Let’s see, where to start. President Obama wants to have a million electric cars on the roads by 2015. Interesting idea, but not very practical, I would say. As I’ve mentioned before in previous articles, electric cars are inhibited by two major concerns. One is the extremely limited range, and the other is a staggering price tag. To offset the latter, our President is planning to offer a $7500 tax credit for buying one. That would bring the actual cost of a $32,800 Nissan Leaf down to $25,300 (assuming you paid cash for it). Let’s think about this from a practical point of view. If you financed one of these cars at 7.5% interest for 60 months, with a $5000 trade in allowance, you’d be paying roughly $574 a month for a car that can only go (if you are lucky) 50 miles before you have to recharge it. This can take up to 17 hours. A trip from Fayetteville to Little Rock and back would take 6 days, assuming you could find someplace to plug it in. You get very many electrics on the road hotels and restaurants will have to start charging for recharging. It would create a new revenue stream for them, I suppose. Instead of a parking meter, you could have a “charging meter”. Might add a whole new definition to the term “charge card”.
These cars would be best suited to those of us who live not in the big congested cities like Los Angeles or Dallas or London, but in the small towns of around 75,000 population. Why? Simple…less traffic and shorter commutes. If you have to make a 40 mile commute across Dallas in the summer while running the AC, you’d run the risk of depleting your battery before you got there! The town where I live is about 65,000 and even if you live at one end and your job is at the most distant point possible at the other end of town, you’re only 10 miles away. You could drive your Leaf to work and back, to the market and even out for an evening without having to worry about getting stuck with a dead battery and only have to charge it overnight every couple of days. That would make a huge impact on air quality and the amount of gasoline as a whole these million cars in the President’s proposal would use. But you and I both know that won’t happen. How many families in this country with the economy in the shape it’s in now could afford to buy a car with a nearly $600 a month payment just to go to work and back? We are being practical here folks…I’m not talking about Tyson and Wal-Mart executives here. I’m talking about the people that work in the factories, mills, and processing plants. The guy who changes your oil, cuts your hair, and stocks the grocery shelves. The lady behind the cash register, who waits your table, or takes care of your kid at daycare. How many of these folks could lay down $574 a month for a car payment, let alone the insurance for these things?
In the first paragraph I made mention of a trade-in worth $5000. Let’s explore this for a minute. For this example we will assume that car is paid for, is in reasonably good condition and gets 20 mpg. At $3 a gallon for gasoline, one month’s payment on the electric would buy enough fuel for you to drive this car for 3826 miles. If gasoline went up to $5 per gallon, you could still buy enough to drive 2300 miles…for the cost of one payment on the electric. There is no way that buying one of these things makes any economic sense. If you are wealthy enough to afford a fashionable toy, then by all means, go for it.
In a previous edition, I put forth my concerns about how much damage to the environment is done by just building these things, and the fossil fuels consumed in the process. All that is hidden behind the “green” movement’s hype and nonsense. If this is your only car, you certainly don’t want to live in a hurricane zone, or any part of the country prone to ice storms that cause widespread power outages. Can you imagine trying to evacuate your family from a coastal area during a hurricane warning in a vehicle that has a 50 mile driving range? What happens if the power is off for a week?
Don’t misunderstand me; I’m not picking on Nissan in particular. The Leaf is probably the least expensive and most practical of the all the full electrics out there. What I am saying is that the so-called “plug in electric” will be a fad. Unless battery technology changes considerably and very quickly, this idea will die a quick death.
