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."
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Lutz has been known to say things that are not representative of GM's corporate views, such as "man made global warming is a crock of sh*t". I take his words as his personal opinion, nothing more, nothing less. Furthermore, according to the quote you provided he said "no one is going to tell
me that its unfeasible" indicating that it is a personal reply. He did
not say "no one is going to tell
us that its unfeasible" which would mean he as speaking for GM. Its a rather subtle, but very important difference.
Nissan can build as many Leaf's as they like, but that won't prove its feasible. People have to buy them to prove that. And regardless, you can't seem to figure out that I've made a distinction between the good idea of electric commuter vehicles and dumb idea of electric sports cars. I'll quote myself for you:
Quote:
Originally Posted by DGthe3
Electrics have their place, but Tesla only seems interested in using them in ways they're poorly suited. Small urban cars? Great. Never go too fast or too far so a small battery and low power (yet high torque) motor are fine. The low speed acceleration would shine going from stop light to stop light in traffic. And when stopped for those lights, it uses practically no energy. Its nearly ideal for use as an urban commuter vehicles. But sports cars? Not so much.
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In my mind, for Tesla to have "motivated the entire industry" like you claimed they've done, we should expect an electric GT-R from Nissan this year, not the Leaf. And an electric Corvette from GM (instead of the Cruze based hybrid Volt), plus every other auto maker releasing electric sports cars either now or in the near future. See, Tesla makes electric sports cars. For the entire industry to be motivated by them, the entire industry has to be making, or planning on making, cars to compete directly with the offerings from Tesla. And that has no chance of happening for the foreseeable future. Nissan
might motivate the industry to offer usher in a wave of electric commuter cars. But even the Insight didn't motivate everyone to make small, parallel strong hybrids. Neither did the more successful Prius. Honda and Toyota pretty much had the market to themselves. So I'm skeptical that a more expensive, less versatile electric from Nissan could have a larger influence than the Prius and Insight. And if the Leaf can't do it, there is no hope that Model S can do it.