New UC Study Endorses Battery-Switch E-Cars

“It took over sixty years and six generations of gasoline engines for the Chevy Corvette to accelerate from zero to sixty miles per hour in under four seconds. The first version of the Tesla Roadster, which is the world’s first Lithium-ion battery powered car, achieved that feat immediately.”

Those are the first sentences in the Introduction to a new study just released by the University of California at Berkeley”s Center for Entrepreneurship & Technology: Electric Vehicles in the United States, a New Model with Forecasts to 2030.
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July 14th Update: Want to know what's on their minds at Hawaiian Electric Company, which supplies electricity to 95 percent of the state's population? The "Energy Futures" website has a link to Hawaii Public Radio's audio archive of Monday's discussion with guest Robbie Alm, HECO executive vice president.

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Among its predictions, the study anticipates massive penetration of the light-vehicle market by electric cars in the next two decades with a big if – IF the cars use switchable batteries and charging networks financed by pay-per-mile contracts. It says removing the cost of the batteries from the sale price of electric vehicles will eliminate a major price component, resulting in impressive market penetration. E.G.:

“In the baseline forecast electric cars account for 64% of U.S. light-vehicle sales by 2030 and comprise 24% of the U.S. light-vehicle fleet. The rates of adoption are driven by the low purchase price and operating costs of electric cars with switchable batteries. The estimates include the cost of installing charging and battery switching infrastructure to extend the range of electric vehicles.”

The study definitely is worth a read – especially in Hawaii, arguably the best test market for the new electric vehicle networks, such as proposed by Better Place. Plug me in!

‘Energy Futures’ Show

Read what dominated today’s program on Hawaii Public Radio here.