EV's Fizzling; Tesla: Makes Consumer Reports Top Ten List -- Nothing To Do With the Bakken; Chevy Volt Sales Short CIrcuit

Updates

February 13, 2013: this page will probably turn to "automobiles" in general; EVs will simply become part of the overall story. Automobile growth to show huge growth:

Although global vehicle demand has grown only 2.3% annually over the past 30 years, they foresee more robust growth in the next three years, from 72.6 million units in 2010 to 77.6 million in 2011, 83.5 million in 2012, 88.3 million in 2013 and 107 million in 2020.

The main drivers to better sales identified in the reports are no surprise, namely extremely rapid motorization in China and other emerging markets and recovery in the U.S. market after two years of weakness.

February 10, 2013: NY Times -- a very, very bad review of the Tesla Model S -- 

Instead, I spent nearly an hour at the Milford service plaza as the Tesla sucked electrons from the hitching post. When I continued my drive, the display read 185 miles, well beyond the distance I intended to cover before returning to the station the next morning for a recharge and returning to Manhattan.

I drove, slowly, to Stonington, Conn., for dinner and spent the night in Groton, a total distance of 79 miles. When I parked the car, its computer said I had 90 miles of range, twice the 46 miles back to Milford. It was a different story at 8:30 the next morning. The thermometer read 10 degrees and the display showed 25 miles of remaining range — the electrical equivalent of someone having siphoned off more than two-thirds of the fuel that was in the tank when I parked.

I called Tesla in California, and the official I woke up said I needed to “condition” the battery pack to restore the lost energy. That meant sitting in the car for half an hour with the heat on a low setting. (There is now a mobile application for warming the battery remotely; it was not available at the time of my test drive.)

February 10, 2013: LA Times tests the Tesla Model S; an EV for $90,000.  So, we'll see how it does.

The trouble is that repeated demonstrations of the car's prodigious power utterly destroy its range. Tesla says this model will go 300 miles on a single charge. The EPA puts that number at 265 miles. Over four days of testing the car, we managed only about 160 miles in heavy-footed driving.

All Model S's will charge through a 120V or 240V outlet. Tesla says the former needs roughly 46 hours to recharge fully, while the latter needs eight to 10 hours. Buyers can reduce these times by adding a second on-board charger for $1,500 and buying a high-power wall connector for $1,200.

Tesla is also installing 100 of what it calls supercharging stations in the U.S. and Canada by year's end, including six already operating in California. They're free for Tesla owners, who can add half a charge in about half an hour.

February 4, 2013: more evidence that EVs are fizzling at Reuters --

Recent moves by Japan's two largest automakers suggest that the electric car, after more than 100 years of development and several brief revivals, still is not ready for prime time - and may never be.

In the meantime, the attention of automotive executives in Asia, Europe and North America is beginning to swing toward an unusual but promising new alternate power source: hydrogen.

The reality is that consumers continue to show little interest in electric vehicles, ...

Despite the promise of "green" transportation - and despite billions of dollars in investment, most recently by Nissan Motor Co - EVs continue to be plagued by many of the problems that eventually scuttled electrics in the 1910s and more recently in the 1990s. Those include high cost, short driving range and lack of charging stations.

The public's lack of appetite for battery-powered cars persuaded the Obama administration last week to back away from its aggressive goal to put 1 million electric cars on U.S. roads by 2015.

Lack of charging stations is bad enough, but length of time to recharge in a culture that wants to keep moving. 

The U.S. Department of Energy on Thursday eased off President Barack Obama's stated goal of putting 1 million electric cars on the road by 2015, and laid out what experts called a more realistic strategy of promoting advanced-drive vehicles and lowering their cost over the next nine years.

Since Obama announced the goal in his 2011 State of the Union speech, auto analysts and executives have doubted American consumers would buy a million electric vehicles by 2015.

"Whether we meet that goal in 2015 or 2016, that's less important than that we're on the right path to get many millions of these vehicles on the road," an Energy Department official said, in advance of remarks by Energy Secretary Steven Chu in a speech at the Washington D.C. auto show.  

What a bunch of poppycock.
 
February 4, 2013: EV sales flattening out; sales tripled in 2012; sales will double in 2013.

February 3, 2013: Nissan will quadruple the number of high-speed charging stations in the US over the next 1 - 1.5 years. I can't wait until NASCAR goes electric. Pit stops will be measured in hours, not seconds, but lots of opportunity for advertising.

February 2, 2013: EVs fizzle; so do sales of small cars.

Sales of some of the smallest cars barely budged or fell last month despite the steady rise in gas prices.

It could be a sign that one of the axioms of the car business may be weakening: sales of tiny cars rise in tandem with driver angst at the pump.

Mercedes-Benz's Smart car, the two-seater that is the smallest car on sale in the U.S., saw sales fall 3% in January to a mere 481 cars. Toyota, whose four-seat Scion iQ is the next smallest, fell 21.1% to only 295 cars.

For cars that are slightly larger, sales are better. Toyota Yaris and Honda Fit subcompact sales were down, but Ford Fiesta, Chevrolet Spark and Fiat 500 all saw good sales gains, according to Autodata. As overall auto sales rose 14.1% last month, the "lower small" segment was up only 6.1%.

February 2, 2013: EVs fizzle in 2013.

General Motors Co., Toyota Motor Corp. and Nissan Motor Co. all reported much lower sales of EVs and plug-in hybrids in January over December, citing lower inventory and the decision of many customers to buy before the end of the tax year.

GM said sales of its plug-in hybrid Chevrolet Volt rose 89 percent to 1,140 over January 2012.

But that's still much lower than recent months — including the 2,633 Volts sold in December. It's the lowest number of Volts sold in a month since February 2012, when GM sold just 1,023.

In total, California and Michigan account for 46 percent of Volt retail sales.
Toyota said January sales of the Prius plug-in fell from 1,361 in December to 874 in January.

Nissan said January 2013 Leaf EV sales fell 3.8 percent over 2012 to 650 — but fell by more than half over December's 1,489 sold.

This week, Ford Motor Co. said it was offering hefty discounts of more than $10,000 on leasing its slow-selling Focus electric vehicle.

The Dearborn automaker also said on its website that it has dropped the base price of the Focus EV by $2,000 for cash sales and is offering up to $10,750 off for three-year-leases.

Ford is also offering a $2,000 cash discount on the Focus EV and 1.9 percent financing if purchased through Ford Motor Credit.

The automaker sold just 685 Focus EVs in 2012, while it built 1,627 Focus EVs — making it one of the poorest performers among electric vehicles on the market.

Last week, Nissan dropped the price of its new base model 2013 Leaf EV by 18 percent to $28,800 and last year offered incentives in the wake of far lower than expected sales.

Ford's new discounts came just days after the Nissan announcement.

Original Post

CNBC at Yahoo!Finance is reporting that Consumer Reports has posted the top ten brand names in automobiles in its survey taken of 2,000 Americans. Here is the list with the number of the 2,000 surveyed who voted for that particular make as #1:

• #1 Toyota - [133]
• #2 Ford - [118]
• #3 Honda - [114]
• #4 Chevrolet - [94]
• #5 Mercedes-Benz - [77]
• #6 Volvo - [77]
• #7 Cadillac - [66]
• #8 BMW - [66]
• #9 Dodge - [56]
• #10 Tesla - [55]

According to Wiki, since 2008 Tesla has sold more than 2,250 Roadsters in 31 countries through March 2012. Less than three thousand cars in more than 30 countries. And it makes the top ten list. Pretty incredible. It must be an incredible automobile: Tesla stopped taking orders for the Roadster in the U.S. market in August 2011

Even more interesting, the brands not on the top ten list: Porsche. Jeep. Ram. In fact, not only were these not on the top ten list, they were at the very bottom.

Another list that makes me very, very skeptical. It would be interesting to see the breakdown of the 2,000 that were surveyed; how those 2,000 were selected; and, how the questions were phrased.

I assume the survey was taken before the Dreamliner 878 started reported "non-passive failures" involving lithium-ion batteries similar to those used in the Tesla.

Speaking of which -- batteries and cars: Chevy Volt sales, Nissan Leaf sale short circuit.

Sales of the Chevrolet Volt have fluctuating wildly recently between record months (October 2012, when 2,961 were sold or December 2012 with 2,633) and noticeable slumps (1,519 Volt sales in November). Last month, January 2013, was one of the down months, with just 1,140 Volts sold across the US. Still, this is better than the 603 Volts sold in January 2012.

As for the Nissan Leaf, we're in a transition period between model years. We recently heard that Nissan is almost sold all of 2012 Leafs in the US and has started making the much cheaper 2013 MY in Smyrna, TN. That said, the company moved just 650 Leafs in January, down 3.8 percent from the 676 sold in January 2012. Nissan sold 1,489 Leafs in December and 9,819 in all of last year. Nissan spokesman Travis Parman told AutoblogGreen that the downturn was due, in part, to "a shortage of inventory during the transition to U.S. assembly of the 2013 model year Nissan Leaf'."

Shortage of inventory? Okay.

Much cheaper or less expensive?