Which Electric Cars Most Excite Potential Electric Car Buyers

Without surprise, current EV ownership matched historical EV sales fairly well — 33.9% had the Nissan LEAF, 21.4% the Tesla Model S, 16% the Chevy Volt, 6.5% the BMW i3, and then much smaller percentages had numerous other electric cars.

Importantly, I think this indicates that the EV-driver respondents are quite representative of the broader EV consumer market, which bodes well for making broad generalizations from this report.

More interesting than the cars people currently have (which we already basically know anyway) were the electric cars people intended to buy and were most excited about. Naturally, these results weren’t a huge surprise either, as there are just a few very exciting electric models publicly planned for market in the coming few years, but it was interesting to see how the preferences were split. Breaking out results for each model, here are the 7 hottest electric vehicles:

Model 3

39% owners expect to buy next
55% of potential owners expect to buy
53% owners more excited about this than any other new/coming EV
56% of potential owners more excited about this than any other new/coming EV

Model X

12% owners expect to buy next
17% of potential owners expect to buy
13% owners more excited about this than any other new/coming EV
15% of potential owners more excited about this than any other new/coming EV

Model S

10% owners expect to buy next
20% of potential owners plan to buy

Chevy Volt (1.0 + 2.0)

7% owners expect to buy next
23% of potential owners expect to buy
5% owners more excited about Volt 2.0 than any other new/coming EV
5% of potential owners more excited about Volt 2.0 than any other new/coming EV

Chevy Bolt

6% owners expect to buy next
17% of potential owners expect to buy
8% owners more excited about this than any other new/coming EV
4% of potential owners more excited about this than any other new/coming EV

Nissan LEAF (1st-Gen)

6% owners expect to buy next
8% of potential owners plan to buy

Long-Range Nissan

5% owners expect to buy next
33% of potential owners expect to buy
10% owners more excited about this than any other new/coming EV
6% of potential owners more excited about this than any other new/coming EV

There are a few other long-range and competitively affordable electric cars tentatively planned for market, but their release dates are less certain, which likely caused them to rank lower.

However, another reason they don’t have as much buyer interest or enthusiasm may be due to Nissan, GM, and Tesla benefiting from “first-mover advantage.” The Nissan LEAF, Chevy Volt, andTesla Model S were the first genuinely mass-market electric vehicles in the United States. Many more of them have been sold than any other electric car models. Both early adopters and EV enthusiasts eager to join the EV movement seem to trust these companies and want to reward them for their leadership in this sector.

Potential EV Drivers

Current EV Drivers

Tesla clearly stands out, even far above Nissan and GM, in consumer interest. I had a little fun with a couple of questions about the electric car company, and the results were impressive: 54.2% of EV owners/lessees self-identified as fanbois/fangurls (typically derogatory terms), and 28.6% said they were “perhaps” fanbois/fangurls. Interestingly, almost the exact same percentages came out of non-owner/lessee responses — 54.5% and 29.10%.

It’s unspecified why respondents were so enthusiastic about Tesla and its products, but there are several likely reasons. One is that Tesla is 100% focused on fully electric vehicles. Not only does it not produce fossil-fuel-gulping cars; it even stays away from fossil-fuel-sipping plug-in hybrids and extended-range electric vehicles. This, by itself, must endear it to EV enthusiasts.

The company, mostly via well known CEO and product architect Elon Musk, is passionate about combating climate change, air pollution, and oil dependency. This is important to many people, and we like Tesla more for its passion on this front.

Tesla has also demonstrated the ability and desire to produce extremely high-performance and innovative vehicles. The Tesla Model S has broken many auto industry records and turned the general concept of electric cars on its head. Additionally, Tesla is the only company with a super-fast charging network in place, a topic I’ll come back to later in the report.

Tesla has long held plans to release a long-range and affordable electric car. It is widely assumed that Tesla’s batteries come at a lower cost per kilowatt-hour than any other EV batteries on the market. Making that assumption, when Tesla does bring a mid-market car to production, many potential buyers believe they will be able to get “more car for the money” from Tesla than from any other automaker.

Given the reviews of the Tesla Model S and Model X, as well as Tesla’s Supercharger network, many EV enthusiasts are eagerly awaiting a Tesla model they can affordably get their hands on. Even those who have bought or plan to buy a higher-cost Model S or Model X are enthusiastic because the Model 3 will presumably bring long-range, fully electric transportation to millions of people — if all goes as planned. That would mark a huge step forward for the electric vehicle movement.

What Is Happening To The Apple Car Project?

Just last month, Apple registered three new urls: apple.car, apple.cars and apple.auto. Earlier this month, Tesla’s CEO, Elon Musk, said it is an “open secret” that Apple is working on an electric car. “It’s pretty hard to hide something when you hire over 1,000 engineers to do it,” Musk said. Everybody and his brother knows the effort is code named “Project Titan.”

In August, Apple poached top software engineer Jamie Carlson from Tesla, where he was intimately involved in developing Tesla autonomous driving Autopilot program. In September, word leaked that the big bosses at Apple had approved a request to triple the size of the Project Titan team. Steve Zadesky, who previously worked as an engineer at Ford, was placed in charge of the expansion.

But now, word has leaked that Zadesky has suddenly left the company for “personal reasons,” according to Newsweek. A report by AppleInsider dated January 25 claims that Apple’s head of design, Jony Ive, has placed a hold on hiring for Project Titan. Insiders report Ive has “expressed his displeasure” with the way the Project Titan process is going.

A report in The Wall Street Journal dated January 22 suggests the project has run up against a number of challenges. Team members are said to be unhappy with the lack of “clear goals for the project.” They also say management is insisting on performance deadlines that are unrealistic. It is thought that 2019 is the target date for introducing an Apple Car, but that may just be the date when final design approval is expected.

Apple has no car manufacturing experience and no car factory. Even the irrepressible Elon Musk seems to have been chastened by how hard it is to actually build automobiles. Back in September, AppleInsider speculated that Apple had approached BMW about partnering to build its car. Apple apparently was impressed with the innovative BMW i3 electric car and thought it might make a suitable platform for its own vehicles. BMW seems to have been less interested than Apple was, however.

Have the wheels come off the Apple Car project? The company is notoriously secretive about its future plans, but if the rumors are reliable, Project Titan seems to be in serious trouble.

Photo credit: Silvery/Creative Commons via Newsweek

Passing It On – Keeping The Sports Car Flame Alive

I  remember the day I became a sports car nut. A man in my neighborhood owned a Jaguar XK 120. It was Olde English white with wire wheels and had a red leather interior. My father always drove Chevys. This was about as far a way from a traditional American sedan as it was possible to get.  One day, this neighbor took me for a ride in his Jaguar. My head hasn’t really been on straight ever since.

I still remember sitting in the passenger seat. I wasn’t tall enough to see out the windshield, but the top was down, the sun was warm, and there were puffy white clouds in the blue sky overhead. I remember the smell of hot oil wafting back from the engine and mixing with the aroma of warm leather. To this day, I can still hear the bark of that straight 6 engine rumbling in my ears. It was as close to a magic carpet ride as I have ever experienced.

When he brought me home, I started gushing to my parents about this incredible convertible. He smiled and said, “This isn’t a convertible, son. This is a roadster.” My father made the mistake of asking what the difference was. “A convertible has a top you occasionally put down when the weather is ideal. A roadster has a top you only put up when the weather is awful,” he said. That made perfect sense to me. I made up my mind that one day I would own a roadster.

Over the years, I have owned several sports cars — all of them roadsters. I started with a rusted out ’56 MGA that I never did get back into road worthy condition. That was followed by a ’74 MGB that stayed in the family for 20 years. It became my daughter’s go to college car. I tweaked and prodded it into as-new condition, then parked it on the sidewalk outside her high school on her graduation day with a big red bow around it. When she finished her valedictory speech, that was her reward. Her classmates were wicked jealous! You could see it in their eyes. They wished they had gotten a sports car for graduation, too.

12 years ago, I latched on to a lightly used ’94 Mazda Miata. It has taken me to Nova Scotia and back and to NASA track days at Watkins Glen, Lime Rock, and Thompson Speedway. In all that time, it has hardly ever been driven with the top up. The car is completely stock except for an Ansa cat-back exhaust system. When I am driving, I don’t look at the speedometer or the tach. I like to listen to the sound of the engine instead.

There is a young man in my neighborhood who helps my wife and me out with chores around the house. He has worked for us nearly 5 years, most recently helping me build a carport. We had some unusually warm days in November. We finished one phase of the construction project early one day and I asked him if he would like a ride in the Miata. He’s a bit of car nut himself, with a used Subaru Legacy turbo that he has modified as part of his training at the local technical college. I didn’t have to ask him twice.

I live on a lake that is about 3 miles long. There is a very twisty two lane country road that goes all the way around. Traffic is usually light and police presence nonexistent. We put the top down and set off to circumnavigate the lake.

They say a good driver never makes his passenger nervous. I started off slowly enough, getting a feel for just how confident my young friend felt with me driving. As we went along, I pushed harder and harder on the throttle, letting the revs climb close to redline. The curves began sliding swiftly astern.

There is one place where the road takes a sharp right turn. As we approached, I jumped hard on the brakes as I shifted down from 4th to 3rd to 2nd, then punched the throttle at the apex. The rear stepped out slightly and I reined it back in with a touch of countersteer. My friend had a grin the size of Jupiter on his face. It was a beautiful day, with puffy white clouds swirling by overhead, just like they were the day I got to ride in that XX 120 years ago.

We got back to my house, switched off, and started to put the top up. “I gotta get a convertible!” my young friend said. “No, you need to get yourself a roadster,” I told him. Then I explained the difference, just as it had been explained to me.

A few weeks later, he sent me a text. He was looking at used Miatas and wanted my advice. I like to think that years from now, long after I have shuffled off this mortal coil, he will be taking another young man, maybe his own son, for a ride down a country lane in a roadster with the top down, the sound of the exhaust tickling their ear drums, and puffy white clouds rushing by overhead.

Some people look forward to the coming age of self driving cars. That may prove to be a wonderful thing, but I am doing my best to pass on the art of driving to the next generation. I look forward to the time when I can teach my own grandkids the difference between a convertible and a roadster. No matter how technologically advanced cars may become, I hope there will always be a place in this world for roadsters!

Photo credit: Jaguars For Sale .com