It seems Tesla, at least for now, is proving the nay sayers wrong as it is currently outselling Mercedes, Audi, BMW, and Lexus. Not bad for the new kid on the block. http://m.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2013/04/17/tesla-outsells-mercedes-audi-bmw-and.html?r=full http://www.greencarreports.com/news/1083585_does-tesla-already-outsell-audi-bmw-lexus-mercedes-benz I have to admit I do see a lot of these cars on the road, they've gotten rave reviews, and the price is pretty competitive.
But to what end? People who own these high end cars can afford gas and don't want to deal with the whole "plug it in and wait" thing. You can stop, get gas in 10 min and be back on the road for another tank full of fuel. I have looked into Nissan leaf pretty extensively and it just does not may any fiscal sense.
I'm seeing more charging stations in parking lots and garages. The infrastructure isn't there yet for it to be practical for every driver to have an electric, but it's becoming less inconvenient to have that limited range.
Around here there is a string of them at Cracker barrel restaurants. Right now the charge is free but its still not that practical. Trust me, I work pretty much daily with the inverter drives that they use to power these cars. The price is way too high and for my daily commute it would take 150K miles on a leaf just to get equal to what it costs me to drive what I have right now if the power to charge was free. We are not there yet with the batteries and the mass production that will get the price right.
Another bit of good news is that Toyota will, for the first time, manufacture a Lexus model outside of Japan. Toyota has decided to use their manufacturing plant in Kentucky for final assembly making it both the first American made Lexus as well as the first non-Japanese built Lexus. http://www.nbcnews.com/business/toyota-investing-over-500m-launch-us-lexus-production-1B9519106
They say imitation is the most sincere form of flattery but I'm not sure Tesla will like this. A new electric car maker set up in Detroit as a joint venture between China's Youngman Automotive Group and ZIP! which is now owned by the former head of Apple's China business is trying to revive an old electric car brand which died ~70 years ago. Detroit Electric (1907-1939) was an early automaker which backed electric car technology but which faded as gasoline engines got better. At one time their cars were driven by people like Thomas Edison and Henry Ford's wife who both said they liked how quiet electric cars were and how they didn't belch smoke like the early gasoline cars did. So any way Detroit Electric is releasing a new roadster which is nearly identical to the discontinued Tesla Roadster right down to using the same engine, the same Lotus Elise car plateform and has blatantly copied just about everything in the car. Sadly, it will cost ~$40k more than the Tesla did and since Detroit Electric isn't allowed to use Tesla's patiented battery technology it will only have a range of 150 miles instead of 240 miles. The company has figured out how to reliably use a multispeed transmission with an electric engine though something Tesla never bothered with as they had an one speed tranny instead. Still, I'd be pissed off that these Chinese people completely copied both my car and my business plan (start with a low volume roadster the move on to build more mass market cars after the factory is set up and the brand name gets known) if I was Tesla. http://www.wired.com/autopia/2013/04/detroit-electric-sp-01/ The only semi good thing is Detroit Electric says they will do final assembly of the car in Detroit using mostly Chinese made parts along with the British built chassis built by Lotus.
