Ford Backs Down On Electric Vehicle Leases

newuser

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[ QUOTE ]
"These are great vehicles," said David Bernikoff-Raboy, 33, a Mariposa County rancher who said Ford decided to sell him the truck for $1. "Ford is missing a huge marketing opportunity with these vehicles." The rancher and his wife, Heather, 34, said the Ranger costs little to maintain, requires no fuel and frees the nation from dependence on foreign oil.

[/ QUOTE ]

Requires no fuel?

Does he think the power that it uses comes from the free energy fairy???
 

Saaby

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I believe, in this context anyway, that when he said 'Fuel' he meant 'Gasoline'. He did not say that it used no energy.
 

IlluminatingBikr

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No fuel as in gasoline. They do require energy from the form of batteries and electricity, however.
 

mattheww50

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Actually Ford probably had a good reason to want them back. Under current Law, I think Ford is obligated to provide spare parts etc for 10 years after protection. The only way around that is to make sure there aren't any.

In a similar situation. Beech/Raytheon bought all of the Starship aircraft back (and often had to pay a hefty premium to get them back, so they could be destroyed). They finally consented to allow one or two to exist in Museum on the proviso that the museums agreed that they would never be sold, nor would any attempt ever be made to make them airworthy again. The problem for Raytheon/Beech was the cost of continued support, it was cheaper to buy up the airplanes and junk them. There was probably a similar issue with the GM EV1. The only way to get out of the business was to get rid of the product in the field.
 

Saaby

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I think the owners waived their continued support rights or something.
 

Ken_McE

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The domestic manufacturers aren't really interested in new technology. Even *Iceland* is ahead of Detroit in hydrogen technology. They think a car with a phone in it is radical hi-tech. They play at it for publicity reasons. They will make real changes only after they lose enough market share for it to really hurt. The Ford electric vehicles are a stalling technique, not a serious commitment.
 

Darell

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[ QUOTE ]
Marty Weiner said:
Darell, you may have given up too easily.

[/ QUOTE ]
:snicker: I haven't and won't give up. Ford and GM have handled this quite differently. GM was the first to yank their EV back, and we certainly were not as organized as we should have been. But GM also ONLY leased the EV1, where Ford has not only already sold some Rangers, but also promised the leasees a chance to buy the vehicles when their leases came up.... and then didn't follow through after the buyout money was paid by the leasees.

Yeah, you could say that I was a bit involved in this. The nit-picking of what was said about "fuel", and how it was reported isn't very relevant here. These folks are friends of mine, and are intelligent people. They know all about energy and where it comes from. Both of the electric Rangers at the demonstration are almost 100% fueled from solar power, if that makes any difference to anybody.

So... If you'd like any first-hand information on this, ask away. I wasn't going to make my involvement public here... but I've been outed by Brock. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif
 

newuser

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[ QUOTE ]
Ken_McE said:
The domestic manufacturers aren't really interested in new technology. Even *Iceland* is ahead of Detroit in hydrogen technology.

[/ QUOTE ]

Iceland can do it for a reason that the US can't. They are sitting on a huge source of nearly limitless, almost free energy. The US doesn't have that. Creating hydrogen for use in cars is WAY less economical than using gas. It's a money pit, and the only way to make it work is to have the a really really really cheap way of making the hydrogen. That's where the geothermal energy of iceland comes in.

There's no way to make Hydrogen work in the US as things are with the NIMBY attitudes all over the country. When it comes time to do the things needed to generate the power to make Hydrogen feasible, people don't want to deal with it near them.
 

jtr1962

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[ QUOTE ]
newuser said:
There's no way to make Hydrogen work in the US as things are with the NIMBY attitudes all over the country. When it comes time to do the things needed to generate the power to make Hydrogen feasible, people don't want to deal with it near them.

[/ QUOTE ]
Actually, as mentioned multiple times by several people in that EV thread, it really makes no sense to use hydrogen at all for ground vehicles. For starters, you need to put in several times the energy into making the hydrogen that you get out of it. Next, you need to transport it, which requires yet more energy. You need to use guards to protect it from terrorists while it's being transported. And finally you need to store it at a few degrees above absolute zero which requires yet more energy. If you want to use grid power it makes the most sense to use it directly to charge a battery in the vehicle, or to power a car directly from the grid via buried cables and inductive pickup (this gets rid of the range issues of EVs). Sure, there are still inefficiencies, but way less than doing it the other way. And as a bonus you're not dealing with moving conveyances full of one of the most explosive materials known to man.

Exactly what do you think the advantage of hydrogen over batteries is? I honestly can't think of one but I can think of plenty of disadvantages. The so-called switch to the hydrogen economy is merely another delay tactic by automakers so that they can continue giving more of the same old garbage they've been giving us for the last 50 years. Hydrogen fuel may ultimately make sense for airplanes, although here again we can replace most of our air travel with either high speed railways or even maglevs. In fact, there are serious proposals for transoceanic maglevs traveling at several thousand mph in evacuated tubes. As for NIMBY attitudes regarding new power generating stations, the short term answer is easy-build a bunch of nuclear power plants in largely unihabited parts of the US, and transmit the power where needed via megavolt cables. Longer term put enough money into making fusion viable. A fusion plant is safe enough and non-polluting enough to be built right in center of a large city. Zero chance of meltdown, and very little in the way of radioactive materials.
 

HarryN

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I can only see one real path to H2 being practical in the US, and that is if it is generated using very cheap, off peak electricity. The only source I have seen where the numbers (in terms of both $ and pollution) come together is (don t yell) Nuclear.

Without getting into whether or not this is a good idea or not, it certainly has its pros and cons, both technically and politically.

It would be much easier, safer, and more efficient, IMHO, to use off peak power to recharge EV batteries at night, than produce H2 and build that infrastructure. At least here in CA, with grid electric rates running $ 0.20 or more when you go over the limits, EV vehicles from grid electricity are a no - go. Currently, the home user price for peak / off peak are the same.

BTW, I have experience with H2, and safety is not one of its high points. Gasoline produces some impressive fires, but H2 produces some really good bangs.

Battery technology still has a way to go as well from a capacity / safety perspective. I used to be pretty gung ho about using a battery pack made up of a few hundred 18650s. I now realize some of the very real challenges that this technology presents to companies that are sued regularly by their customers.
 

idleprocess

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The "hydrogen economy" is currently a red herring, sort of like the idea in the late 40s/early 50s that everyone would have their own safe nuclear reactor in their basement for near-eternal power and heat.

...except the auto industry knows it's blowing smoke because they can't ffigure out how to build a fuel cell car for less than a few hundred grand right now.

A hydrogen fueling station will cost an order (or two) of magnitude more to build than a conventional gas station.

Fuel cell cars are mechanical monstrousities, with more maintenance liabilities than conventional cars.

I really enjoyed reading Natural Capitalism, but the authors of the book were way off when they descriibed the "Hypercar" - it seems they did not understand the physics and hard math associated with fuel cells... and it's not going to improve by leaps and bounds in the forseeable future.
 

Darell

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Odd how we got here from the Ford action. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/thinking.gif

[ QUOTE ]
jtr1962 said:
Exactly what do you think the advantage of hydrogen over batteries is?

[/ QUOTE ]
I'll take the devil's advocate position here, if only because I know it so well. The perceived advantages of H2 are the same as those for gasoline: Fast refuel and long range. The problem is, of course, neither of those actually exist for H2 in any practical sense. The "Hydrogen Highway" as proposed in CA would have 5000 psi filling stations. To get range that even matches 15-year-old BEV technology, we need at least 10,000 psi... and that isn't even being proposed at the supply end, though the vehicles are starting to be built NEEDING that much pressure in the tanks.

Anyway, as far as I know, the range and refuel times are what has people most jazzed about H2. Maybe even more to the point is that people are jazzed about H2 because it is a seemingly new, exciting technology and there seems to be no end to the promises of the technology. Forget that the first H2 FCV was built by GM in the 60's, and that the technology still hasn't reached the retail market even amongst the claims from the Automakers that they WANT to build these. (as compared to BEVs that they haven't ever wanted to build... when the makers were forced to build BEVs, presto, in a couple of years, they're available at the retail level).
 

Darell

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[ QUOTE ]
HarryN said:
At least here in CA, with grid electric rates running $ 0.20 or more when you go over the limits, EV vehicles from grid electricity are a no - go.

[/ QUOTE ]
From a cost perspective ONLY, this is still a bargain. 20c/kWh gives you about 6.5c/mile. A 25mpg vehicle with $2 gasoline is looking at 8c/mile.

[ QUOTE ]
Currently, the home user price for peak / off peak are the same.

[/ QUOTE ]
And isn't that just crazy? We pay more to vacation at popular places during peak season. We pay more for gasoline during peak driving holidays. We pay more for an airplane flight that leaves at a popular time instead of a red-eye. Why do we pay the same for power no matter when we use it? If Time of Use billing were mandatory, we'd see several power issues just vanish, I think.
 

Brock

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[ QUOTE ]
Currently, the home user price for peak / off peak are the same.

[/ QUOTE ] Darell wasn't it mandated that if you had a production EV you had to get peak / off peak meters?
 

Darell

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[ QUOTE ]
Brock said:
[ QUOTE ]
Currently, the home user price for peak / off peak are the same.

[/ QUOTE ] Darell wasn't it mandated that if you had a production EV you had to get peak / off peak meters?

[/ QUOTE ]
Correct. By state law, I am forced into Time of Use because of the EV. So my neighbor can use his two AC units during peak time, and pay nothing extra. His two AC units running together draw almost 2x the power that my car charger draws. It would be very expensive for me to run my AC during these times since I'd be paying 3x for the power what my neighbor pays. And of course it would be expensive for me to charge during peak times for the same reason - and this is the reason I'm forced into TOU - even though a car charger at home is WAY less likely to be used during peak times as compared to an AC unit. Go figure.

So I just cool the house down before peak times, shut everything down in the house, and sit here selling power to my neighbors. Then at night, I plug the car in, and buy some of my power back.
 

Darell

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OK, so we already have an Alt Fuel Vehicle thread running, maybe we can move some of this over there...

Is anybody interested about anything to do with the Ford Ranger action? This, BTW, is the second "victory" against Ford in the past year. A few months back, Ford was going to crush all the Electric Thinks that it purchased from Norway, instead of shipping them back to Norway to fulfill a waiting list for them in that country. Shipping them back was what Ford originally promised when this program began, but decided that since the FORD name was on the vehicles, they could be disposed of as Ford wished. No leases were extended, and they were all rounded up. A protest brought the problem to the public eye, and all Thinks were eventually returned to Norway. Yay.
 

ikendu

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[ QUOTE ]
Darell said:
Odd how we got here from the Ford action. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/thinking.gif

[ QUOTE ]
jtr1962 said:
Exactly what do you think the advantage of hydrogen over batteries is?

[/ QUOTE ]
I'll take the devil's advocate position here, if only because I know it so well. The perceived advantages of H2 are the same as those for gasoline: Fast refuel and long range. The problem is, of course, neither of those actually exist for H2 in any practical sense. The "Hydrogen Highway" as proposed in CA would have 5000 psi filling stations. To get range that even matches 15-year-old BEV technology, we need at least 10,000 psi... and that isn't even being proposed at the supply end, though the vehicles are starting to be built NEEDING that much pressure in the tanks.

Anyway, as far as I know, the range and refuel times are what has people most jazzed about H2. Maybe even more to the point is that people are jazzed about H2 because it is a seemingly new, exciting technology and there seems to be no end to the promises of the technology. Forget that the first H2 FCV was built by GM in the 60's, and that the technology still hasn't reached the retail market even amongst the claims from the Automakers that they WANT to build these. (as compared to BEVs that they haven't ever wanted to build... when the makers were forced to build BEVs, presto, in a couple of years, they're available at the retail level).

[/ QUOTE ]

I'll do my reply in the Alt Fuel thread...
 
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