Think EV causes some EV economic thinking
Tiny electric car has big priceThink is starting to sell the The City electric car in Norway. With a 112 miles per charge and a top speed of 62.5 miles per hour, the Think doesn't pack a ton of WOW power. Still, it's an environment-saving, oil-crushing electric vehicle.
Nonetheless, the economics of Think's City cause some serious consumer thinking. The base price of the The City equates to $28,690. That's fair for a small, under-performing electric car, right?
Hold on. That doesn't include the battery. The battery is leased for another $183 per month. After 5 years that would add an extra $11,000 to the cost of the vehicle, totalling almost $40,000 - and that doesn't include charging costs.
Makes me think that either GM is going to take a big hit on the Volt, or that the close to $40,000 price tag must not include the battery lease. Thank god for government tax incentives. We're gonna need a lot of them if gas prices keep falling.
Labels: electric cars, think, think city
posted by Dahcredyns at
1:52 PM
2 Comments:
Something doesn't add up. I sincerely doubt the cost of parts in a car like this are THAT MUCH more than a regular car if at all....I'm very suspicious.
I'd really like to get a detailed breakdown of costs, etc before I believe this.
Part of the problem with cars like this is that there isn't a supply chain for many parts, which means supplies are significantly more expensive. It'll take time for economies of scale to catch up to many supply costs.
GM, for instance, is making many of its own parts for the first gen. Volt because some parts don't yet even exist in the supply chain. Supply chains simply won't exist until the 2nd gen Volt and even then economies of scale still won't fully kick in.
Even Tesla said it focused on the Roadster at first, as a sporty luxury vehicle because if they tried to make something like a Civic EV, it would have cost $60,000.
The fact is many auto supplies today are cheap because they've been standardized to fit millions of vehicles, which brings economies of scale.
Starting new, production capabilities for small runs of unique supplies means you can't spread those production costs amongst millions of parts. Instead, they're spread across 1000's of parts. That means much higher costs.
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