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Author Topic: Electric Vehicles  (Read 65017 times)

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AGelbert

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Re: Electric Vehicles
« Reply #60 on: February 26, 2015, 02:42:53 pm »
Quote

Great article! My wife and I own a Leaf and could not be happier. We have been saving for a Tesla to replace the Leaf after lease expiration. When people hear this, their response is often, "Tesla is a luxury car". While my first reaction is to say that it is not, because of the many points in your article, I agree with them wholeheartedly instead.

Indeed, it will be luxury to never buy gas. It will be a luxury to pack food, a tent, and drive to Moab without bringing my wallet. It will be a luxury for children on the sidewalks to not have to breath in toxic chemicals emitting from our vehicle. It will be a luxury to never worry about a timing belt replacement, oil changes, transmission replacement, coolant flushes, tune-ups, exhaust leaks, etc., etc. 

The caveat here is that when I go to DMV in Glenwood and register the Tesla, the $4000 registration cost will certainly feel like I'm paying for a luxury car...  ;)

Craig Farnum

Why EVs Are AND Aren’t Luxury Cars
   

http://blog.rmi.org/blog_2015_02_26_why_EVs_are_and_arent_luxury_cars


Quote
Luxury is what people experience RIGHT NOW, either sitting in the vehicle or observing it from the roadside. Total Cost of Ownership is an outcome of the robustness of the technologies implemented in the vehicle. A luxury car owner doesn't care that much about TCO, unless their eyes were bigger than their wallet, and luxury car brands - Lexus excepted - don't try that hard to lower TCO through super-robust design. Instead, they offer free maintenance for the duration of the leases through which these cars are usually acquired and, not coincidentally, the usual duration of ownership.

 I and many others perceive the passing Tesla as a luxury car; big, powerful, expensive, looks a bit like a Jaguar, which is ostensibly the brand with the best sense of theatre that is an essential part of the projection of luxury. Inside the car, it's a different story. The driver's console DOES look techy, but not necessarily practical as a driving tool. It's showy, and that's not what a luxury car is supposed to provide its passengers - there's an element of taste that's missing. But the car is unquestionably comfortable, and it does give the driver and passengers a sense of power and privilege that is what luxury cars are supposed to do. Remember that offensive ad for the Cadillac CTV with the overprivileged white guy strutting and preening? Cadillac understands the luxury experience ( )...it just made the mistake of telling the truth.   

The LEAF is definitely a mass-market car. The BMW i3 is not. It's a Halo car for the brand in a completely different way than what you'd expect. The many Toyota/Lexus hybrids are examples of the proper balance of tech and the luxury experience...the tech is essentially invisible. It's the rest of the experience that delivers the luxury.

Elon Musk has definitely targeted the S to the luxury crowd, even though he's smart enough not to explicitly call it a luxury car. That may be just an interesting side show, however, What I find more interesting is that he's recognized the much bigger and less regulated market for 24/7 solar local power generation and is dedicating 30% of his Gigafactory's batter production towards synergizing SolarWorld's domestic solar panel systems into a distributed power grid.

Electric cars, cool. A totally different way of distributing power to the masses, world-changing. And profitable.
   

Shaun Simpkins
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

 

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