On 09/25/2014 07:47 PM, George Tyler via EV wrote: > Well, I am also a bit senior! Elon Musk wants to see an electric car > industry develop. Current new EV's are the only way in which most people can > get them, but they are too expensive for most people. The conversions could > cost less, there are companies doing conversions but not main stream. Tesla > (Elon) wants to see basically only electrics on the road, he could help many > here to get into the main stream market and further his aims by achieving a > critical mass. I like your sentiment but I don't think the argument works. A conversion is going to cost at least $15,000 plus the price of the car being converted. There is a lot of extra labor involved in getting the car de-gassified. And if you're doing the conversion for Joe Everybody, it can't be--as many of our conversions are--a rolling science experiment. That involves a lot of extra work and expense in figuring out things like transmissions and interfacing to the car's computers. And you end up with a vehicle that is probably only repairable by the conversion shop that did it, that's hard to get financing for, and that likely has a very low resale value.
In order to make it work on a massive scale you have to pick one or two models of cars so that you can streamline the process and make standardized components like battery racks. Choose the wrong car and you're dead because no one will buy it. Frankly I think that's part of what killed Solectria...who really wants a Geo Metro? An electric car industry is developing and it's going to be new cars. And the price is coming down. I am leasing a Smart ED for for which I paid $238 down and $124 per month. I've seen Leafs for $199/mo and a dealer in California is offering (a very limited number of) BMW i3's for $329 per month. There are options if you want an electric car. And we don't want to hit critical mass yet....the supply chain isn't mature enough to provide all those cars. But I think we're making progress and I believe EVs are not going away this time. --Rick _______________________________________________ UNSUBSCRIBE: http://www.evdl.org/help/index.html#usub http://lists.evdl.org/listinfo.cgi/ev-evdl.org For EV drag racing discussion, please use NEDRA (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NEDRA)
