Electric vehicles could spark huge savings for NZ

The report seriously underestimated the performance of lithium-ion batteries, particularly LiFePO4 cells. US$1000/kWh? 1000 cycles?

For at least the past 3 years LiFePO4 cells, with 3000 to 5000 cycle life and costing under US$330/kWh, have been available. This is an important point since battery cost and performance are the critical factors that will alow EVs to compete with gas guzzlers.

Yawn - I am sick of all these people with no knowledge, putting EVs down. I use a light EV (a Green Machine TC) around town every day, at a cost of less than 1/2 a cent a KM, yes that's under 50c per 100km. The makers say 'Auckland to Wellington for the price of a cup of coffee!' So please don't bleat on about electric vehicles unless you have some experience with them.

Omg the ignorance of some of these comments... "the simplicity of an electric motor is a drawback".. thats just retarded. I am converting a Mazda MX5 to electric for a little less than the original cost of the car, its my commuter/fun burn rubber car. It needs to travel 50km max @ 100kph in a day, I'm designing it for 100km. There is no reason for me to have a 300km range. If I take a long trip i'll use my SUV or rent a car. I'm using LiFePO4 batteries like many of the big car companies, these cells have a life expectancy over 3000 cycles*, thats more than the average life of a car.. Charging will be done at night to take advantage of cheap rates when the grid is under utilised. The way I see it, is electric cars are not here to replace ICE cars altogether, that will never happen unless there is a huge leap in battery tech. However, electric cars are perfect commuter cars which is the vast majority of trips for most people. And if you want the best of both worlds, get a plug-in hybrid.

The costs of owning an electric car are different than petrol. The mechanical maintainance costs are almost nil. Electric motors are very reliable and should they fail much cheaper than an ICE to replace. Battery replacement is an issue, but the costs have been coming down to reasonable levels, especially those sized for commuter travel where electric cars will first make headway. Environment benefits are significant not just CO2 but local air quality which should reduce linked diseases. Should not overlook our green image especially with many europeans being environmentally conscious who make up a large part of our tourism income. Electric cars are becoming affordable now but with mass manufacturer will eventually be much cheaper than ICE cars. To get an idea of how simple and practical electric cars are look at evalbum.com and diyelectriccar.com (non-commercial sites), they range from the very cheap to high-end racing vehicles and all mostly constructed in garages with off-the-shelf components.

Its interesting the under researched opinions some people have. Electric cars aren't "radical" they have been around as long as internal combustion. Some modern battery packs can last over 10,000 charges. Electric motors are as reliable as most people say they are. As far as the charging of electric cars putting strain on the national grid, that isn't an issue. Most people will be charging their cars at night. The demand on the national grid at night is low so its cheaper to charge then and there is lots of spare capacity in the network. If anything it will make electricity cheaper because the power companies are getting better utilisation of their generators and transmission networks because they are getting used day and night rather than just during the day. There is an all electric sports car made in America called the Tesla Roadster that has statistics of 392km range, electronically limited to 200km/hr, 7 year/160,000km life expectancy for the battery pack and a full battery charge in 3.5hrs. 0-100km/hr time of 3.9 seconds. That will beat most sports cars around today for acceleration and also handling. The myth about electric cars being slow and impractical is just that, a myth. They are the future of motoring and the sooner we realise that and start changing the less it will cost in the future to add things like charging stations. Ryan Gibbs

Great for city cars. But in order to get reasonable range and performance, pure electric vehicles are of very light construction and small and so can they offer the crash protection that Land Transport keep urging us to buy? Once-small cars (Honda Civic, for example) have gradually become mid-sized due to the need to build-in crumple zones and air bags. Other issues about electric have already been raised - the Green lobby don't want us to use any more electricity unless we can produce it by some kind of magic spell!

tsk tsk tsk, listen to the naysayers - coming out swinging their carefully calculated naysaying bats. look fella's, back when cars were invented, they were hardly the engineering marvel they are today - they were slow, noisy, smelly and polluting converted horse-drawn carriages. let's just get started, and i'll wager 100 years from today they'll be looking back on li-ion electric cars with fascination.

i'm all for it, go china, make it cheap for us so we can all get one.

;)

To be atractive to customers an electric car will have be be able to reach 100kph and have a range of at least 300km - more if it requires an overnight recharge, and it would have to be in the same price range as a fossil fuel burner. There is also the problem of the extra demand an electric vehicle fleet would place on our power generation infrastructure, either we'd have to bite the bullet and build more hydro dams and wind farms or it'll be time to say hello to the nuclear option.

I'd also like to add that questions should be asked whether people are really going to give up their internal combustion engines in favor of a radical solution such as the electric car when the benefits to the environment are a comparatively neglible 9 percent? And like I've said before, the number of charge cycles the battery can handle is finite - at around 1000 for lithium ion. And they are very dear to replace! So you can through reduced maintenance costs out the window as well.

I'd also like to add that questions should be asked whether people are really going to give up their internal combustion engines in favor of a radical solution such as the electric car when the benefits to the environment are a comparatively neglible 9 percent? And like I've said before, the number of charge cycles the battery can handle is finite - at around 1000 for lithium ion. And they are very dear to replace! So you can through reduced maintenance costs out the window as well.