If I was out Black Friday shopping today I would be looking for the 50% off deal on electric vehicles. What?! No dealerships in the area. Sadly, the Wisconsin market will likely be one of the last to see a wide selection of plug-in cars. If you want to buy one you will have to look a little farther…or wait. Besides limited distribution markets, most electric vehicles have run into production delays. Don’t worry, if you are hoping to spread your silent (because EVs are quieter than gas-guzzlers) green wings in the near future, things are still looking pretty good for the EV market.
One of the under-reported stumbling blocks for EV adoption is charging capability. Plugging the car into a regular household socket will work, but it is not optimal. If you want fast charging capability at your house you have to get a special electric outlet set-up and even then, your utility might grumble a bit. Another solution is for charging stations or battery swap stations to be set-up around the city, just like gas stations. Project Better Place is testing the battery swap idea in a few spots and a couple cities in the country are doling out some money for thousands of charging stations. The two that have announced big plans thus far are Detroit and Houston. Houston could use a large fleet of EVs to reduce its infamous worst-air-pollution-in-the-nation status. Detroit had better spend some dough on EVs, considering the billions and billions of dollars in bailout money that landed in their lap.
By the way, the Ford Focus electric version is expected to arrive in late 2011. It is estimated to have a 100 mile per charge range. The Nissan leaf has already arrived and tests indicate its range is about 73 miles. Nissan was hoping for 100 miles but real world driving tests put more load on the batteries and reduce the range. 73 miles is pretty good, but it is not enough to get me home (the Chippewa Valley) or to a Packer game (Green Bay) on one charge. Both places are about 90 miles away.
A reminder: tune in to Wake-Up Wisconsin on Monday and Tuesday of next week to find out who will receive the big R-store prizes for predicting the winning date of the First Snowfall Contest (we had 1.5 inches of snow on Wednesday).
Have a fun black Friday! Meteorologist Justin Loew.