"Who killed the electric car", le film-documentaire de Chris Paine, développe la thèse selon laquelle General Motors aurait arrêté le développement d'un modèle de voiture électrique pour cause de complot avec la compagnie pétrolière Chevron.
Dans un post intitulé "What an electric vehicle costs", l'économiste libertarien David Friedman relève les contre-vérités de ce raisonnement et présente une explication beaucoup plus terre à terre que celle du grand complot capitaliste, à savoir que la voiture électrique ne constitue pas encore une alternative viable en tant que produit de masse à cause de son prix exorbitant et d'une faible amélioration du coût par miles, tout simplement:
If gas costs $3/gallon, the per mile cost for a vehicle averaging 25 mpg is 12 cents, so the electric vehicle saves less than ten cents per mile. If we assume a 100,000 mile lifetime, that's less than ten thousand dollars, which doesn't make up for much of the cost difference between the electric car and a conventional vehicle.
Un ancien collaborateur de GM tient le même discours:
Some facts about the EV1, the research and development of which was produced by my division of GM, Hughes Electronics:
General Motors lost two billion dollars on the project, and lost money on every single EV1 produced. The leases didn't even cover the costs of servicing them.
The range of 130 miles is bogus. None of them ever achieved that under normal driving conditions. Running the air conditioning or heater could halve that range. Even running the headlightsreduced it by 10%.
Minimum recharge time was two hours using special charging stations that except for fleet use didn't exist. The effective recharge time, using the equipment that could be installed in a lessee's garage, was eight hours. Home electrical systems simply couldn't handle the necessary current draw for "fast" charging.
NiMH batteries that had lasted up to three years in testing were failing after six months in service. There was no way to keep them from overheating without doubling the size of the battery pack. Lead-acid batteries were superior to NiMH in actual daily use.
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