This is all good positive news.

I think people are seriously understimating just how close we are to crossing the chasm for electric vehicles.  It’s still a few years out, but once it hits, it’s going to be huge and a huge boost for the economy for decades to come.  Think Iphone, but on steriods electric cars  touch not only transportation, but energy as well.

Should electric cars and hybrids be required at slow speed to have extra noise added?  Most of the cars out there already have something in anticipation of this.  On the Nissan Leaf you can choose to turn it off…. for now.  This is a very interesting subject brought up by Jim Motavalli.   Beyond the fact of whether it’s really needed or not, it’s complicated to implement at it’s actually unclear if doing so may introduce other problems.  The law of unintended consequences in this case may indeed apply.

One of the best parts of electric cars are the quiet operation.  Talk to any potential buyer and this is one of the most mentioned pluses.  Legislation for mandating certain noises is something that has been brewing for a while and as noted by Jim he found is it’s more complex than just adding some noise.  Sounds can be different on a quiet street vs NYC, etc.  Something not noted in the article is at slow speeds an luxury ICE sedan car is nearly as quiet as an electric car unless your really revving up and after 12 mph tire noise is all the same anyway.  Yet, there is no proposed legislation for all those silent but deadly ICE cars

Thought this was a great article to highlight over @ fool.com.  It’s no wonder a good percentage of people who buy an electric car or plugin hybrid end up getting solar.  The economic payback is huge when compared to paying for gasoline.  Take out the costs of the car itself, focus on only the energy source and you can pay off an average homes solar panels in around 5-6 years.

Lets say you drive about 15,000 miles now and take an average size 27 mpg car. Let’s say a Toyota Camry.  The costs for that gas at $4.00 per gallon is approx $2200.00 per year!  Let’s add in maintenance for an ICE car and you could easily add in another $300 per year for that Camry for a total of about $2700.00 extra per year.  We are not even including the fact, you’ll have to replace brakes pads and other possible costly repairs for that Camry after 3 years.  An EV requires very little maintenance.  Although Tesla charges $600.00 per year, a nissan leaf has only a 1 time per year checkup and even that has not been required in our experience.  Usually you just bring it in for software updates and they check the battery and battery health then.  It’s more like a rolling computer.  Also, you’ll likely trade in the vehicle or replace/upgrade the batteries with a new pack at some point.  We think the repair costs/long term maintenance for a gas car over 6 years vs new battery pack likely cancel each other out.  6-10 years from now battery prices should be much lower as the volume of cars on the road will be approaching the 1 million mark or more.  Like any electronics higher volume drastically reduces prices.

So now take your electric car, add solar and take that $2700.00 per year you were going to spend on the Camry gas and instead apply that to the cost of your solar panels.  At current install rates an average solar array system after tax credits and rebates may run about $12,000.00.  Voila after about 5 years you have paid for your panels, so your home power and all your next electric cars are free

People who get an EV quickly realize this game changing value proposition and it only stands to grow quickly over the coming decades.

This is a great article/post by Anton Wahlman over @ The Street. Obviously not a green guy, but his understanding and ability to see beyond the noise of many other business writers/bloggers on Tesla is very keen. His observations can also be broadly applied to EV’s in general and he notes the coming inevitable competition coming as Tesla continues to succeed.  We electric car advocates have been saying these exact same things for years, but it’s nice to see it start bubbling up in those truly paying attention on the investment side.   Below is a great example, but go read the whole article.

“To understand why Tesla is succeeding in the market, you have to understand how lyric its customers are. In the big scheme of things, Tesla has essentially no marketing presence — very few people on Earth have been to one of the few Tesla stores, and Tesla does not advertise.

What Tesla has found is that most of its new sales are now some form of referral sales. Basically, the people who got their Teslas already can’t stop talking about them with their friends, neighbors, relatives and co-workers. They won’t give up until they have sold a few of them.

As a result, Tesla adoption is occurring disproportionately in clusters now. This is particularly evident in Tesla’s Silicon Valley home market. Today, as I have been every day in the recent weeks, I saw more Teslas than I could bother counting, and I wasn’t even out a lot.

The word “sustainable” is being thrown around a lot, and I usually react against it with acute nausea. However, I will argue that there is nothing as sustainable for Tesla as passionate owners who sell the car for you. THAT’S sustainability!”

This is really, really good and great quality. As we tell everyone, once you drive an Electric Car you become an instant activist. So well done!

Wow. from Green Car Reports

This is probably a few months out of date, but it’s a nice feature of the company, Elon Mush, cars, vision etc.

Confirmed by AutoblogGreen, O’brien Mitsubishi in Normal, IL is offering this amazing lease.