Quote:
Originally Posted by ecofreak
I love how they can make an 110-mile range car in the 1990's yet take 4 years to come out with a proof-of-concept electric car that has a 40 mile range. They aren't marketing anything anymore. Anybody hear that the Volt might now be a series-drive hybrid?
Also, I can't convince my friends that you wouldn't need a car that had a range beyond 60 miles.
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I hate defending GM engineering, but I'm going to stand up for this one.
There is a large difference between building a $500,000 prototype and creating a mass produced vehicle that costs $20K-$30K. Quite simply when you have a team of engineers/researchers trying to nab every last bit of fuel economy out of project car, yes the end result should be amazing.
Now when you need to build an entire assembly line to produce a new product on a 6-7 year time scale you will not need meet the 50,000 man hours put into a prototype. Not to mention the car has to meet different standards both government regulated and consumer expectations. With over 25,000 pieces to a modern car it cannot be done to produce 40,000-80,000 vehicles that are top absolute peak performers. The car comes off the factory floor as a finished product in under 7 days. The system cannot be designed to make a perfect vehicle with tolerances. If team sat there and fine tuned every vehicle the time would jump from 7 days to month, the costs would go from 20K-30K to 100K-120K and no one would ever buy the vehicle.
Be happy that large scale companies are finally producing hybrid and electric vehicles that will get to the general public. Its something that should have been pushed before I was even born. But the cost of producing was just too much and the technology did not exist. The infrastructure to provide the batteries, to produce the electric motors, and ability to have a supply chain from stable companies took 15-20 years to develop. And quite honest, if it was for a massive push from laptop/notebooks/cell phones to conjure up producers of lithium, you current hybrids and electric cars would have
NEVER been produced.