Quote:
Originally Posted by HeHasReturned
A. Bob Lutz was the North American chairman, therefore, he is representative of the entire company as far as North America is concerned.
B. The electric cars you have brought up were not mass produced electric cars for the masses. The ev1 you mentioned: 1000 cars produced over 4 years, and those were only leased out. How about the Leaf: 150,000 cars will be produced annually just at the Smyrna plant in Tennessee. It will be the first mass produced electric car for the market. You cannot possibly say that electric cars are not feasible for the masses until you have one that is built for the masses with proper infrastructure. Nissan has partnered with the government to get charging stations built, and estimates range as high as 11,000 charging stations.
You know what, I'll agree with you, it was intelligence that held back automakers from mass producing electric cars. But not in the way you think. You seem to think that automakers were intelligent enough to know not to build electric cars because they weren't "feasible," based off a half-assed attempt by GM and a few other startups. I think in fact that they weren't intelligent enough to figure out how to mass produce electric cars succesfully. Only now has Nissan really solved the problem by lobbying for infrastructure. They needed somebody like Tesla to come along and start something up. It's like Lutz said, "If some Silicon Valley start-up can solve this equation, no one is going to tell me anymore that it's unfeasible."
|
Infrastructure commentary...
I'm just curious how the lines at the Service Stations are going to be, when it takes everyone (no less than) 30 minutes to a charge enough... just to get to the next Service Station. Infrastructure or not, practicality of all, all electric vehicles... isn't there. Good luck Nissan, but I wouldn't put my eggs in that basket just yet.