Posts Tagged by Fisker Karma
EVs As Popular as iPhones?
| January 25, 2011 | Posted by Craig Shields under Electric Vehicles |
Will EVs be as popular as the iPhone? That’s what Henrik Fisker says, the man behind the 4-door luxury Fisker Karma. The Karma will start production in March and is slated to show up in U.S. showrooms in April. The MSRP is $95,000, but Fisker points out that the starting price on new technology is always high, but descends quickly as manufacturing processes scale up.
Popular as the iPhone? I too expect a robust adoption curve for electric vehicles, though I refrain from hyper-dramatic statements. Of course, I share neither Fisker’s financial exposure nor his super-bombastic personality. Read More
Plug-In Hybrid Electric Vehicles
| February 4, 2010 | Posted by Craig Shields under Electric Vehicles |
I happen to be looking through an issue of Car and Driver yesterday and noticed their discussion of the EPA’s struggle to measure and report MPG ratings for plug-in hybrids. Apparently, there are people who fail to realize that this is a completely meaningless number. Those who never exceed the battery-only range never need gasoline, and thus experience an infinite number of miles per gallon. Those who never charge their cars experience whatever number is associated with the size and efficiency of the internal combustion engine as it operates their car, given its weight, wind resistance, etc. Of course, most people will experience a number in between – say between 100 and 1000.
But is that really helpful? Can’t we just note that this is metric that doesn’t apply? I had a friend in college who would ask, “How long is a piece of string?” and “Is it shorter to New York, or by car?” It seems to be that the people seriously pursuing MPG ratings for the Chevy Volt and the Fisker Karma are asking questions that have no more meaning than that.
