ARE YOU SURE ABOUT ELECTRICAL VEHICLES … JUST SAY NO

Are we being ripped off with the price of electric vehicles? The Nissan Leaf is R505 000 [and the BMW i3 is R637 300 – editor]. And that’s without a charger.

Take a common run-of-themill four-cylinder engine today. Twin-overhead cam, four valves per cylinder, variable valve timing and probably turbocharged. Think of all the components and assembly. Plus, you have a highly technical, machined gearbox, followed by an equally expensive differential. Compare all that to an armature and a couple of eld coils.

The only excuse manufacturers can come up with is the battery pack. Is it really that expensive? Carmakers should standardise battery packs so we could swap them in lieu of lling up.

In a letter in your September issue, Gerrie Gericke is very chuffed with his Prius and who can blame him, but all that cheap electricity comes from highly polluting, coal- red power stations or the equally controversial nuclear ones. Until carbon-free electricity is available, EVS should be a no-go. DAVID MCKINNEY Rondebosch [To be fair, you would also need to consider economies of scale and, in our market, import duties and a lack of government incentives. The OEMS produce hundreds of thousands more internal-combustion-engined vehicles than EVS; the former, therefore, will always be cheaper. In the South African market, OEMS such as Toyota, Nissan and BMW are always going to use their export credits to subsidise their big-volume sellers. And, sadly, unlike other, more progressive government initiatives around the world, ours does not offer any rebates or subsidies on EVS – editor.]