975 NOK = US$ 200 / month

commute to work = 100 km = 62 miles
estimate 0.3 kWh/mile = 18.6 kWh/day
cheap electricity at night = $0.05/kWh = $0.93/day
(excluding fixed charges as already pay them now)
rental $200/month = $9.50/work day
total = $10.43/work day

gasoline regular today = $1.1/L = $4.18/gal
summer: Honda Civic CX 6L/100km
$6.60/work day
winter: Honda CRV 10L/100km
$11/work day

So the good news is that electricity used by the car is dirt cheap. The bad news is that even for my longish commute the battery rental cost is very high. Compared to my summer car it is too expensive. Comapred to my winter car it is about the same.

Now there are several other factors. My existing cars are paid for compared to additioanl chunck of change for a new Think. During severe winter weather days I couldn’t drive it while still paying for battery rental.

On the other hand there is little bit of less maintenance (oil and such). Motor should last foerever, but then it is rusting frame that kills cars here, not engines. If those $16K or thereabouts figures are correct it would be half the price of a Prius and even less compared to Volt.

The bottom line is that Think rental is no go until gasoline price roughly doubles. At that point my existing cars are costing:

summer: Honda Civic CX 6L/100km
$13.20/work day
winter: Honda CRV 10L/100km
$22/work day

By then battery will have a higher capacity *AND* will be cheaper, so then its cost will look favorable.

And this BS about there is not enough interest. Well duh, there was not enough interest few years back when gas price was half of what it is today. It is a different world today where only sky is a limit for oil price (actually with speculators buying oil futures maybe even the sky is not a limit). Of course there is plenty of interest. Nobody builds a house in burbs with less than 2 car garages. Therefore, it is trivial to have one BEV like this for city commutes and another longer range vechile for longer trips.

Clearly it is not in competition with Volt. On the contrary it is an excellent complement to Volt so long as doesn’t have a range extender but a bigger battery. As suggested it would be a great additiona to the Saturn line giving choice to all those who stated here that Volt is too expensive.

Not to mention enconomy of scale and reuse of existing work to use the same batteries and other bits (low current wipers, stereo, etc.)

So the fact that this car DOES NOT have a range extender is actually the selling feature. No engine to maintain, no oil/gas to mess with, etc. As for the limited range, in the worst case you get towed home. It should be clear to all that this is only a city car, so you cannot possibly be far away from a tow truck.

Now this could be a great entry level EV from GM. Then when you want to upgrade we have Volt, etc. GM *NEEDS* a car like this to capture large market share. Otherwise they risk missing most of the market due to Volt’s high cost.

Your heating and cooling idea sounds good as a way to save battery power for locomotion. In the 1930-40’s before many cars had heaters there were after market Arvin (brand name) gas heaters that could be installed. One advantage was instant heat, the engine did not have to heat up for there to be heat. This day and time I doubt if people would like to ride around with liquid gas burning in the passenger compartment, but the butane/propane cylinders with the right kind of safety designed into the system might be a good alternative.