Arbitrage on Electric Car Batteries
A couple of weeks ago Energy 2.0 featured a story on the 2010 Chevy Volt–the car that will save GM–and the first mass market example of transport technology that might save us all in the end. But will the public buy it.
This article about the Tesla (the all electric roadster favored by environmentally-conscious celebrities such a George Clooney) demonstrates there is a market for these cars, as long as they are appropriately targeted to customers.
The most interesting part of the article examines the company’s financial arrangements with customers to replace the car’s battery, which they estimate has a lifetime of approximately 7 years or 100,000 miles. As you can imagine, you don’t simply undo the cables and hand swap them like a vehicle powered by an internal-combustion engine.… [view entry]
