However, I think you sell people short. Some will be buying the Volt for image, but more than you might imagine will be doing the actual cost analysis (if the target of 60,000 or so a year is reached anyway). Simply because its a 40,000 dollar compact car. Majority of people who can afford it, didn’t get to the point to afford it by being stupid.

The concept has been in work in Aviation for dozens of years.

Almost all Airbus planes have been produced in a similar fashion (not truely outsourced, but two offices speaking different languages, working with disticnt different parts and goals might as well be different companies). Even Boeing has traditionally shipping large subassemblies of 737/747/777 across countires and oceans.

The issue with the 787 (and to a lessor extent the A380) is not fundamental concept, but the level it was taken to… as long as Fisker is in charge of the engineering design and integration, things should be okay. If they outsource too much of the engineering design, then they will have similar issues as the aviation companies.

In a BEV situation, a battery needs to be sized to cover 95% of daily driving distances for someone to consider owning a BEV. The data out of the PHEV testing suggests this number is north of 60 miles for an average US driver and I think Nissan has a good pegging at around 100 miles on LA04. This leads to having ~18-20 kWh of usable battery.

In comparison, a successful PHEV can only cover 50-75% of driving miles. GM has gone high with 40 miles ~78% and Toyota seems to be aiming at the low end (not sure they are even hitting 50%). They have usage batterys of 8kWh-10kWh for the 75% number and probably 3-4 kWh for the 50% number.

The first 4 kWh you put in a car, it saves approx 50 gallons/year per kWh over a 50 MPG car. The next 4 kWh you put in a car, each additional kWh only saves approx 25 gallons/year per kWh over a 50 MPG car. The last 10 kWh you put in to make it a full BEV only saves approx 8 gallons/year per kWh!

Overall, its better for society to build PHEV 10/20/40s than to make full BEV. Better use of reasoures, and at least PHEV 10/20 should be significantly cheaper than full BEV leading to faster adoption.

So, I need a BEV to fill the gap between too far for cycling, but not quite far enough that I need a legitimate car. This is worth $20,000 to me? Maybe Nissan can get the scooter store to sell these things and have them subsidized by medicare as mobility devices and I can get one free.

Edit – Just thought of something, all the people who live in highly developed urban areas with no access to charging could really use these things, except it isn’t practical to own personal transportation in places like NY, you don’t have a way to charge it, and you’d likely only want to use it when driving far outside the city since it’s easy to get around inside town without a car. Otherwise, this is the perfect device for city dwellers.