Karl on Cars

In the next 48 hours you're going to hear a lot of squawking about electric cars by various "green" groups. That's because the California Air Resources Board (CARB) is meeting on March 27th (Friday) to possibly reinstate the zero-emissions vehicle (ZEV) mandate they abandoned back in 2003.

I find this fascinating because the same justifications these groups will use to demand electric cars are the same reasons it should be clear why EVs aren't viable. People associated with Tesla Motors and the movie Who Killed the Electric Car will be on hand in Sacramento today to tow the EV line. Let's look at each group's claim.

1. Electric Vehicles Were Proven Viable by a Movie, Dammit! -- As I discussed in a blog post from June 2006, Who Killed the Electric Car did more to validate the EV1's intrinsic failings than to convince me of some "conspiracy" to destroy the car. The EV1 was too expensive and utterly useless for 99-plus percent of the population. Thus a tiny number of people actually wanted one, and GM had no choice but to abandon the program after spending a billion dollars (much of it taxpayer money) on developing the four-wheeled paper weight.

2. Tesla is Proving the Electric Car's Viability, Dammit! -- Once again, I've posted a couple blogs on Tesla's "progress" in creating an electric sports car. This was the company that was supposed to redefine automobile production by shrugging off the bonds of those "stupid, old-world automakers" and start with a clean slate. They were going to do for the car what Apple did for the PC.

But it hasn't really worked out that way, has it? The Tesla roadster has been constantly delayed, and every time they revise the car's rollout plan the price has gone up while the range and performance have gone down. Like the EV1, I don't know how many people are looking for a $100,000 car with seating capacity for two, a 200-mile range, and a zero-to-60 time of 6 seconds. Probably not many, which is good because Tesla is only producing one a week. So in 10 years Tesla will have helped 500 people save the planet. That should offset the rising pollution from India and China over the next decade, dontcha think?

Just like the 100-mpg carburetor and the 40 mpg full-size SUV, the viable electric car doesn't exist, and probably never will. Increases in battery, motor and weight-saving technology might some day produce an electric vehicle that can carry four passengers at least 100 miles between charges while costing less than $30,000. But until that vehicle exists, and can be produced in high volumes, electric vehicles will not represent a viable alternative to the internal combustion engine.

And if you think automakers can simply snap their fingers and start producing this dream EV tomorrow just ask the folks at Tesla how easy it is to leave the internal-combustion engine behind.