Big recent news in the US was that GM, Chrysler, and Ford were in trouble. The US backs GM, mostly to save jobs, and the Chevy Volt would change the industry.

Constant news of oil spills, trouble in the Mideast, high gas prices, etc, affect almost every aspect of our everyday lives. From our news the Chevy Volt will hit the market later this year and the world will change.

If people start buying fuel from their electric company, many jobs will be affected. Power plants will be built, more car plants will close, oil may be worth less so gas may get cheaper.

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A dozen chinese companies are developing electric vehicles for mass production
03 de mayo de 2010

BYD America Corp., a division of a China-based company that makes electric cars, solar modules and lithium-ion batteries, says it is planning to open a U.S. headquarters in Los Angeles.

A dozen chinese companies are developing electric vehicles for mass production
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger join Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa to announce that Chinese electric car company BYD will locate its North American headquarters in downtown Los Angeles.

BYD, a company in which America's best-known investor, Warren Buffett, holds a stake, has been promoting the future potential to combine solar photovoltaic systems with home-battery storage of the generated electricity and the use of electric vehicles.

BYD will open in Los Angeles in late 2010 and plans to enter the U.S. electric car market about the same time, shipping its electric vehicles through the Port of Los Angeles.

The biggest buzz at this year's Auto China show surrounds the rapidly advancing plans of Chinese car firms to mass-produce affordable electric vehicles for domestic and international markets.

All of China's leading compact car producers are showing futuristic electric cars alongside hybrids and fuel-efficient conventional vehicles.

...

"This is not an opportunity, but a necessity," BYD spokesman Paul Lin said of China's development of electric vehicles.

"We think the electric vehicle market in China will be very big and the most developed in the world," Lin said.

BYD is promoting its E6 electric car, which it says uses a battery with a range of about 300-kilometres that can fully charge in two hours.

BYD, seen as a global market leader in battery technology, also plans to cooperate with DaimlerChrysler to make Mercedes-Benz-branded electric cars.

"They (BYD) developed from batteries to cars. We came from cars to batteries," Ulrich Walker, the chairman of Daimler North-east Asia, told reporters.

German auto giant Volkswagen AG has launched a "China electric vehicle strategy" to produce electric cars in China by 2013 or 2014.

"As China becomes Volkswagen's most important market around the world, achievement in the electric vehicle segment in China is key to the success of our global electric vehicle strategic vision," said Martin Winterkorn, Volkswagen's chief executive officer...

"Today, speed is everything," Zhao said. "It's not how big you are, it's how fast your are."

China already has state-of-the-art battery technology and the world's fourth-largest reserves of lithium. Global and Chinese automakers are displaying nearly 100 electric cars and concepts at the Auto China 2010.


http://www.evwind.es/noticias.php?id_not=5469
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So who is affected by this? Chevy's Volt would appear to have some competition. Would you buy a car with 300 kilometer range (about 180 miles) that costs a couple of bucks to recharge over two hours and costs less that $25,000? The politics of this transition are huge.

only if it will let me drive by and say hi to you!

I love the idea of an electric car but for me it is not practical. Most days I am on the road all day and I average 1000 miles per week so if I had to stop in the middle of the day to recharge for 2 hours it just wouldn't work for me.

Until they come up with a battery with a longer life, the market will be for the light mileage driver. People like myself who replace their cars every few years would not be the target market

ID love one if it gets off the ground,, hate buying gas.

There was a hydro vehicle developed as well,but I doubt that will be permitted to go anywhere(harder to regulate and make profits from).....would have loved one of those as well.

Unless and until the technology improves so that an electric car equals or betters the range of conventionally powered cars of today, an electric car can be considered analogous to the flashlight ... an object people use to store dead batteries in ...

Around here, you'd rarely have to plug in and pay the power co. Solar charging.

With this cap-n-tax, gas may wind up being cheaper than electricity.

I wonder about the effect on the grid when several million people start plugging in their cars all at the same time

and does the added electrical generation produce an equivalent amount of emissions as the millions of gasoline cars that will be taken off the market?

There was this big news story going on that the Volt was going to save GM, thousands of jobs, and turn around the car industry in the US. The reality is that, apparently, China is WAY ahead of the game and is making the infrastructure changes for electric cars, gearing up for mass production, is king of the battery technology, and the world is about to change. We don't seem to be changing with it.

The Chinese are changing everything from power plant requirements to the need for oil in the future to accommodate this single change. We are doing little.

I guess next year the thread will be about who owns a Chinese electric car?

I'll have a bottle of wine ready!

You are the EXACT market for the Chevy Volt. It has a backup gas engine. You charge it up every night, go 100 miles for a couple of bucks and then run on gas til to get home to start all over.

Th Chinese are able to progress because they don't have the EPA and all the Gov. restrictions to bog them down.

I'm sure Americans would love to be allowed to compete.

There is some truth to that but the point I was trying to make was that the US news, government, etc., sources have been telling us that we are about to rule the electric car industry. We aren't.

In that case, with the money that my company puts out in fuel costs, I forsee them offering an incentive to all employees who purchase one. However with electric costs going up 60% in this area it would also be necessary to reimburse some electric costs for charging the car every night.

Interesting point. Most companies reimburse by the mile, not by the receipt. Getting a receipt from the electric company would be impossible. I guess you could put a little electric meter on your recharging station.

No it would most likely be a flat rate based on previous mileage. As I have a gas card now the company can track my miles through my gas usage.

It would probably cost about half as much to drive on electric.

http://www.ccds.charlotte.nc.us/~jarrett/EV/cost.php

What is a hydro vehicle?

i don't particularly like any of the current near term choices.
but there are some exciting possibilities on the horizon.

[rl]http://finance.yahoo.com/family-home/article/108926/10-cool-electric-cars-of-the-future?mod=family-autos

right now i'm thinking bicycle!

Mostly, they will be charging their vehicles at night, when there is excess capacity.

I doubt such a car will happen anytime soon. The oil gives the Regime a good excuse to go start pointless wars for profit against mideasterners.