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Will the Volt meet your transportation needs like an ICE SUV/sedan, or is it just a stop gap answer to the oil crisis? Are our expectations exceeding the reality of existing EV’s transportation capabilities?
If there is a local catastrophe (brown out, ice storm, hurricane, flood) that temporarily takes down the power grid, will its 6 gallon gas tank take you to safety if every other gas station is out of gas? We don’t know if unassisted steering, marginal A/C or heating, cramped back seating, lack of adequate luggage/weekly grocery shopping storage space will cause it to lose favor.
At this point in time it has unproven reliability. Lab testing cannot find all the “gotchas” lurking in the field. We don’t know if its batteries will quit or boil over in the dessert under heavy loads. We don’t know if certain combinations of extended thermal, mechanical, or vibration stress will damage the batteries. We don’t know if reliability/quality/supplier issues will cause shorts in the battery and prevent the ICE from starting up. All of the above could cause public relations disasters.
My suspicion is that another leap in battery/storage technology will be required to get EVs to the place where they truly meet our transportation needs. I also suspect that our expectations are overly optimistic for the rate of battery advances and price reductions.
There is a tendency to have expectations of magical qualities to new technologies.
(We have been conditioned by the rapid advances in computer, electronics, and memory storage to expect the same rate of advance in other technologies. This is an erroneous expectation. The former advances are driven by the 40 years of line width reductions tied to advances in photolithography and increases in wafer size, i.e. Moore’s Law. This is unique and applies to the semiconductor/memory industries only. What is the rate of advance we see on toasters and vacuum cleaners? I expect advances in batteries to be midway between these extremes. )
If there is a local catastrophe (brown out, ice storm, hurricane, flood) that temporarily takes down the power grid, will its 6 gallon gas tank take you to safety if every other gas station is out of gas? We don’t know if unassisted steering, marginal A/C or heating, cramped back seating, lack of adequate luggage/weekly grocery shopping storage space will cause it to lose favor.
At this point in time it has unproven reliability. Lab testing cannot find all the “gotchas” lurking in the field. We don’t know if its batteries will quit or boil over in the dessert under heavy loads. We don’t know if certain combinations of extended thermal, mechanical, or vibration stress will damage the batteries. We don’t know if reliability/quality/supplier issues will cause shorts in the battery and prevent the ICE from starting up. All of the above could cause public relations disasters.
My suspicion is that another leap in battery/storage technology will be required to get EVs to the place where they truly meet our transportation needs. I also suspect that our expectations are overly optimistic for the rate of battery advances and price reductions.
There is a tendency to have expectations of magical qualities to new technologies.
(We have been conditioned by the rapid advances in computer, electronics, and memory storage to expect the same rate of advance in other technologies. This is an erroneous expectation. The former advances are driven by the 40 years of line width reductions tied to advances in photolithography and increases in wafer size, i.e. Moore’s Law. This is unique and applies to the semiconductor/memory industries only. What is the rate of advance we see on toasters and vacuum cleaners? I expect advances in batteries to be midway between these extremes. )
