Wednesday, October 24, 2007

WSJ on Electric Possibilities

Joseph White, Wall St Journal Detroit bureau chief, is writing about electric cars again, this time about the majors. He's in Tokyo reporting from the big Japanese Motor Show.
Hybrid or All-Electric? Car Makers Take Sides
Nissan-Renault continue talking up small all-electric cars. Toyota and GM are continuing down their differing hybrid paths. Honda, the quintessential internal combustion company, is lobbing criticism at hybrids, a market Toyota exploited better than Honda. White suggests Honda is lining up with Nissan, seeing a future not in hybrids but rather electric cars. Perhaps the lithium batteries upon with Honda depends to make it's FCV function will actually see the light of day in a full-function battery electric car.
"My feeling is that the kind of plug-in hybrid currently proposed by different auto makers can be best described as a battery electric vehicle equipped with an unnecessary fuel engine and fuel tank," [Honda President and CEO Takeo] Fukui said at the company's research-and-development center.
Is Honda's Fuel Cell vehicle a battery electric with an unnecessary, expensive, impractical, inefficient fuel cell stack and hydrogen storage tank?