Ford Focus Hated. Who did not see this coming?

[two_bit_score]

Nah, electrics are always going to be used in urban/suburban locations so putting requirements like 200 mile range on them is no more reasonable than saying that any diesel vehicle must be able to tow at least 15,000lbs or any gas vehicle must do 0-60 in 5 seconds or less.

There will be a natural niche for electric vehicles and I don't have any problem with public incentives to move that industry along.

So the same breaks should apply to the 'other' vehicle you will need to drive out of town.

Or maybe the government should just tell some people they will have to limit their travel to in town use and others they should just stay out of town.


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[IslandTractor]

So the same breaks should apply to the 'other' vehicle you will need to drive out of town.

Or maybe the government should just tell some people they will have to limit their travel to in town use and others they should just stay out of town.

.

If there is a new technology for long distance high mpg vehicles then sure, support development with incentives.

Government doesn't need to tell anyone how far and how they travel. If I want to drive an electric out of town it's simply my choice and I need to figure out how to recharge before heading home.

 

[Sutol]

Just my two cents worth,
Prius or whatever it is called was tested over here and did less mileage than a diesel so why would you pay the extra for a green car and then pay extra to run it.
Dont make any sense to me

 

[Sutol]

Government doesn't need to tell anyone how far and how they travel. If I want to drive an electric out of town it's simply my choice and I need to figure out how to recharge before heading home.

perhaps you could stay over whilst the car filled up with electrickery:laughing:

 

[IslandTractor]

perhaps you could stay over whilst the car filled up with electrickery:laughing:

I'm thinking it would be a great excuse for avoiding honey do tasks while drinking a few beers.

 

[powerpace]

Just my two cents worth,
Prius or whatever it is called was tested over here and did less mileage than a diesel so why would you pay the extra for a green car and then pay extra to run it.
Dont make any sense to me

Most British Gas or Diesels won't pass the emissions requirements to get imported in this country. And they are not very big.

There have been over 2,200,000 million Prius sold worldwide. 1,000,000 in the U.S.
Most of the British or European vehicles are starting $10,000 dollars higher than a Prius High end. I saw a Land Rover on the Freeway today. My mistake that isn't made by a British Company. What do you make that is Diesel? If any are made by TATA motors they are investing heavily in alternative fueled vehicles for a reason. Compressed air cars. New lithium battery powered cars.

 

[marcusmiller360]

The problem (that many people can't look past) with the Prius is the batteries, and the environmental footprint of the car is astoundingly huge before it even hits the road.

It seems like it is marketed or seen as one of the ultimate in environmentally friendly cars. This is certainly no longer true.

I'm currently driving an Opel Corsa with a 1.3l TDI engine in it. I routinely get 67mpg out if it. Battery technology needs to go a long long way before it can compete with well-designed diesel applications.

My guess is that Ford are simply ticking some sort of box like "Company must provide electric cars for market" in order to be allowed to sell other vehicles... and probably don't care that the vehicles themselves are terrible. (that's my hope.... because releasing something with such a poor range for any other reason is just daft!)

You also use Imperial Gallons, which are bigger than US Gallons. Every European car also sold in the US gets better mileage on just that fact.

Electric vehicles are great, I've driven a Volt and loved it. But like gas vehicles once were, Electric vehicles are still too new to be a real "value." It's why I bought a gas Focus.

Remember that once upon a time gas powered vehicles were ridiculously expensive, unreliable and no one wanted one compared to a horse. And really, gas and diesel vehicles didn't get over that hump until the 1950s. By the early 1920's here in the states most people in cities had at least 1 car, but rural areas didn't see everyone owning a cars until the late 1940s at least. My grandmother saw her first car during the Depression in western Kansas, the family didn't have one until 1943.

And back to the 50s, it wasn't until then that two cars in every garage was a reality in the States, unless you had been wealthy.

Electric vehicles don't have all the humps gas and diesel did to overcome. There are paved roads just about everywhere (or at least, passable roads). The only problems to overcome are as follows: an updated electric infrastructure, at least in the US, to handle every house having an extra 240 volt socket to charge the things as well as fast charging 340 volt units at gas stations and businesses, AND lighter weight batteries.

As far as the Focus goes, I think its like the Volt where people just don't understand the technology and/or don't think it can provide a value to them. In the Volt's case, unless your round trip is less than 40 miles a day for a decade it probably won't be a value either. But Ford, Chevy, Toyota, all of them need these vehicles in the wild to get real world data on their use and any problems they could have.

 

[IslandTractor]

Try the link from my post earlier in the thread:


Aaron Z

Interesting paper but it needs to be considered in the context of the USA or even more appropriately, by region.

Using an old dirty coal fired generation plant to recharge your Volt does not save any emissions compared to a state of the art gas or diesel engine (still way more savings of emissions compared to high horsepower older technology gas though and there are relatively few high efficiency gas engines sold in the US yet). Indeed it is slightly dirtier. Luckily however, with the exception of a handful of states (North Dakota, Indiana, Ohio, Missouri, West Virginia, Kentucky, Wyoming and Utah), we do not generate our electricity primarily from coal and certainly not from the dirty old coal plants that the German engineers were modeling. I think the total % of electricity nationally generated from coal is about 45% so while it is the biggest single source it is not the only consideration. Our EPA standards have also required pretty tight controls on emissions already so I don't think the German "old dirty coal plant" figures are the ones to look at even for coal.

The US has a fair amount of hydropower (about 5% of national use but with significant regional variation) and also nuclear (20%) and natural gas (20%). Only small % of solar and wind to date but those are certainly going to increase especially in regions well suited for those types of generation.

In New England we import a lot of hydroelectricity from Canada and use a lot of natural gas and have a number of nukes for generation as well. It is therefore considerably "cleaner" to run a battery powered vehicle in New England than in Indiana or West Virginia for comparison. In the future we'll have wind generated power providing a fair proportion of our electricity so that is also far cleaner.

Point here is that running a battery powered car in a Boston suburb would be a lot cleaner than that same vehicle in Indianapolis. Certainly in New England or eastern Canada, the battery powered vehicle is going to generate fewer life cycle green house gases or sulfur pollutants than an equivalent gas or diesel powered vehicle.

 

[marcusmiller360]

Using an old dirty coal fired generation plant to recharge your Volt does not save any emissions compared to a state of the art gas or diesel engine (still way more savings of emissions compared to high horsepower older technology gas though and there are relatively few high efficiency gas engines sold in the US yet).

That may change to diesel owners benefit soon. I've seen coal plants out west with no stacks, they instead pump the soot and smoke into some sort of facility and use it to generate algae. ExxonMobile apparently invested $600 million into this.

It works like this: instead of the emissions from the coal and dino-diesel ending up in the air, the exhaust from burning coal is fed into a plant that generates algae, which can be distilled into bio-diesel. That bio diesel can then power trucks.

Same emissions as a coal plant, but you don't need the dino diesel anymore (overall cut in emissions then). Also, algae apparently has a really good return on energy investment. You can get many times more BTU's out of an acre of algae compared to corn, with less water investment and the harvest equipment would cost less too.

 

[ultrarunner]

You also use Imperial Gallons, which are bigger than US Gallons. Every European car also sold in the US gets better mileage on just that fact.

Electric vehicles are great, I've driven a Volt and loved it. But like gas vehicles once were, Electric vehicles are still too new to be a real "value." It's why I bought a gas Focus.

Remember that once upon a time gas powered vehicles were ridiculously expensive, unreliable and no one wanted one compared to a horse. And really, gas and diesel vehicles didn't get over that hump until the 1950s. By the early 1920's here in the states most people in cities had at least 1 car, but rural areas didn't see everyone owning a cars until the late 1940s at least. My grandmother saw her first car during the Depression in western Kansas, the family didn't have one until 1943.

And back to the 50s, it wasn't until then that two cars in every garage was a reality in the States, unless you had been wealthy.

Electric vehicles don't have all the humps gas and diesel did to overcome. There are paved roads just about everywhere (or at least, passable roads). The only problems to overcome are as follows: an updated electric infrastructure, at least in the US, to handle every house having an extra 240 volt socket to charge the things as well as fast charging 340 volt units at gas stations and businesses, AND lighter weight batteries.

As far as the Focus goes, I think its like the Volt where people just don't understand the technology and/or don't think it can provide a value to them. In the Volt's case, unless your round trip is less than 40 miles a day for a decade it probably won't be a value either. But Ford, Chevy, Toyota, all of them need these vehicles in the wild to get real world data on their use and any problems they could have.

My first home is in a sub-division built in 1921... every house had a detached garage for an automobile..

By 1930... just the Ford Motor Company had sold 20 million cars...

The Lincoln Highway coast to coast and miles of city roads have been around for a 100 years...

My oldest car is a 1905 Oldsmobile... the same model drove from San Francisco to the East Coast back then...

There were also a fair amount of electric and steam vehicles...

The real powerful cars were steam... the simple ones electric... overtime, gasoline automobiles took over because they offered extended range...

I would think nothing of getting in my 1930 Model A roadster and driving 300 miles a day...