Electric Momentum

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Sunday May 11, 2008 - Electric Momentum - With Gas prices in the US creeping over the $4.00 mark and people in the oil industry now begging to talk about the oil peak occurring sooner rather than later it seems like there is a growing explosion of EV research going on.

This weak I saw news articles about BMW and Audi both working on electric cars and Smart, who is already running a trial of an electric version in the UK has just announced it is going to expand the trial by using Lithium batteries starting next year.  The BMW offering will be a city car and will probably be sold under the name Isetta.  So far there is no real information about the car but those who remember the bubble cars of the 1950s can get an idea of what the Isetta may look like.  As for Audi, Rupert Stadler, CEO of Audi, in a recent interview in Frankfurt said that Audi would have an electric car in the next five to ten years. 

It seems like just about every major automobile manufacturer is going electric and they are lining up in two camps, Plug-in Hybrids and Battery Electric Vehicles.  There is one notable exception to this; Honda.  Honda is still pushing fuel cell vehicles expecting to begin a limited lease program to the public of its Clarity FCV later this year.  In his recent news letter Bill Moore from EV World speculated that Honda probably has an R&D program for battery electric vehicles in progress but is not saying anything about it.  I tend to agree with Bill Moore, a company like Honda can't afford to put all its eggs in one basket and the cost of a BEV R&D program would be cheap insurance against backing the wrong alternative fuel.

Renault has also been in the news again with speculation that they have done a deal with Israel and Project Better World to become the exclusive supplier of thousands of electric cars.  Renault is denying that but they do seem to be the major contender for supplying most of the vehicles for both the Israel and Demark projects.

Venturi has also been in the News recently and the news wasn't good.  They have once again slipped the production of their Fetish electric sports car as they continue to tweak the car to reduce weight and improve performance.  I have no doubt that Venturi will be able to sell all the cars it wants to produce but they really need to stop messing and get the car to their customers.

This week Tesla opened its first service center and showroom in on Santa Monica Blvd. in West LA.  Continuing a long tradition they invited many Los Angeles residents who are prominent in the EV movement but ignored evfinder.com even though their dealership is less than 5 miles from where I sit writing this blog.  I drove by there yesterday morning and the showroom appeared empty except for a single roadster sitting in the window.  Since they are already backlogged by 15 months this didn't surprise me and the fact that they now have a place where owners can get their car attended to is a good thing.  

Tesla also seem to be experiencing a few delays of their own as they iron out the bugs in their production line.  However, they do appear to have started delivery of to customers.  In Daryl Siry's blog from the 5th of May he indicated that car number 003 has been delivered to an unnamed customer while car number 002 is undergoing some fixes after the QA process before it is shipped to the US for delivered to Martin Eberhard.  I learned this morning that car number 002 is now in San Carlos so Mrting Eberhard should be driving it soon.

Building cars is a very capital intensive business and once the large OEMs begin to roll out real electric vehicles the small time manufacturers are likely to be pushed aside.  I have said this many times, they need to get into production and build a niche before the big boys come along and eat their lunch.  Tesla is making the right moves and I am looking forward to seeing other companies following in their footsteps.

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