Electric Car Story

As I wandered through the Frankfurt Auto Show yesterday.....it's painfully obvious that diesel sales are ended.  The new era is electric.

The thing is....electric-car sales aren't worth bragging about.  Back in December 2016....the Germans were just about to hit 100,000 electric cars registered.  For 2017....they might get toward 25,000 sold.  It's just not that popular.

I noticed Sweden discussed their electric car situation this week.  They got real aggressive....dumping all sales tax on the electric cars.  You could save around 5,000 Euro via their method.  Their complaint however.....is that they just don't have enough recharging stations around the country for the growing number of electric cars, and this is not going to get any better in 2018 or 2019.

A typical German will go to a show like this, and it'll plant a seed over the display, the look of the car, and then he'll go and investigate the whole electric car routine.

First, there's this range issue.  Talking gas here....an example is the Ford Focus with the 1.0 size engine and small tank, with 40 MPG....you can figure on one single tank that it'll get you 400 miles.  The BMW 320i has a small tank as well, with 35 MPG on average and you can figure that the car will get you around 550 miles.

For battery-cars?  The Nissan Leaf which people talk alot about?  It's about 110 miles on one charge.  The e-Golf from VW?  It gets you around 125 miles on one charge.  The Tesla gets near 295 miles on one charge.  If you go for the new Tesla-S model....it's around 330 miles.

A German would gaze at the mileage per charge and just shake their head for the most part.  It might make sense for a guy who is a urban-dweller or never drives more than 50 kilometers per day.

Second, you come to the weird scenario business and quicker consumption deal.  When the electric car folks talk about consumption....it's under average conditions.  So, lets throw in a snow-storm, which Germany is famous for....with high demand for heat while traveling....the mileage is likely decreased by 10-percent.  How about stop-and-go traffic in the mid-summer period, with a hot temperature situation?  AC going at max rate?  That's probably cutting the mileage by more than 25-percent.

Third, the recharge?  The guy who stops at some autobahn point for a electrical charge probably has a 90-percent charge situation, and will require a minimum of one hour....maybe even two hours.  Several of the electric cars out there and being sold need four to six hours to do a 100-percent charge.  Germans aren't that eager to go and waste two hours of their time just sitting around and waiting.

Fourth, the consumption cost factor?  Germany is on the high-end of grid cost for European countries.  You can do the spreadsheet analysis and find that you save nothing by going to the electrical car (hybrid might be a totally different case).  In Iceland, with the cheaper electricity?  Yeah, there's a vast savings.

Fifth, a German will get around to trust on the grid and its reliability issue.  On this, I have to admit that reliability is something that you come to expect out of the German grid.  In an average year, you might have a two-hour period where some storm knocked power out.  But for a German who has to base their whole lifestyle upon the grid.....can you trust it to that degree?

As much as the environmentalists, the political folks, and the car companies ready to get a return on their investment of battery-cars.....I don't see the enthusiasm there.  Germans ask too many questions and have a high expectation of return.  Maybe if you could get a full 500 kilometers on a one-hour charge situation, and you knew that there were 500,000 public recharging stations out there for you around cities and autobahns....it'd all make sense.  In my village, we've yet to put up a public recharging station.

I've sat and looked at the public recharging station deal.  Almost all of them have a charging rate price-scheme which might be slightly higher than what you'd pay for your home.  Most have some station-point usage charge associated with the re-charge....meaning that you pay a Euro or two for just using this one particular station. Credit cards required?  That's an interesting point.....all of the stations I've ever seen.....require the credit card.....no cash.

So I would conclude this with the observation that electric car trend has yet to take off, and I don't see this occurring unless Germany dumps the sales tax and makes it a national policy of building 2,000 charging stations every single month for several years.  Beyond that....it'll be impossible to sell this to a German.