My preferred transport for the past 18 years has been sub-ton ’80s Hondas whose only relationship to your comments is the cost of dealing well with rust issues. I’m saving up for a MkI Insight which I figure can get a PHEV conversion at some point, and in future years get a EREV/BEV conversion since Insights don’t know how to rust and have already often proven as eternally reliable as the mid-80s Hondas I’m used to. Adding xEVs to America’s Disposable Society’s list of ingredients is not much of an answer to anything IMHO. Disposable, low resale value cars via low-grade engineering is what brought the American car industry to this point in the first place, and why I switched to Hondas so long ago. While I understand xEVs are seen by industry as much more like laptop computers than ICE cars regarding reliability and upgrades, IMHO it is vital that an xEV, especially BEV, typically prove as reliable as an old Honda or a good memory chip especially for non-battery components. There is no reason for this to not be the case. Mass adoption will be determined by earned reputation.

While you are correct that almost noone keeps a car for more than ten years, and most cars are junked before they see a decade of use, it a car’s ability to keep going well past that decade mark if asked to that is key to market perception of that car. That is a main reason Toyota eventually starting out-selling GM.

The main concern of most MkI Insight purchasers and would-be purchasers is the battery pack, not the rest of the car. This is how it must be for vehicles with a more solid-state nature than purely ICE vehicles. As folks expect compact flash -based hard drives to be more efficient and reliable than spinning-disk hard drives (while costing more), xEVs must earn a reputation for utter, total reliability.

The engineering around battery packs must not be lifetime-limited to match the battery pack. That will kill the future of xEVs.

Re:
wwskinn3 Says:
January 7th, 2009 at 3:27 pm

“I’m still waiting for the first wrecked one at the junk yard so I can get the components. Perhaps put it in an old Mustang II.”

NNNNOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!! What a perfect way to keep us tethered to Desert Islam’s oil, if an oversized Pinto is what you want EVs associated with! Uuuurrrrgghhhhhhh!!!!!

Regards,
Roger

And vice versa – everybody shall know that EV if become real issue will be tool of pressing oil demand and consequently oil prices down. And again – fuel tax in US is absolutely necessary and will help avoiding blackmailing of western world. Free trade is O.K. but only on fair basis.