Czar Nicholas II of Russia
Car Czar Consulting says: Even the main stream business media is now focused on Boulder Electric Vehicle’s versatile Class 4 Truck. (see below).
Plug it in!
What’s Driving ‘Green’ Cars Now?
When $4 a gallon gasoline spooked American consumers out of their big SUVs in the summer of 2008, car makers realized they had to start getting serious about “green” cars.
Manufacturers are still serious about green cars, even though average gas prices are below $3 a gallon in most of the country. Now what’s driving the U.S. market toward new technology are government regulators—which is evident at this week’s auto show in Washington, D.C.
Washington Auto Show Boasts Green Tech
With regulators as their target audience, auto makers are showing off new efforts to wean cars from oil at this year’s Washington Auto Show. WSJ’s Joe White takes a look at the offerings, including a delivery van to a tiny subcompact runs on batteries.
The Washington show is billing itself this year as “The Automotive Seat of Power.” The government does, after all, have controlling ownership stakes in two of the three Detroit auto makers—General Motors Co. and Chrysler LLC—and the Obama administration’s pending fuel-economy regulations are dictating product strategies for all the industry’s players.
Here are three points about the greening of the auto industry evident from the Washington show and surrounding events.
It’s not the technology, it’s the cost.
The technology exists to make electric or hybrid-electric vehicles that can deliver credible performance, carry four or five adults or enough packages to keep a delivery driver busy.
The big problem, yet to be solved, is that alternatives to conventional vehicle technology still cost too much. Putting a lithium-ion battery pack in a car can boost the cost by $10,000 or more compared to a vehicle outfitted with a comparable, internal-combustion engine.
BMW AG’s U.S. sales arm recently conducted a sales experiment that offers some insight into how big an obstacle this is. BMW offered diesel versions of its X5 sport utility vehicle, priced about $4,500 above the gasoline versions. The company didn’t get many takers—until it offered a credit that wiped out the diesel price premium. Then customers began snapping up the diesel X5’s, says Jim O’Donnell, president of BMW’s North American operations.
BMW will forge ahead with plans to offer an electric “Mega City vehicle” in the next five years. But, like other vehicle makers, BMW will want the government’s help in the form of tax breaks and regulatory credits to make the numbers work.
Consumers will have to change along with the cars.
Americans are used to judging cars by a few metrics. Miles per gallon. Horsepower. The size or displacement of the engine. How far the vehicle goes on a tank of gas. Most Americans don’t think much about how far they are going to drive, because they can always stop and get more gas.
Boulder Electric Vehicle’s delivery truck weighs half as much as a normal van of comparable size, and runs on electric power alone.
In the green car future, electric vehicles will compel owners to think about how far they drive every day—and adjust for cold days, which can cut 20% to 30% off a vehicle’s range. Most of us don’t drive in a day more than the 100-mile range of a typical electric car. But some of us do.
That’s one reason the commercial and government-fleet market could be critical to electric-vehicle makers’ hopes of ramping up high-volume sales, and bringing down costs. The Postal Service, which is investigating converting part of its fleet to electric vehicles, or rival delivery companies such as FedEx, can buy an electric delivery van and put it on a predictable route that returns the vehicle every night to a depot outfitted with a commercial-grade charging station. This is why electric commercial vehicles such as the UPS-truck-sized Boulder Electric delivery van are featured at the Washington auto show.
The biggest threat to Washington’s green dreams? Cheap gas.
Sales of small cars tend to rise and fall with gas prices. Without a sustained price increase, or a gas tax, that’s going to be a challenge for manufacturers investing heavily in compact and subcompact models, including GM and Ford Motor Co.
Another challenge: Car makers also are investing billions in engine and transmission technology to create cars for the next decade that are luxurious, spacious and fuel efficient.
Vehicles that burn petroleum will be the bulk of new cars for years. Cars that had eight-cylinder engines will come with six-cylinder motors. Six-cylinder cars will be redesigned to run well with four-cylinder engines. This will challenge consumers to put a higher value on cars with smaller engines.
Objectively, a BMW 740i with a 315-horsepower, six-cylinder engine, planned for 2011, is a quick, powerful car. But BMW hasn’t offered a six cylinder in its top of the line car since 1992, because cheap gas made it easy for consumers to demand bigger engines.
