Friday, April 10, 2009

Electric vehicle on show in Melbourne

I took some photos of the Mitsubishi iMiEV electric vehicle that was on display in Melbourne on 9 April 2009. The car has 30% of the carbon emissions of a comparable petrol car. There is no availability to date for Australia however.


More information and photos: http://www.greenlivingpedia.org/IMiEV_electric_car

Unfortunately the best that General Motors Holden has come up with so far in Australia is to commit to building another four cylinder petrol car - with generous government handouts. They don't seem to realise we are running out of petrol and the age of the electric vehicle has arrived.

Like dinosaurs, these industries will go extinct if they don't adapt. General Motors in the United States is very nearly bankrupt and about to go into receivership.

1 comment:

Grant said...

Morning Peter
The car does not look bad, but appears to have 2 major hurdles.
1. Proposed initial cost (what generally has caused Prius sales to be so small)
2. Cannot be used outside the inner suburban areas (range issue).

Time will also tell if it will suffer from other issues that have impacted Prius sales, such as:
1. Costs of replacement batteries exoected to be around $ 5k+
2. Life of batteries estimated to be less than 10 years
3. Resale value extremely poor
4. High costs of service and maintenance compared to small petrol / diesel cars
5. Lack of power on open road when needing to travel at 100 - 110 k/hr
(the above are as quoted by motoring journalists who in theory have their sources)

Anyway I suggest that they will have very small sales as even Government departments need to purchase on the whole of life vehicle costs.