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tags carbon emissions electric car electric cars electric vehicles green car hybrid garage range anxiety

Time to diversify your garage

By Kara Saltness

With all of this talk about range anxiety, its completely understandable that people are a little stressed out just thinking about replacing their familiar gas guzzlers with an emissions free electric car.

We get it.  It’s new and it’s unfamiliar.  So there’s a lot to think through, but that doesn’t mean you should discount them so soon.  In his October 20th post, Gas2.0 Editor Nick Chambers points out a compelling statistic:  according to the 2001 US Department of Transportation National Household Travel Survey (NHTS), the average person drives their personal vehicle less than 23 miles a day, which is more than covered by the CODA’s minimum 90 mile range.

Still, the questions persist, “What if I want to go on a road trip over the weekend? Or what if an emergency comes up and I need to drive further than I normally do?”

These concerns are understandable, but perhaps a bit irrational.  Nick may have put it best, “So, if the average person drives a quarter of the distance an electric car is capable of going in a given day, why do people still say that they aren’t practical? It certainly isn’t a feeling based in how people actually use their cars. No, it’s more of a feeling based on our obsession with risk aversion—trying to avoid potential problems even if those problems don’t crop up during 95% of the rest of our lives.”

Our solution?  A hybrid garage.  No, we don’t mean a garage of hybrid vehicles.  What we mean is a garage with a CODA electric car for every day commuting and a conventional car (that gets high gas mileage, please) that will get you where you need to go on those rare occasions when you need more than your 90-120 mile CODA range.  And since most US households (92%) already have two vehicles, the idea of having two different cars for different purposes shouldn’t be news to anyone.

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 5th, 2009 at 5:24 pm and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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  1. posted by Josh Ferber November 12, 2009 at 5:00 pm

    Does Coda plan to team up with electric companies or contractors to make installing a “hybrid garage” for accessible to people, as in running electricity lines or whatever to the garage that can actually charge the car? I think that would be a great idea, personally. Myself, I wouldn’t know the first thing about who to call or what to do to make that happen, lol.

  2. posted by CODA Auto November 16, 2009 at 5:17 pm

    Yes, CODA does plan to work with other companies on the installation of in-garage wall chargers. We’re in the process of working out contracts right now.

  3. posted by jackmarchand November 28, 2009 at 3:27 pm

    nov.28,09
    Gentlemen,
    The following was forwarded to EV-World several years ago and the paying per
    mile was done during battery swap by cash, credit card or ‘EZ-pass’.

    —-

    june 30, 2006 ATT’N:EV-World Gentlemen: With the present EVs there
    is too much anxiety for the owner to feel free to travel long distances. The
    alternative is one minute battery swap stations and they also interface with
    my high speed maglev system presented to US DOT which was selected “top gun”
    by a TRW study for the DOT back in the 1960s’. A few years ago transportation
    interests finally saw a new direction from my web site and are now trying to
    claim it as theirs.–As is,the plug-in EV has its limitations. So the EV in
    the future will be part of a bigger infrastructure to suit everyone’s advantage.
    GM is now even considering my seperation of the passenger capsule from its
    bottom carrier. Which they call the AUTOnomy skateboard. (the motorized wheels,
    support frame, including the swap batteries). My upper capsule will also
    withstand a vacuum negative pressure while traveling air evacuated pipelines at very high speeds
    exceeding the Concorde jet. It’s a “whole new ball game”. And …no.! EVs are
    not dead –the’re coming. -OIL..Let ‘em shove it..!! Check this web site–
    http://trillions.topcities.com/dualmodemaglev.html also visit these pages
    http://trillions.topcities.com/electriCar.html and tell the world..A new way is imminent. Jack Marchand

    My Email is: jackmarchant@yahoo.com

  4. posted by Jeremy Gow January 11, 2010 at 2:03 am

    It seems to me that the idea of a ‘hybrid garage’ is more than workable. I’ve driven approximately 100,000 miles in the last 4 years; I could have done the majority of this driving within the range capabilities of the upcoming Coda. How? Aside from work-based driving in a company vehicle, which averaged out at 60 miles per day, I commute roughly 60 miles each way in my own personal vehicle to visit my fiance, up to a several times a week. I always stay overnight, so there’s no issue with recharging, and I’d still have a 30-40 mile reserve range once I get to work, allowing me to run a pile of errands afterward, even without a recharge during the day. Most car owners I know think that my commute is a long one, and that I drive an awful lot; In other words, most of my friends would seldom approach the range capacity of this vehicle. The concern that one might not be able to go on long trips in an EV is a weak objection. Car rental companies are around every corner, and what’s more, as a couple, we’ll keep one gas car in the garage for those few annual infrequent long trips. But I bet it won’t be long before we go all-electric with an occasional rental car. Bye-bye tune-ups, oil changes, muffler jobs, timing belts, water pumps, oil pumps, fuel filters; all of it. Finally, a car that’s as reliable as a household appliance!

 
 

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