GM CEO criticizes the cost of Tesla Roadster and Fisker Karma
(Note: To learn more about hydrogen fuel cell cars and their potential to solve the oil crisis, please read the series of articles titled “Twelve Hydrogen Facts” which is part of the Hydrogen Manhattan Project.)
Plug-in battery technology has numerous problems which include driving range, fueling time, cost, space they take up in a car, durability, safety, weight, cold weather performance, and a negative impact on the environment.
Regarding the cost issue with plug-in battery technology, here is an excerpt from a May 3rd AutoblogGreen post where GM CEO Rick Wagoner criticizes the cost of the Tesla Roadster and Fisker Karma:
“Speaking to the Commonwealth Club of California this week, GM CEO Rick Wagoner told the gathering that in order for electric cars to make a difference in global warming it will require large numbers of them to be deployed at prices that mainstream buyers can afford. While a few hundred Tesla Roadsters or Fisker Karmas may make the owners feel better about themselves, in the U.S. vehicle fleet of 200 million vehicles they won’t make any real measurable difference in the grand scheme of things. To make a significant impact on fuel consumption and emissions, millions of cars and trucks every year need to be more efficient. However, that can only happen if those vehicles are affordable to average car buyers.
When Wagoner was asked why it’s taking as long as it is to bring the Volt to market he explained that it’s a lot harder to create a viable $20,000 electric car than one that costs $100,000.”
The Tesla Roadster contains a whopping 6831 lithium-ion batteries. This is the same type of battery that is used in laptop computers. And they are not inexpensive. Therefore, it is easy to see why the car costs so much.
Moreover, the following excerpt from an August 2006 article about Tesla reveals a major cost issue:
“The central concept of Tesla Motors, founded in July 2003, is that there is no need to reinvent the battery, particularly for a product with a small initial market. Eberhard simply adopted the lithium-ion technology used in laptops and harnessed the momentum of the computer industry. Let Dell, HP, and the rest of the sprawling PC business, with their billions of R&D dollars, do the hard work of extending battery life and driving down prices. He’d piggyback on their innovations.”
The problem is that lithium-ion batteries are already mass produced. They were first commercialized back in 1991 by Sony. Therefore, the cost benefits of mass production have already been realized. They will obviously continue to go down in price in the future, but the point is that the potential for reducing the cost of lithium-ion batteries is far less than it was 10 or 15 years ago. And if the batteries are far too expensive now, how will they ever be economical?
Furthermore, I think Rick Wagoner is wrong to say that plug-in battery technology will make a difference with global warming and emissions. In the U.S., 50% of the electricity comes from coal and around 20% comes from natural gas. Therefore, plug-in battery technology would result in far greater use of fossil fuels.
Plug-in battery technology is a half-measure just like ethanol. The only complete solution to the oil crisis is hydrogen fuel cell vehicles where the hydrogen is produced from clean sources of energy such as wind and solar power.
The car companies are very aware of all of the problems with plug-in battery technology. Honda is one of the top car companies in the world and they have completely rejected plug-in battery technology!
This is why Toyota, Honda, Hyundai, GM, Daimler, and others are aggressively pursuing hydrogen fuel cell cars.
