Battery technology is already good enough, and there is a market for PHEVs even at high conversion prices. Subsidies, incentives, and/or third-party battery ownership or warranties may have the power to greatly accelerate the process, so that we can become foreign petroleum free and greatly reduce transportation greenhouse emissions in as little as a decade or two.

Though the purchase price would be higher, total ownership costs for a mass-produced PHEV (not a conversion, which will always be expensive) could already be lower than for a conventional vehicle, even with battery prices higher than today's laptop manufacturers' costs for Li-ion cells. Pure EVs will eventually become competitive, too, as battery prices continue to fall. And Li-ion will not remain the only game in town. Wit a developed market, who knows what might soon appear. For example, Firefly's promising foam-core lead-acid technology could soon offer better-than-NiMH performance and longevity at half the best projected price of Li-ion.
Posted by: Ronald Gremban

If you really think that it’s all Bush’s fault that we’re not humming down the road in an EV then why is it you can’t get your rich liberal friends to make and then subsidize such cars? Maybe if George Soros wasn’t spending so much money trying to sell us on how bad America is, he could start a car company. I and most of my conservative friends would buy an EV right now if the price was just a little unreasonable and the performance was just barely reasonable. But I don’t expect everyone else to subsidize my purchases with taxes just as I don’t want my tax dollars subsidizing a technology that some bureaucrat or some activist deems as being the one we should all adopt. Let the people decide.

And EV Rider, even if it comes from the president you hate so much, take a breath once in a while and try to appreciate the good things that happen in our common quest to reduce fossil fuel consumption.
Posted by: Tom Lee

Armen... that's what's so exciting about the Altairnano battery. Both Altairnano and Phoenix claim the battery can be recharged -- albeit using 440 volts and LOTS of amps -- in under 10 minutes. Also remember, that most cars sit 23 out of 24 hours in a day, plenty of time to charge them using off-peak power at night on 110v or 220v, OR, where available, solar such as a handful of solar PV shaded parking lots in California and elsewhere. If you need to drive beyond the battery range, there are plug-in hybrids and range-extended EVs in the works, the closest to production being the Dassault SVE CleanNova cars in France. We'll have a feature on them shortly here on EV World.

Posted by: Bill Moore

Hey Mr. President, the 2 vehicles you are so happy about aren't made in the US. (Toyota Prius - made in Japan and the Phoenix SUT is made in Korea - [Note: the Phoenix motor and electronics are installed in the US]).

How about having a conversation with GM or Ford and tell them no more subsidies until they can produce BEVs that have better specs than those you viewed and are affordable to the general public ?

Mr. President, don't listen the rhetoric from GM or Ford that the technology doesn't exist because you are seeing it with your own eyes.

It's now up to GM and Ford to step forward and create these vehicles.
Posted by: Bill C

I predicted a while back that the electric car's comeback will only be initiated from a different entity or entities other than the major car companies. It seems that has finally occurred and this time there is no turning back.
Posted by: Brett Boye

The White House EVent was indeed great exposure for the industry. I suspect it was also good PR for a beleaguered president whose handlers know just how to improve on the former oil man's public approval ratings. Seems to be working ...What do you think?

President Bush brags that under his regime the federal government is using more alternative-fuel vehicles, adding that it is important for Washington to lead by example.

Great words! But check George's own example. To get to a photo op only 110 miles from Washington, the very day after he reminded the nation how it must stop America's addiction to oil by investing more federal funds in energy efficiency and renewable energy sources, did he show leadership by driving a hybrid biodiesel car? No, he flew on Air Force One! This massive plane guzzles totally-nonrenewable jet fuel, getting less than one mile per gallon!

When Bush touched down in Wilmington, was he greeted by a fleet of energy-efficienct vehicles to haul him and his entourage to the photo-op to talk about renewables? No, his motorcade was made up of two dozen SUVs, vans, and limos – all gas guzzlers.

Bill C's sentiments (above) are worth repeating: When the president is being driven in a vehicle that is powered by electricity, I will start believing that the president is behind electric vehicles.

After six years of this administration, America is more addicted to oil than ever, and his actual energy policy (as opposed to his rhetorical policy) continues to be based on more oil consumption.

Sources: Bush Makes Sales Pitch For Proposal On Energy, The New York Times, January 25, 2007. State of Energy and the Environment, The Progress Report, January 22, 2007. BUSH'S RHETORIC ON RENEWABLES

Mr. Bush and gang are trying to appear to support electric vehicles in spite of their agenda and certainly not leading the way. Very heartening to see that even oil stalwarts like Bush are being forced to at least pay lip service to the need for change.

They are much more likely to use political appearances as a stalling tactic, rather than a positive influence on the the situation though.
Posted by: Kevin Hill

Consumer demand for EVs does exist. According to a study titled "The Current and Future Market for Electric Vehicles", the market for an EV with at least 80 miles range, highway capability, and pricetag comparable to like gas powered cars was 12-18% of new car sales in California with a 95% confidence interval. This is over 150,000 cars per year in just one state in the entire U.S. For the EV1s and others, there were waiting lists of thousands of people, with virtually no advertising of the vehicles. Today, we can do 300 miles range with performance to match or beat almost any gas powered car. The technology was(and is) there, but the major auto automakers weren't(and still aren't) willing. Why offer consumers the product they want to buy when you can sell them the higher margin product that you want them to buy instead? The people have decided what they want, but the auto industry refuses to produce it. In the case of hybrids and economical cars, consumers are flocking to foreign products with only incremental improvements over domestics like flies on crap as a result. Now companies like GM are whining for big nanny government to give them some more welfare handouts, one here for 'battery research' with some false notion that the battery tech isn't there as the excuse, one there for a bailout due to $300 billion in debt, perhaps some more import restrictions to encourage purchasing of domestics because people don't want subpar products... Free market my ass. If the market weren't so rigged by big government and a slew of entrenched industries, we'd have had affordable long range EVs on our roads in large numbers 10 years ago.

I agree with you perfectly on subsidies. Neither you or I or anyone should be compelled by statute to subsidize anyone's purchases with our tax dollars. I shouldn't have to subsidize someone's hybrid or EV purchase. Neither should I have to subsidize anyone's oil purchases. Factoring in personal and property damage along with subsidies and government spending to protect oil supplies, gasoline has a real cost of over $9/gallon. U.S. taxpayers are subsidizing the use of this fuel, even those who choose not to use it. Even with the most expensive hand-built Li Ion battery packs available, on a cost per mile basis, this would make any EV without subsidy more than competitive with your cheapest to operate gasoline cars. With automotive volume, NiMH batteries could allow cost parity with like gasoline cars at $1.30/gallon gas according to a study by Cuenca and Gaines. Gas will never be that low again. This figure is quoted without any subsidy to the EV. Too bad a few oilies snubbed that battery tech out. In automotive volume, Li Ion EVs would break even with like gasoline cars at about $2.50-3/gallon gas(would require $250/kWh in automotive volume, doable according to Argonne National Laboratories). Gas is in that range right now and will be there for the foreseeable future. Like it or not, a mas produced EV without subsidy would beat out any gasoline car that currently has large amounts of subsidies heaped on it, even if those subsidies are indirect.

While the Bush administration doesn't deserve all the blame for the demise of the EV, it certainly played a large role. Under Bush, the DOJ filed an amicus brief supporting the big three in their effort to end the ZEV mandate in California. Former GM lobbyist and former Bush Chief of Staff Andrew Card acted as a plaintiff against the state of California in a court case involving the ZEV mandate. Whatever happened to the 10th amendment guaranteeing state's rights? Yes, the Bush administration is one of the reasons you can't walk into a dealership and buy an EV from the big automakers.
Posted by: John Westlund

A ten-year plan to convert to new technologies? Let’s declare energy independence — now!

In last year's elections, oil corporations pumped $17.5 million into congressional campaigns – 83 percent of it going to Bush's Republicans. In 2004, George himself got $2.6 million from Big Oil – eight-and-a-half times more than went to the Democrat.

George W. endlessly repeats — as if his Teleprompter is stuck — that his sweeping, globallistic, unrestricted, chop-a-matic, smoke-’em-out, suspend-the-Constitution, freedom-busting, antiterrorism campaign is about nothing but freedom itself. “We’ve got to be free,” he says, simply. Then he says it again. Only louder. Then once more.

Yet it is Bush, Cheney & Co. — backed by a swarm of smiling oil lobbyists and a chorus of compliant Congress critters — who are dead set against actually setting us free. Think about it. The United States has been, is now, and will be into the foreseeable future shackled to foreign oil — specifically to the crude-pumping rigs of the oiligarchies of OPEC, including the pampered, despotic royal family that rules Saudi Arabia with an iron fist, gladly keeping their oil spigots open for ExxonMobil, ChevronTexaco, and the rest.

Are you as tired as I am of being yanked up and down by oil barons abroad and here at home? If we really want freedom, we need to cut that string and sever our nation’s pathetic dependence on OPEC’s — or anyone’s — oil.

Kris Kristofferson’s song 'Me and Bobbie McGee' has a refrain that goes, Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose. Well, what if we lost the need to put the blood of our troops and billions of our taxpayer dollars into oil politics? What if we lost the need to enrage the impoverished people of the world by constantly putting our military behind the despots that repress them? What if we lost the need to have our household consumers, farmers, truck drivers, and overall economy jacked around periodically by price spikes caused by the whims of oil manipulators? What if we lost the need to surrender our sovereignty to the handful of oil profiteers who not only control the flow of energy to our families, but also control the flow of energy policy through Washington?

What that would spell is freedom, for we’d no longer have anything to lose from the monarchs, oiligarchs, globalizers and greedheads.

The beauty is, we can do this! And now is the perfect time to declare, at long last, America’s energy independence from any foreign or corporate power.

This country is in its second war in a decade to protect Persian Gulf oiligarchies. Will we put our kids into a third because we lack the gumption to put them instead into fossil-fuel-busting cars?

Let’s declare energy independence — now!

Remember the wag's definition of an elephant: "Mouse built to Government Specifications!"

GM and Ford don't build battery electric vehicles because they cost too much.

Did you notice that Phoenix Motorcars doesn't publish prices on their website? It's because the cars are *expensive*.

Check out the battery pack prices on the AC Propulsion website. Check out the plug-in Prius conversion cost on http://www.edrivesystems.com/faq.html.

The prices won't magically go down with mass production, either. It will take iterations of refinement to reduce the cost of a battery pack to something ordinary people can afford.

TANSTAAFL!
Posted by: Bob W

'vehicles with freeway speeds and a range of 130 miles. ' If other companies can do this, why doesn't GM built the Volt? It's specifications call for only 40 miles in electric mode.

Why is GM building 100 fuel cell cars to test hydrogen technology yet we hear nothing about building test vehicles based on the Volt's highway speed, 40 mile electric range technology with gas backup?

Looks like GM want's us tied to the existing petroleum distribution system since they will distribute the hydrogen fuel.

Posted by: Lyle L

Can you please tell us who provided the Plug in Prius that is in the picture? The article says that A123 provided the batteries, so does that mean the plug-in conversion came from Hymotion?
Posted by: Kyle Dansie