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Old 04-16-2008, 12:38 PM   #10 (permalink)
Kardax
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Jun 2007
Location: Minnesota, USA
Posts: 228
Quote:
Originally Posted by Hunter View Post
I guess I just don't follow the premise of this thread. Why is it such a hard job to build Whitestar without a generator? The pure BEV is a lot simpler...seems to me like it's a lot harder to build it with an ICE."
Building an electric sedan is easy. But that's not the goal.

The goal is to build an affordable electric sedan. That changes everything. High-capacity batteries are expensive, so in order to use fewer of them, you have to use lightweight materials and efficient aerodynamics while still keeping it visually appealing and useful to mainstream customers. Balancing all those together is what makes building an electric sedan that you can profitably sell incredibly difficult. It's never been done.

Using a generator adds complexity, but the materials costs go way down because you can use a battery pack with a fraction of the capacity. Fuel tanks are relatively cheap at any size.

-Ryan
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