This author has made numerous errors.. the first is comparing costs per mile by simply looking at the cost of the fuel. A proper calculation would take into account the cost of vehicle, and electric cars, like them or lump, are still fairly expensive. Of course Jaguars or BMWs may be more expensive but then comes the question of whether the people who own those cars would even notice an electric vehicle or care about the cost savings noted here.

Then the author grabs a figure from a power purchasing agreement and equates that to the actual cost of the power. Not so. The utility is required to take renewable energy so the price is designed to get that power, and would involve various subsidies, hidden or not, including charges on consumers.

So is any of this affecting electric vehicle sales? Last I looked these were miniscule - not worth mentioning. Hybrids were far more popular - that's the way the market seems to be going - although they are still just a fraction of sales.

There are many other errors but that will do for now.

Mark, the cost of the vehicle is not relevant for a couple of reasons. Firstly, the plants are still being amortised and simply for that reason, over time the cost will come down rapidly. Elon Musk has already announced that the next Tesla model will be aimed at a mass market and priced accordingly. His aim is US$35k, which is comparable with many fleet vehicles and very favourable when the cost savings on fuel over the life of the car are extrapolated. Second, the cost of fuel is what the argument is about!

The primary reason for electric vehicle sales being slow is the lack of availability of recharging points. Once again, this is a major focus of Tesla's strategic plan and is seeing large numbers of charging stations being rolled out across the US, Europe and China and that will continue.

Petroleum fuel prices are not remotely an example of free market operations. The oil market price has very little to do with the cost of production. In fact the very existence of the motor industry world wide relies heavily on Government assistance.

Your comments are reminiscent of the sorts of things we would have heard from those Curmudgeons who couldn't see the sense in horseless carriages a hundred or so years ago.

Craig - sorry but most of your claims are quite wrong. The price of the vehicle most certainly does count in calculating the cost of travel. My suggestion is that you go and find a fleet manager and ask why. The point about "the plants are being amortised" makes no sense, while the following remark shows you're in a different world "The oil market price has very little to do with the cost of production. In fact the very existence of the motor industry world wide relies heavily on Government assistance."

The oil market in fact has everything to do with the cost of production plus taxes.. petrol is taxed not subsidised like solar power. Although car production is supported by governments in some countries, if that all were withdrawn overnight just as many cars would be produced just in different countries.

The only point of substance you make is about electric points and electric car prices coming down. They have been talking about more electric points for well over a decade now. The problem is that there are so few cars to use them - whether more such points would overcome evident consumer reluctance to buy EVs so that there would be cars to use the points is another question. Cheaper EVs may help but as EVs already have enough range to handle suburban commutes and even mid-range out of town trips, I doubt it. A passing fad that doesn't even save carbon in most states (they don't - look it up!)

There are two things about the solar PV issue that no one seems to have noticed:

1. The Western Sahara and Central Australia are both big enough to supply the whole world demand and are about 150 degrees apart. In effect 24 hour solar power.

2. I was most surprised when I discovered that the rainfall in London is less than in Bloemfontein - the result of differential insolation. Hence I wonder if the effect of shading square kilometers of desert will not or could not be made to cool the ground under a solar farm to the point where desert could be converted to viable dry land farming. In effect would the appreciation in land value not more than pay for the cost of the land.

Mark, the cost of the vehicle has to be amortised just as the cost of the plant does. However, the cost of the vehicle that the customer pays is directly related to the amortisation of the capital cost of the plant and of the development of the technology. In every technological case, as the cost of plant is amortised, the cost of product is reduced. Can you give me a single example of that not happening?

Oh and in case you're wondering, I've actually run my own small fleets, both as an owner and as a manager.

The point about petroleum is that it is not a free market and that the reason it has been cheap historically is that the Saudi government via OPEC has been willing to keep prices low to maintain an oligopoly. Oil has always been regarded as a strategic resource and that means the price to the consumer has very little to do with anything real like returns on investment. Shell has divested all its retail petrol operations and the oil companies are among the biggest investors in renewables, especially solar PV. I guess they must be as deluded as I am, the poor things. Don't they realise the future is powered by V8s?

Your final paragraph is a classic chicken and egg and was aroung in a slightly different form a hundred years ago. "Horseless carriages will never catch on. They need smooth roads and petrol stations and who's going to build those when there are so few horseless carriages and they're so expensive?"

Then along came good old Henry Ford...

The debate is irrelevant here in Australia.
As one who placed an order for a Nissan Leaf and then cancelled it the
cost was very relevant.
In 2012 they wanted $51,500 for it and because they could not sell them
at that price they put the latest price up to $57,500 !

For comparison, in the US at that time the Nissan leaf sold for just
under $30,000.
It is a beautiful car to drive and is very well equipped and fitted out.
It's range would have suited me very well.
A friend has a Mitsubishi ieMEV and it costs him 1 cent a KM to
drive to work every day.

No the main problem is the GARO, the Great Australian Ripoff.

Perhaps the author could have discussed the price difference of the essential EV battery, it's life cycle, and vehicle endurance with conventional vehicles.
The rosy costs per mile then change a bit. More than a bit actually.
When we see battery operated suburban trains, we will know EVs have matured.

Craig m - look, for heaven sake sit down and think.. your amortisation is depreciation which is a cost.. you count the cost of that .. so its fuel cost plus write off/ depreciation/amortisation cost on on car. You and I are talking about the same thing, you're just trying to exclude it or pretend it isn't a cost. It most certainly is. You look at whole of life costs, not just fuel costs. I, too, know about fleet costs.

I don't have time or patience to fully debunk your views on OPEC, but they are at least less widely eccentric than your previous contention that the car market is being propped up by governments.

As for the chicken-egg.. my point was that even if they do have recharging points there would seem to be consumer reluctant to adopt electric. Maybe some day. But they still don't save carbon.

Anyway, enough of this.

Bazz - while I appreciate the price in Aus is just too great, my recollection of the US sales figures is that they are still very small.. tiny even by Aus standards let alone the US..

Amortisation isn't depreciation per se, it's the spreading of a cost of a capital asset over a period, eventually reducing to zero. At that point the asset still has value, but is fully paid for, so the capital cost does not have to be defrayed as part of the cost of goods sold.

That's why the price declines.

OPEC has repeatedly manipulated the oil price, both up and down. In recent times it's been down, to drive out competition from shale oil producers for the last few years of an oil-based vehicular economy. There are of course lots of othert costs of oil which aren't factored into prices. For example, what is the cost of the Gulf Wars, which were fought entirely to protect strategic oil interests? What is the cost of cleaning up former oil fields, fuel stations, etc? What does it cost to do emissions abatement? The list goes on and on.

The car industry in this country and elsewhere, has enjoyed the status of a protected industry for decades, for several reasons that most people presumably are aware of to some extent.

Seriously Mark, if subsidy of renewables is bad, why is subsidy of other forms of energy OK?

With respect to your comment to Bazz and Col's questions

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plug-in_electric_vehicle

should answer some questions.

As of Dec 2014 around 300,000 EVs had been sold and the rate of sales is increasing exponentially, nostly due to battery-supplied vehicles.

I'm not sure what's driving the FUD being generated around this topic, perhaps Mark might know more about that.

An analysis of the cost of owning and operating the family car will show that for most people, fuel is a smaller cost than the annual depreciation. Hard to understand why the cost of the car is not important for some people.

Even if you look at the cost of long haul road train truck, where consumption might be close to 1 litre per km, the cost of fuel is important, but considerably less than half O&O costs.

Most private owners value the flexibility of personal transport. The vehicle choice is often influenced by recreational activities; a 4x4 for touring outback, big enough to tow the caravan, big enough to carry the dogs down to the beach, able to drive 300km without a stop and being able to fuel up in ten minutes. Not everyone lives in the inner city, spends their life on their iphone and flies overseas for their recreation (in a battery powered aircraft of course). We could force everyone to adopt the organic inner city lifestyle, but that might require the suspension of representative government …

Some questions
What is the energy density of the most advanced batteries in GJ per tonne and GJ per cubic metre? How does this compare to the same values for diesel and aviation fuel?

From this, at what point will we see battery powered long haul road transport able to travel continuously (with a few stops of less than 15 minutes) for at least 12 hours per day and still have room and mass capacity to carry a 50 tonne payload?

Trains able to cross Australia? What would be the transmission losses for an electricity grid to span the country to charge the trains, or, what would be the cost of solar arrays and more importantly the battery storage that could recharge a train quickly enough to make this competitive with diesel synthesised from sustainably grown cellulose? (Please don’t give me the USA corn ethanol figures, we all know that’s an agricultural subsidy at its core).

Air transport, the military? of course we could always abolish the latter and live in peace.

We can produce as much hydrocarbon as we need when the price of oil stays above $100/bbl by going direct from plant material to the liquid fuel without the fossil step in the middle. The carbon emitted during combustion is captured by the plants grown and harvested in the same geological era; no fossil stage required to make things so complicated.

Investors invest in anything that will show a return short term. In itself, this does not validate the fundamental physical principles
of the activity they invest in.

Boxer, the issue is appropriate use of technology. If it is possible to be more efficient in some uses of technology, then we should do that.

We don't use petrol engines for trucks because diesel is more efficient and has better power delivery characteristics. We choose the power plant that suits the needs.

At this stage nobody is proposing battery-electric power for very heavy haulage, although Tesla is working on battery power for smaller transport, like standard semis. There are also lots of designs now around to do battery swaps in just a few minutes. At the risk of being perceived as Tesla's mouthpiece, their model S and later can now do a complete battery swap at a dedicated station in less than 3 minutes, which is quicker than a petrol car can fuel up at 15 liters/minute (the standard pump flow rate).

At present there is no question that EVs are a poor option at the moment in Australia, but there is equally little question that this will change.

Have a look at this piece, which lists all the different types of horse-drawn transport.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horse-drawn_vehicle

How many of those types do you reckon were produced last year?

Curmudgeon, I saw a figure just for the Nissan Leaf and it was over 100,000.

In Norway it is the number one seller.

In Australia I think it is about 100.
I will go and have a look.

In US March sales 1817 for Leaf.
So the 100,000 must be world.