Making Electric Cars Cheaper Than Gas Cars

Within 20 years, 86 percent of light-vehicles sold in the U.S. could be electric vehicles; but only by following this prescription.

A U.C. Berkeley study found that Americans want something like their cell phone plan for electric cars. If they don’t have to worry about their batteries, then most Americans would prefer electric cars.

If the customer is always right, then more of the automakers planning electric cars should be looking at battery leasing; with battery swaps available for long-distance travel. Customers would own the car, but pay a per-mile charge to lease the battery.

Here’s how this would make EVs cheaper than gasoline cars:

The study proposes that if battery prices are excluded from the upfront cost of the car, (the way ongoing fueling costs now are excluded from the upfront cost of a gasoline car), and with the $7,500 electric vehicle credit, EVs would have lower upfront cost than gas cars.

The monthly cost to rent the battery and pay for charging it could be 13 cents lower per mile than gas cars per mile. Consumers will buy and own their car and subscribe to energy, including the use of the battery, which would be charged by the mile driven.

Winners and losers

To build the infrastructure for battery charging and swapping systems over the next few decades, would cost $320 billion, the study found. (Or to put that another way – there’s $320 billion to be made in building this new infrastructure, bringing $320 billion into the economy. )

Savings to the economy would amount to health-related savings of $205 billion, as less vehicle pollution reduces the incidence of asthma and other respiratory diseases. (Or put another way; health related industry profits would fall as fewer people buy inhalers and so on.) So, there are winners and losers.

Vehicle-related emissions would be reduced 62 percent (from 2005 levels), provided electric vehicles are powered by clean sources of electricity, the study found. Current oil imports of 3.7 million barrels a day from the Middle East and Venezuela would be eliminated.

Read more . . .

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Tags: battery prices, electric cars, electric vehicle, electric vehicles, gas cars, gasoline car, gasoline cars, Innovation, oil imports, respiratory diseases, sources of electricity, swaps, vehicle pollution, winners and losers

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 9th, 2009 at 2:32 pm and is filed under Automotive, Innovation, Project Energy, environment. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.