FE. Ok.. So. I live here in an Jose and want to go for a little trip to Carmel. About 75 mile one way. You mean i can't get home ? Can i even get there as it's uphill over the santa cruz mountains ?
Well, the conversation ends right there because you are looking at a fully electric car to replace a car that has an entirely different usage scenario.
In that case by a Holden Volt.
Or get a Tesla S that has up to 500km range.
Ok, problem is the tesla is a luxury car and thus expensive.
My idea is : take the battery and drive train from a tesla and put it in a car like a chevrolet volt. Strip the leather alcantara luxury interior, strip the 17 inch tablet and hi resulation lcd display for instrument cluster, strip the 12 speaker dolby surround soundsystem
. Use traditional cloth seats and regular dashboard .
I think you'd be able to make the car for less than half the cost of the tesla. Even if the battery pack and drive train cost 20.000 dollar. You should be able to take a Kia or a Nissan that cost 18000 with petrol engine and swap it. You'd end up with a 35k$ car that has 500km range.
Base platform : economy car equipped with 20k$ battery= no range problem and still affordable.
Yet nobody does it. They dick around with 70 mile range cars... That still cost 35000$. Why ?
In case of the nissan the thing that peeved me is that they had the gall to tell me: use your other car , assuming i'd have two cars (doubling my cost since i need to buy two cars , one of which is needed to overcome their shortcomings) or rent a petrol one.
What ? You first do all the feel good ,green , don't need petrol hype marketing song and dance giving me a nice shiny green balloon and then you drop that bit of info ?
You just popped the shiny green balloon and it turned out to be filled with acrid petrol exhaust...