View Single Post
      07-05-2017, 07:22 PM   #11
The Wind Breezes
Lieutenant Colonel
912
Rep
1,850
Posts

Drives: 135i N55 DCT
Join Date: Apr 2015
Location: USA

iTrader: (0)

Quote:
Originally Posted by bimmer456 View Post
After 8 years, the battery costs $10-15K to replace, negating the cost saving of electric charging vs. gasoline or diesel. In the meantime, your battery is gradualy declining, losing power and range until it is deamed below acceptable standard per Tesla. The hybrid cars will likely still have a transmission unless they're like the konegsegg regera which I don't see happening soon.
Except for very unusual situations nobody is buying electric cars for cost savings. That's just not going to happen until the batteries are better / cheaper. People buy electric cars because they're awesome. The cost savings over combustion cars will come later as technology develops.

Hybrids don't need a billion horsepower to get away with having no transmission, especially series hybrids. One of my electric bikes has 8 hp (input power, output is less), weighs 200 lbs with me on it, and goes 0-60 (the top speed) pretty fast. If you extrapolate, you can see it doesn't take much power at all to make a single speed feasible with the torque curve of an electric motor. And by the time you extrapolate to say, a 4000 lb car with 160 hp OUTPUT (or whatever) you've got enough power to go well over 100 MPH in any car with the slightest attention paid to aerodynamics. Up that to a lowly 300 hp and you'll have remarkably sport acceleration off the line. Even a chevy volt has decent get up and go at low speed, by economy car standards (it's an overpriced economy car).
Appreciate 0