Where are the electric cars?

Back in February, my sister sent me a link to the electric car company Miles EV.  On their website, they featured a 100+ mile range highway-speed fully-electric car with an estimated MSRP under $40,000 that they said would be ready to test drive sometime in August, and would be available for sale sometime early in 2010.  It is now gone from their website, which currently is only featuring a few small low-speed cars and trucks.

In 2005, Commuter Cars started shipping the Tango, two-seater electric vehicle with up to a 150 mile range; unfortunately, the volume shipped has been very low, and the price tag is $100k.  In 2006, they reported that if they could secure $50M in financing, they could produce highway-speed electric vehicles at an MSRP of $20,000.  Nothing further has been said about the low-cost Tangos in recent years.

The high-performance Tesla, also in the $100k range, is well-known in the EV arena.  Their website is currently featuring the Model S, a $50,000 EV slated to begin shipping sometime in 2012.  (Reportedly, in the first week of taking reservations for the early "Model S Signature" variant to go on sale for an undisclosed price in 2011, over 500 people signed up and paid the refundable $40,000 deposit.)  Their production schedule is dependent upon receiving a $450M loan from the government;last year, their loan was delayed as the Government made plans to shore up General Motors and Chrysler's business.

With GM sales down more than 50% and Chrysler sales down 29% after the announcement of the bailout, one has to wonder if the billions of dollars going to these companies is going to be effective.  Shouldn't the nation be investing more heavily in alternative fuel vehicles?  Obama is targeting one million plugin cars on the road by 2015, but the plans for the Chevy / GM volt are still vague, and the vehicle's range is expected to be only around forty miles per charge.

In contrast, Australia has made plans to build 600,000 electric car charging stations by 2012.  If the U.S. was really serious about getting a lot of electric cars on the road, a plan to establish similar infrastructure would go a long way toward solving the chicken-and-egg problem that seems to be keeping the next generation of EV cars perpetually two years from fruition.

      - Greg