Thursday, July 3, 2008

The Economist's opinion on electric vehicles: WRONG!



Perhaps The Economist should check it's math.

In the Economist's opinion this electric vehicle:


and less like this gas powered vehicle




A friend who is also interested in electric cars told me about a special report on the future of energy in the "venerable" Economist magazine.  I scoffed, and told him that I wouldn't trust anything written in that or any mainstream media about electric cars.

I got a chance to peruse that article yesterday and was unpleasantly unsurprised by the opinion piece which acts as an introduction to the special report. "Battery-powered cars, meanwhile, are slightly comic: more like milk-floats than Maseratis."  
The section of the article on electric vehicles was actually quite accurate but it seems from this quote that the anonymous author-bot did not actually read It's own article or any thing about current electric vehicles. Hilarious because the Tesla (which is mentioned in the report) runs circles around any Maserati you might care to bring on. Apparently The Economist does not have a high opinion of itself.

By the way,
Maserati: 19.2mpg  0-60: 5.6 seconds
Tesla:     200mpg*  0-60: 3.2 seconds
Milk float: 300qpm** 0-60: never

*calculated from kwh
**quarts per mile