging makes an EV a 'drive all day' option.

Over 200 mile range is not likely a big selling feature if one has to drive a 'weird' car to get it.

Over time our cars might evolve to look like bananas on wheels (to borrow a description from Lovins), but short term I suspect market resistance would be very high.

Seven and the Dolphin go over 200 miles on ~32-33kWh packs – the Dolphin has a lead acid pack! If the Dolphin had even the 60kWh pack from the Model S, it would go close to 400 miles.

Beauty is what beauty does.

The issue is how large an evolutional jump the market will support. If a “normal looking” EV uses 0.3 kWh per mile which means a cost of 4c/mile using 13c/kWh electricity would people drive a “weird looking” EV that uses 0.2 kWh per mile to save 1.4c/mile? For the average 13,000 mile per year driver that would be only a $15 per month savings.

Many people love the looks of the Tesla S and I think really helps to drive sales. I’m not sure sales would be a good if the S looked like Dave’s Dolphin….

The thing is: if a car can deliver 200-400+ miles per charge, I think it will look great! We can’t expect conventional designs to perform very well, because they have been based on a wasteful system – gasoline is so energy packed that designers have been spoiled, in a sense; and they have grown lazy.

Form has to follow function. No one complains about how airplanes look, right? Cars need to be (almost) as focused on aerodynamics as do airplanes. And once we see how well they work, we will wonder why we liked those fossil fueled behemoths in the first place.

Neil

That would allow someone to plug in and be able to leave their car parked for an hour before they need to move it and give someone else access.

Imagine how restaurants and retailers like to bring more traffic into their businesses. Customer acquisition has value. It would make sense for businesses to install charging stations in their parking lots and offer a good price for hooking up and juicing.

“The goal is to make owning an EV just as affordable as owning a gasoline vehicle within the next ten years.”

Studies show that over the life of the vehicle, total cost of ownership of TODAY’S electric vehicles is actually the same, or in many cases MUCH lower than, the total cost of ownership of a comparable internal combustion engine vehicle. Perhaps the author meant to use “buying” in place of “owning.” It’s an important distinction, and aside from environmental considerations, this is a key reason why more people than ever are considering purchasing EVs today.

The Aptera had a very low drag coefficient but I doubt any ability to sell in significant numbers due to its unusual looks.

A private entity building the supercharger station will only drive the cost of electricity more than the price of gasoline per mile when charging from these stations and the EV owners would be reluctant to use these stations resulting in a lose-lose proposition. The private owner of the supercharger station will go bankrupt even if the government pays entirely for the installation.

If the Leaf was as low drag as the EV1, it would have a range of 120-140 miles. I think it would sell a lot better if it had that sort of range.

Neil