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In the dark on the future of electric vehicles
DAVID COOPER/TORONTO STAR FILE PHOTO
BYD chairman Wang Chuanfu, right, with Berkshire Hathaway’s David Sokol, shows off the e6. Berkshire Hathaway owns 9.9 per cent of BYD.
Buffett wanted a bigger piece but was rebuffed by founder and chairman Wang Chuanfu. Still, he's laughing now: In less than a year his Berkshire Hathaway holding company has made a paper profit of $1 billion on the deal.
Also wreathed in smiles is BYD: The fast-growing company, opting for 130,000 low-paid assembly workers instead of expensive machines, recently announced it will be among the first to introduce an all-electric highway-speed car in North America. Its e6 crossover is to be available in the United States next year, 12 months ahead of the previous schedule.
BYD's haste is understandable: Car companies are tripping all over themselves to get their all-electric vehicles on the road.
Entries touted for next year, besides the e6, include Nissan's LEAF, Tata Motors' Invicta EV, and the Better Place/Renault project that promises a network of charging stations and facilities where dead batteries can, in five minutes, be swapped for fully charged replacements. Mercedes Benz is to roll out an electric Smart. Japan's Mitsubishi, Norway-based Think, and a second Chinese entry, Coda Automotive, are gearing up.
An obvious feature of this list is the presence of many relative newcomers and the absence of big players – Toyota, Honda, GM, Ford and Chrysler. That's understandable since the upstarts aren't encumbered by old technologies and ways of thinking.
Less evident, but equally important, is how difficult it is to get useful information from most of these companies. All boast spiffy websites loaded with gaudy claims for how far their vehicles will travel between plug-ins – BYD's 400 kilometres is, so far, the biggest – how quickly they'll recharge and what sprightly performance they'll achieve at what a low cost.
But they're all, shall we say, reticent about answering questions. Among the presumed leaders, Nissan at least responded to requests for information. Tata, BYD and Better Place remain silent.
Too bad, because questions abound: Common to all the vehicles, and most crucial, is the reliability of their claims for range: Some haven't been tested and the tests themselves might yield inaccurate "energy economy" scores.
It would also be useful to know whether owners must purchase the battery as part of the car, lease it, or pay a monthly user fee similar to the charge for cellphone service. And, of course, how much this would cost. Suggested retail prices run from $30,000 to more than $40,000 – minus incentives – but without knowing how the expensive batteries are to be financed, the estimates mean little.
BYD and Tata face concerns about safety and quality. The Chinese company must deal, as well, with puzzlement over how the claimed range of its e6 can be double that of any competitor.
Better Place will charge a user fee – to be announced. Key to its plan is the network of swap stations. The idea isn't proven, although it works brilliantly in animation on the company's website: Some industry insiders argue batteries and their management systems are too complex to be simply plugged into the bottom of a car like a lamp into a socket. Not to mention the cost of supplying the stations with replacements.
In the next few columns I'll answer as many questions as I can about these cars. It will be years, if ever, before EVs dominate, but the best vantage point from which to see where we might be headed is the place we're at now – the beginning.
Peter Gorrie is The Star's former
environment reporter. He can be reached at pgorrie@sympatico.ca
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