I recently read an article in Hybrid Cars which includes an interview with Xavier Mosquet, a co- author of a recent report by the Boston Consulting Group called "The Comeback of the Electric Car" They paint a gloomy picture to consumers about the hidden costs of electric cars. The group was part of an auto task force advising President Obama on the auto manufactures bail out. The report is a sloppy bit of work and highly biased towards ICE cars due to some glaring omissions.
1)The true costs of oil are not represented which make the report highly skewed. Oil is highly subsidized so the title is very misleading. They base their report on the pump costs alone. Add in a few wars for oil and the picture would be very different.
2) The costs of ownership do not include service costs which are quite high for ICE vehicles and would be substantially lower for an electric car. Also resale values for an electric car would be higher due to the longevity of electric motors.
3) Cheaper batteries are coming and this report only covers Lithium Ion and at an inflated price. Large scale NiMH batteries, as in the EV1 gen2 and RAV4, would be much cheaper, and actually available, if only Cobasis (majority owned by Chevron) would licence the technology or at least sell the batteries on the open market. Why not make the cost of batteries a variable in the graphs like the costs of different ICE technologies? Hmmm?
Someone didn't do their homework.
A shoddy report at best, anti-electric propaganda at worst.
1 comment:
http://www.engadget.com/2009/04/23/engadget-shreds-on-the-zero-s-all-electric-motorcycle-with-video/#continued
Thoughy you may like this.
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