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Cars at Costco: A Great Idea!

Автор: EliseoArredondo вторник, 4 августа 2009 г. Ярлыки: , , , , , , 0 коммент.

byd_fo_111You know how it goes: Go to Costco for one thing, and end up walking out with $200 worth of flour, DVDs, Diet Coke, toilet paper, and beef jerky.

The whole Costco experience is about impulse buying as much as it is about bulk and convenience. Soon, as we briefly mentioned on this blog earlier, you could end up loading all that stuff into the ultimate of impulse buys: an electric car.

A Mexican company, GS Motors, currently imports Chinese cars for sale through big-box stores and has plans to do the same in the U.S.; they’re even building a factory in Mexico to build the Chinese-designed cars.

Chinese cars made a splash at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit earlier this year, but still get ridiculed for their design and questionable safety and reliability standards. That makes sales through a conventional dealer system risky, but absolutely ideal for sale in a warehouse club or box store. I love this idea! 

If the price can be kept around $5,000 to $6,000, these things will fly off the shelf faster than a Wii at Christmas. 

Costco shoppers love convenience, and if the cars are built well enough to drive them back and forth to work five days a week, people will adore them. Never mind the fact that they don’t have the fit and finish of a Honda or the zoom-zoom of a Mazda, because frankly, we won’t expect it. 

What we will expect is a noticeable drop in our weekly fuel costs and the satisfaction of knowing it’s being brought to us by the friendly folks in China, Mexico, and at Costco.

This is not to say I want cheapo Chinese cars to replace conventional domestic and import autos, but I think it would be dang cool if we had the choice of having one of each, at least until a domestic maker could offer something similar.

Would you buy a $5,000 electric Chinese car from Costco if it were available?

-tgriffith



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The Scion That Goes Both Ways

Автор: EliseoArredondo среда, 22 июля 2009 г. Ярлыки: , , , , , , 0 коммент.

Scion EVYou know how sometimes you hear about an idea that seems so obvious you kick yourself for not being the one to think of it first?

That’s what happened to me when I read this story about a professor at the University of Delaware who has stripped apart a Scion xB and converted it to an electric vehicle capable of hitting 90 mph and going 120 miles between charges. 

The rise in popularity of electric cars is happening fast, and begins to beg the question of how many electric vehicles the country’s electrical grid can handle. While we’re still years away from having enough electric cars to cause a serious drain on the grid, it’s a valid question.

Enter Professor Willett Kempton, whose Scion doesn’t only consume electric energy, it gives it back.

The battery in the car works two ways, receiving energy and then returning stored electricity back to the grid. As an added bonus, the car can serve as an emergency energy source in case of a power outage; it’s a drivable generator. Get a few million of these babies in people’s garages and suddenly the United States has an innovative energy storage system that can provide a backup to the country’s taxed energy grid.

Down the road, it’s even possible for customers with these cars to receive checks from the power companies in reimbursement for storing energy; money that over time could end up paying for the car itself.

See? It’s an idea that makes so much sense I know I could’ve thought of it. But I guess it took a professor to actually build it!

Does a two-way electric car have any effect on what you think about electric vehicles? If they were affordable and available, would you own one?

-tgriffith



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