Student Post: Current State of the Electric Car

The latest “global recession” seems to have jump started another round of interest in electric vehicles. After the EV1 program, which was discussed in ‘Who Killed the Electric Car’ ended in 2002, and most electric cars were withdrawn from the American car market. There was little activity after this until Tesla unveiled the Tesla Roadster in 2006, which became available to consumers in 2008 for over $98,000.

After gas prices went over $4.00/gallon in July of 2008 more focus was put on smaller and less fuel consuming cars. In 2009 the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act made two billion dollars available to invest in electric car technology and the department of energy gave eight billion in loans to Ford, Tesla, and Nissan to promote electric car development. As a result of this slightly more affordable electric cars were put on the market.

Currently on the market in United States is the Chevy Volt, The Mitsubishi i, the Ford Focus and the Nissan Leaf. The Nissan Leaf is available for around $28,000. The overall prices of electric cars should continue to go down with the advancements in battery technology. A company called Envia has created a battery that has twice the capacity of the current batteries, when these batteries can be used (a lot of work is still needed) they predict that the current average price of $10,000/battery will be able to be cut in half.

The Federal government currently allows for up to a $7,500 tax credit with the purchase of a new electric car, but there is still the issue of informing consumers about these incentives and options. Things such as the movie ‘Revenge of the Electric Car’, by the same people who made ‘Who Killed the Electric Car’ having been released in January are making an attempt to inform, as well as community efforts such as Bloomington-Normal, IL which has taken the steps to market themselves as EVTown, “a model electric vehicle community”.

Considering How long the electric car has been around and how slow the technology has been to progress, the latest incentives given to companies and consumers as well as the heightened price of gas which has consumers conscience of the type of vehicle they are purchasing gives hope that the electric car will continue to make advances and become a much more common and affordable source of transportation.

Sources:
http://www.nissanusa.com/leaf-electric-car/index#/leaf-electric-car/
http://www.technologyreview.com/energy/39806/
http://www.evtown.org/home.html
http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/taxevb.shtml

Interesting Timeline of the History of the Electric Car: http://www.pbs.org/now/shows/223/electric-car-timeline.html