How much would you pay for an EV?

could this be your $8000 Vectrix?

http://www.electricmotorsport.com/store/ems_electric_motorcycle_gpr-s.php

Since I am thinking of spending over $12,000 to convert a small Fiat to a Lithium powered electric, I guess I'd be in the market for small fast fun to drive electric car in the $20,000-24,000 range. it isn't going to happen anytime soon, unless it only has 3 wheels though. the DOT is making sure nothing fully electric with 4 wheels that goes faster than 25MPH will be affordable.

Let me see, first the vehicle would have to pass a few requirements -

Top Speed 80 MPH Range @ 50 MPH 120 Miles Charge Time 4 to 6 Hours Body Style 4 wheeled vehicle that looks like a car

Maybe looks like :
Now I could see spending up to 30,000.oo UDS for a car like this.

Grandpa Chas S.

There's not much logic in spending that much for what's offered. I wouldn't pay it. There's not a very good reason to have a 90 mph top speed, and the range could be cut down to maybe 50-70 miles, and the vehicle would be a viable choice, with the option for more range at expense. That being said though, it would be a really nice vehicle.

The problem with an EV this expensive, is that BEV's only make good 2nd vehicle options, due to the limited range. They can't be used for road trips like gasers.

A more affordable option is to contact companies that could do conversions, if someone is looking to buy a finished BEV (doesn't want to do the work in a conversion). Probably, some of the major EV distributors might take up such a project if you offered enough money, and they'd most likely do a pretty good job. You could have the project tailored just to your needs to cut down on expense.

An estimate might come out as follows if you hunt down and provide a decent rolling chassis (which might be gotten cheaply):
Components Cost: $8,000 - $20,000 (depending on performance and battery type)
Labor: 200-300 hrs at $60/hr = $12,000-18,000

So you are at $20,000 to $38,000 and you will have interchangeable, and proven DC components.

TS Motors would build a complete sports car for $29,500 + labor which might be $18,000, so you are at about the cost of the Phoenix car, and this would be a very high power sports car. This estimate includes a $12,000 rolling chassis.

Also, sometimes people do pretty nice conversions just for the fun in the project than sell them for the components cost. For example, here's a nice conversion for sale: Toyota Yaris. People also often sell partially finished projects for really good deals. Here's a good place to find them: EV Tradin Post.

You know what would add a lot of value to a EV for me is.

Lift all the restrictions.

If I could go out and build a EV without the big old government looking over my shoulder, I would do it. Actually I could probably get away with it :)

Deron.

The problem with an EV this expensive, is that BEV's only make good 2nd vehicle options, due to the limited range. They can't be used for road trips like gasers.

Fine by me. The days when we westerners can go as far as we want whenever we want are rapidly drawing to a close. It's just too costly for the planet and soon it will be too costly period. My hypothetical car would only have to take me as far as the bus station, the train station, or in a dire emergency, the airport. Since my primary vehicle right now is a bicycle, anything with four wheels would be a step up... or a step down depending on how you look at it.

I agree emphatically with Chas, although I might be willing to go $5k more for a BEV the size of a Smart car.

It's hard for me to say, since I'm a broke 17 year old who was originally going to buy a beat up old miata, and no one in my family has even bought a new car aside from my dad who did it for the first timeafew months ago.

That being said it seams electric with good range (anything over 100 miles, enough for a commute + going out to dinner + unexpected crap) has better utility than a car in the same class. I'd compare it to a small sports car or a converible in terms of a price customers would pay.

That is, a city car that only seats 2 people might be $15,000 but a convertible sports car like a miata that only seats 2 people costs about $22,000. So the added "fun trait" tacked $7,000 on the price. I think an extra $7,000 over a similar car in it's class would be aceptable. Especially when you consider fuel savings.

Also the talk about electric cars will change signifigantely once oil hits $4.00 a gallon this summer.

I would pay about $1000 at most. $1000 is enough for a really great motor kit+battery combination for a bicycle, which is the market I'm most interested in.

I don't have a lot of money but fortunately e-bikes are cheap - no insurance, and the electricity cost is negligible.

I know this is probably not a popular opinion for an electric vehicles forum, but I believe that if we simply go back to proper urban design, a majority of people would eventually not be willing to spend much on a car at all, electric or otherwise, because it would be more convenient to walk, use (good) public transportation, or a bicycle or scooter.

For the situations where ones needs transportation to small towns or rural areas, or needs to transport something bulky, renting a car or truck, or using a flex-car system will be much more economical than owning. But, these would usually need to be IC engine vehicles due to the distances involved.

The most efficient setup would be a public motor-pool system where one simply gets a car out of a centrally located neighborhood garage. This would optimize the percent utilization of each car, and with the community being otherwise car-free, greatly reduce the number of cars that clog the community or need to be built at all, with enormous savings of resources and carbon emissions.

You guys make a good argument for electric bicycles.

Why not stop wasting money and resources hauling around dead weight. Take my motorcycle, and the electric civic I'm working on. The motorcycle battery pack is $800, and the battery life is expected to be 3,000 miles. The Civic battery pack cost $2,300, and battery life will be ~9,000. Replacing batteries alone is:

Motorcycle: $.27/mile
Civic: $.25/mile

And the estimated vehicle costs (with labor):

Motorcycle: $12,000
Civic: $20,000

And all that expense for a pretty crappy range on both (limiting the vehicle practicality).

I'm thinking the above two are a nice hobby and for occasional use, but expensive for my routine commute. For more practical long-term transportation, and to really cut my gasoline use, and overall vehicle costs, I'm thinking of an electric bicycle. This will also cut energy usage to a small fraction of a heavy EV. Cost of a bicycle would probably be about $1,500 for decent components and a decent NiMH/LiFePo4 battery pack. I estimate the cost for batteries to be about:

E-bicycle: $.06/mile for a $500 600 whr NiMH pack with 16 mile range and 500 cycles. Very conservative, and it's still less than 1/4 the cost of the civic or motorcycle.

Andrew,

The problem with electric bicycles is that they can't go fast enough - not legally or safely anyway.

Have you considered a LiFePO4 pack?

If it gets only half the advertised life, the $1300 liFePO4 pack going into my e-max will go 1000 cycles at an average of 25 miles per cycle (maximum range will be about 35 miles) or 5.2 cents per mile.

And I can't figure out how so many people consider these things just a hobby because of inadequate range. My scooters lead acid, warm-day range of 23 miles will get me to 95% of any local destination in the Pittsburgh area, and back, that I need to go. For almost 8 months last year my car stayed parked.

Yea, LiFePo4 kind of throws everything off. I really hope the initial expense can come down, and even if it doesn't, once I have some more information, than there will be much less risk spending $8k on a pack for instance. It's kind of like what I was thinking about the Z20 back last year in October (before the pre-order "discount" went away). It looks attractive, but it's a lot of money for something that might not live up to specs.

One thing I would pay extra for on a EV is the reduced maintenance. No oil changes, no cooling system to mess with, no blow head gaskets, no replacing mufflers...

I would hate to mess with a lead car, but something with low maintenance batteries would be nice.

Really, here in San Diego, I see no need for a car to make short trips. The weather is fine year round, so you can ride a bike anytime. I can pretty much get everywhere by bike or moped. I usually can haul almost everything I need too on the back of them too.

Heck I own four vehicles and I do not think I have bought gas for the past couple of months :)

Deron.

A couple of years ago I looked into converting my Fiero to electric. I did an internet search using "electric Fiero" as a search term and found a lot on information. There are companys that produce "kits" for the job. They stress that Kit means prebuilt parts to make the job easier, not just bolt together parts. For instance a part to join standard size electric motors to the transmission bell.
In addition there was a guy ( do not remember the links, sorry) who kept track of the cost and time. He estimated a year to do the work as a hobby, 4 months with no life, and about $10,000 in parts to do the conversion. He was using lead based batteries and I think his battery cost was around $4000 to $5000. I would guess the would translate into %15000 to $20000 in battery cost for Li.
Based on a real world conversion $10000 lead, $20,000 to $25,000 for Li plus labor.
This means the current cost of the conversions from Ebox http://www.acpropulsion.com/ebox/ or Hybrid Technologies http://www.hybridtechnologies.com/ (The 2 that I follow) Are not out of line. Cost of the car, around $15 to 25 K plus cost of parts 20 to 25 k plus maybe 200 hours of labor at $4 to $5K (if you could get it that cheap) gives a range of $39K to $55k. Which is about what they run today.
Note Hybrid Technology reduced the price of their conversions becauce Li prices came down.
Might be cheaper to build from ground up, but for now, much like during the intial introduction fo the IC car, this cost more.
Also note the price of the model T came down a bunch during it's production run, so there is hope.

Perhaps if 10 of us buy one we could each have 3.5kWh of 15,000 life cycle batteries for $4,750 each?

Kind of like buying a giant Dewalt power tool pack...

Those batteries are too good, they would far outlast the scooter.

Have you contacted Patrick Rentsch about his discount priced Thundersky's? Don't know if they can be fit in a XM-2000. Reply if you are interested and I'll PM you his contact info.

Those batteries are too good, they would far outlast the scooter.

I'm not following how that is a bad thing. If the batteries maintain their value, than they can be sold to recover the cost, and essentially they are very cheap.