I could not find anything on this topic in the forum. If there is, please merge this post into that thread...
Anyway, Honda is probably going to release a new Fit EV (Electric Vehicle) in 2012 in the US.

I just have to wait and see when or if it is going to be released in the EU too.

Any thoughts about the car? I think it looks just like the todays Fit GD8 expept for the new front.

Would anyone here buy one?

If you bought it, would you keep the petrol car too or would you swap it for the EV?

 

No, the range is too short. Can't replace a regular car with this plug in.

 

i dont care for electric vehicles in general. you save gas $, but your utility bill at home goes up, your neighbors also get EV's, then the entire community gets a black-out because the grid wasn't designed to power electric cars.

you waste more energy making electricity, not helping the environment. battery..also a hazardous waste. safety... are these electric cars even safe? people get all hyped about saving gas money they forget the basics.

there's really no benefit to owning an electric car yet.

 

Centralized electrical generation, even including the inefficiencies in transmission lines and charging, are still much more efficient than car engines.

 

Yah, taking a bicycle is better for the body and environment.

 

Electric vehicles also has layers of circuit protections built in. As soon as it senses any electrical leakage or any abnormalities, the car will very likely be in protection/safety mode and not start. I think the overall car's circuit tolerance for errors is less than that of traditional fuel engines.

I have a co-worker who owned just a hybrid. About once every two months, her car will not start because it detected a fault somewhere in the circuits. (Hybrid cars relied more on electrical system than traditional cars). Few mechanics knows how to fix it. She needs the car towed to her dealership every time and getting sick of it.

Electric cars will have more or total reliance on the electrical systems in the car... I will be worried if I have an EV as my main vehicle now as someone previously posted that we do not have the mature infrastructure yet to support electric cars. Guess, someone has to be the guinea pig

 

The one queation nobady wants to answer is where the electric generating capacity to charge a few million electric vehicles every night is going to come from. America doesn't have enough power generation to handle demand right now. We build power lines to import electricity from Canada, and two days of 90F+ weather causes the power grid to fail when the air conditioners come on.

The people who want electric cars are probably the same people who scream and cry when a new electric generation plant is proposed anywhere near them.

 

Umm, since electric cars charge at night, when demand is at a major lull, it won't be that taxing on peak capacity.

 

yah, typical answer...but here's the catch.

if it's just YOU charging in your community at night that's okay. look around, count how many cars are in your community (or apartment complex). now imagine how much current the car will be demanding while they all charge at night.

from wat i read, the grid can not support it...

 

Well, the grid can't support a lot of things and will need to be upgraded anyway. It's not like it's a permanent fixture that never needs maintenance anyway.

But what this article says is that it'll involve upgrading local transformers, and not something that will involve additional powerplants.

 

yah, but who's going to pay for it? it's going to come out of people paying more taxes... other than impressing the nerds over at CNet and stuff, these electric cars are just a burden.

hybrids are atleast sort of self-contained.

i dont think full electric vehicles is the answer to our dependency on oil amoungst many many other things...

 

Why you would expect today's grid to handle tomorrow's EV load is beyond me. Do you think everyone on your street is going to buy an EV at the same time? While simultaneously thinking that it won't happen because of the problems you cited? Sounds like a straw man argument to me.

Obviously electric cars being everywhere and being viable is a ways off. That's called progress and it happens slowly. Did you have a bad breakup with someone who drove an electric car?

 

Umm, local transformers are owned by the utility company and paid for by the consumers, not tax dollars. Sure, if we were talking about something that required more transmission lines or power plants then there's a public investment issue. That's not the case. We're talking about using excess capacity (night time loads are much less than daytime loads), with some minor modifications like slightly more robust local transformers. What's the burden here?

 

For some reason he has a stick up his ass about electric cars in general. The logic is weak with this one. Practically nobody has an electric car and he's already to the part where the grid gets overwhelmed. And last time I checked, anything worth doing takes a bit of work to get there. And yes, they are safe. And yes, they are more efficient than gas cars (even now). And no, suggesting a bicycle is even more efficient / good for the environment is not a reasonable response to being proven wrong.

 

yah, but i mean indirectly. wait until the goverment gets involved with kickbacks, etc. you will be paying more for your utility to support the grid if these EV's take off.

EV's look great on paper but in reality i dont have the warm fuzzy...at least not yet.

 

They will pop up in more affluent neighborhoods at first and the strain of all of them being charged at once will prove to be too much of a strain on the transformers in those areas... Or so said an oil company executive.

 

yah, but the interview i saw a few months ago was the electric utility executive that was concerned about the aged system being able to handle the loads. he clearly stated that if more than a few families in a community charged their cars at night at the same time, there will not be enough power to support... and as of today, not enough funding to update their system to support the potential demand.

it kinda reminded me of the old bridges in the US that collapsed or on the
verge of collapsing due to poor management and insufficient funding.

i dont sense the car companies and utility companies are in sync... do you? i will leave it at that.

 

Right, the local transformers need to get swapped out. Not new lines run, or more power plants built. Just a few larger transformers added. And based on my experience, the current ones blow out every few years anyway. It's not a problem of lack of supply, as daytime loads are still going to be much higher.

 

My son was a tower worker that worked in telecommunications for 11 years and for the last 8 he has been with a company that is in the process of upgrades of power lines towers and other equipment... He recently put together a motorized bicycle but it runs on gasoline.

 

At the risk of being ridiculed, I am going to suggest that if there's not enough electric power from the grid to charge all our EV OR charging EV via plugging into household power is going to get expensive, some creative souls may resort to purchase home gas power generators eg portable Honda generators powered by diesel or gas that we used during power outage to generate electricity to charge their electric vehicles. There may come a point where many homes with EV in the neighborhood has gas powered generators humming in the background to charge up electric cars. Sorry, if I said something stupid... I can't help it