1 g0t 0wn3d

lets just hope no one buys them out.

__________________

heinz57

True that, freakin` GM and the EV1 again! Nah I doubt they would. Only if they were controlled by stock. In the long run it could give them a lot of power.

EnglishPaul

There are more ways to skin a cat: if the government was to put a restrictive tax on such electric refueling either outright or via intricate regulation of filling sites, then petrol cars could still have the advantage.
Is it just me, or does the feel good car in the last link also fall into the look bad car category? Electric cars will only take off as an alternative when they look and feel like an alternative.

yustr

IMO, that "Neighborhood Electric Vehicle" is going to change the way we think about cars. Its basically a golf cart with more power, real seats and a body for weather protection. Think about how you REALLY use your car and you'll see the practicality. I wish I had one at home right now for all those quick trips to the market.

We had two at my last job. They were great for running across the place to another building. The 25 -30 mph limit was not an issue as they were not for highway use. Plus, we bought them for about $7K each - much less than buying what we'd normally have bought.

__________________
I didn't mean to say it. But I meant what I said. J. McMurtry

In Vino Veritas

EnglishPaul

Where I live, space is an issue. There is hardly enough space for people to have one car per house, let alone one per person. So the idea of an electric car for smaller journeys fails on the practicality that a household would need one electric car for short journeys and one proper car for distances.

It may be possible to get round this in a car pooling kind of way, like some countries do with bicycles, but people have such an affinity to their car that I doubt it would work in practice.

In general, for shorter journeys, public transport would probably offer the best alternative. If people actually wanted to use it.

Car use is changing, but I'm not sure its in the direction suggested. More shops are moving 'out of town' and thus are only accessible on faster roads. People commute further for work because of house prices.

I still think that it is the popular market that the electric car needs to target, and one that covers longer distances and faster speeds. If a train can run at speed on electricity, then a car can to. It just depends upon how much battery bulk you need to achieve it. And who knows, talk of hydrogen cells 'just round the corner' has occurred for years.

I also think the biggest impact to the environment will be when alternative fuels power trucks, vans and buses. In fact I think this would be the easiest sector to legislate for.

heinz57

True that man, electric cars are freakin` ugly.

If they could make them look and feel somewhat like that Chevy on Transformers... then they'd have lots of buyers.

Like I mentioned....with stronger/more sophisticated batteries comes a stronger and more sophisticated motor ;)

Imagine a 500hp electric motor, you could destroy those Vipers out on the street ;)

bry623

The problem with transportation is that we keep trying to find new ways to power cars. We should look at new transportation choices instead of costly attempts at changing an imperfect situation.

__________________
When you fear Sarah, you attack her and try destroy her

yustr

Hey everyone take notice: Bry and I agree.

When I lived in IN they were debating the route for a new interstate. The completion date was +25 years. My question - which no one bothered to answer - was: "Why are you designing the road for yesterday's technology? Why not plan something better?" I suggested at least they should plan a lane each direction dedicated to whatever automated piloting technology surfaces. Or perhaps a dedicated lane for "car-trains" (where one large engine pulls many cars a long). But No, they're busy (I guess) designing a road for 1950's technology that won't be used until almost 2050 (given the inevitable delays).

To look at it another way: when was the last MAJOR innovation in the automobile? Moving from crank start to electric perhaps? Or the automatic transmission? Sure cars are safer, more reliable, less polluting, but they're only slightly more efficient and arguably less interesting. My first car was made in 1963 - and I'd love to own one now. But why could it still work on modern roads?

__________________
I didn't mean to say it. But I meant what I said. J. McMurtry

In Vino Veritas

EnglishPaul

I've now just watched the 'movie'. What an education!

I thought that to kill the electric car was to sideline a few prototype golf carts. What I learnt today was that in the late 90s California had developed clean air legislation and that had led to the production of several electric cars: including a sporty car and a pick up. There was also an amount of recharging infrastructure put in.
What seems to have happened is that the motor companies not only undersold the electric cars, they fought against the clean air legislation and just as the market was growing they discontinued the manufacture and then repossessed and crushed all the functioning cars.
Of cause this is only a brief outline of the 1.5hr film, which can be a little boring at times, but it is well worth watching if you haven't already.

All the politics and deception aside, what surprises me is how good the cars got in such a short space of time. They could do 100miles. They could go at 70mph. They had far lower running costs: not only in fuel but also in lack of consumables (relegated to special features on the DVD) ie no exhaust, oil changes, oil filters, fuel filters, cat, clutch, less brake wear!
And by the time the film was made last year, newer batteries could run for 300 miles and then fast charge in 1hr. Put another way, I am forced to take a 45min break every 4.5 hrs if I drive a truck in Europe. So having a 1hr break every 5hrs on a long journey is probably a very good thing!

And the cars can go fast. And they looked normal. Some even looked sexy.

Another thing relegated to special features is the demise of the electric trolley bus in California. This was also allegedly at the hands of GM, who favoured engine buses and bought up and ripped out all the electric infrastructure!
The movie also took up the point that, if anything, engine technology is regressing in terms of fuel consumption.

I can't help thinking that by nailing the lid on that era of electric cars, GM and others have also nailed their foot to the floor! The market place is changing, and I can see a lot of people wanting to buy green, or go oil independent (Iraq war?), or just see the savings in running costs and noise. So hybrids are on the scene, and they're mostly Japanese, and the next and most exciting wave is the plug in hybrid (think of an electric car with a contingency engine).

If I could afford to buy one, if they were in the UK, I'd want one now. And vans. And trucks when they come along.

EnglishPaul

After a bit of Wikipedia I found that GM are back in development of a new electric car, based on the technology they had 10yrs previous. Their change of heart seems to be an electric sports car by an independent manufacturer:

http://www.teslamotors.com/

(Out of my price range). Interesting to see who is financing them (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_Motors).

heinz57

Yeah I saw that in popular science. Looks like they say that they are trying to limit our dependence on oil. They only say that now because it is the popular thing to do now. I think in the late 90's no one cared that much about gas prices.
Show's you the wonderfull ways that our government is control by weathly companies.

Rob@MWW

My son recommended "Who Killed the Electric Car?" over the Thanksgiving holiday. It's on my list to see soon.

You might be interested in a TSF thread I started a few days ago about Space-Based Solar Power. I believe it could be the answer to a potentially unlimited source of clean electricity. Yes, it is a complex engineering problem but a recent study released by the National Space Security Office stated that "technological challenges are closing rapidly and the business case for creating SBSP is improving with each passing year."

I started a website called Citizens for Space-Based Solar Power to help folks learn more about the concept and to encourage them to get involved and contact leaders in government and the private sector and ask for their support of SBSP.

__________________
Best regards,
Rob@MWW

Chode

The problem with conspiracy theories is that they all fall apart under their own weight because the truth is simpler. No one killed the electric car. Oil has been and remains cheap (yep, I'd maintain oil is still cheap), and internal combustion technology is mature, cheap (the C word again), and the infrastructure to support it is already in place. Millions of jobs depend on the status quo. None of this can be said about electric cars.

I'd say the reality is that the costs of conventional automobile transport are going to have to rise to agonizingly unpleasant levels before Americans, at least, are willing to accept alternative technologies and transportation schemes.

__________________
Sweet!

EnglishPaul

But Chode GM made an electric car that was futuristic and in demand. Being expensive just added to its kudos. It was not a failure, but a success cut off at the root.
And had it been aloud to live, cars and technology would have come down in price, and infrastructure would have developed.
The only status quo was the profits of the established companies, who would loose out on the sale of oil and loose out on all the servicing that is needed with a combustion engine.
And GM could have been well ahead of the game.

Doh!

If a scheme works, is affordable, and is sold well people will buy it. In fact if you sell something well, people will even buy rubbish. (Can't help thinking M$, although I can't think why!)

I want an electric car. I need a good range, so it may have to be a hybrid, but I want the instant heater, the reuse of inertia instead of wastage with breaks, the lower consumables cost, the quicker servicing, the quieter car, and potentially more torque and acceleration. I want to not waste money on fuel while stuck in traffic. And I want to do my bit for the environment. That is a consumer choice; only many parties chose to take that choice from me. They killed the electric car. And they made alternatives too expensive for me.

I'm sure the typewriter industry hated the idea of computers, but who has a typewriter these days? And people who made typewriters probably did loose their jobs, but to say that computers didn't bring an industry of their own...

Chode

EP, there you go with the conspiracy nonsense! GM wasn't the only company developing electric cars in the '90s; Toyota, Honda, and Nissan were there too. GM killed the EV1 because they showed no signs of selling in quantities sufficient to become profitable. Yes, there were waiting lists for the car but a few hundred celebrities is a long way from the hundreds of thousands of buyers that would have been needed to make the technology feasible.

What you are saying is that GM backed away from a new technology that would have been profitable for them and would have leapfrogged their U.S., European, and Japanese competitors. My God, man! If that isn't irrational thinking, I don't know what is!

And speaking of the Japanese, they didn't exactly deluge the U.S. market with electric cars either, did they? In fact, they didn't deluge the Japanese market with electrics. It is only within the last 2 years that Japanese manufacturers such as Mitsubishi and Subaru have initiated plans that are intended to produce viable electric "town cars" somewhere in the 2008-2010 time frame. Can you name an industrialized country on the planet that has more incentive to cut its oil dependency than Japan?

Face it, Bubba, the EV1 was technology released before it was really ready. Hey, I'm cranked, so let's take this whole electric car concept a bit further. Here's a thought: Is an electrically powered car necessarily "greener" (more environmentally friendly) than a vehicle with comparable performance, passenger capacity, etc. powered by an internal combustion engine?

Consider how the electricity to power the EC (electric car) is generated and transmitted. Are the components used to produce batteries for the EC environmentally friendly? How about the process of mining and refining the materials? What about the processes used in manufacturing the batteries? Do any of these processes consume fossil fuels, incorporate toxic substances, or generate toxic by-products during production?

__________________
Sweet!

yustr

I'd guess that the impact of the manufacturing process is a fraction of the impact of the life cycle impact of 10 - 20 years of operating.

But even more so, you're limiting your options on electrical generation. One of the biggest failures I see today is the debate over coal fired plants versus nuclear plants. Both assume the need for large centrally generated power. There just is no inherent reason for maintaining this paradigm - other than allowing the government sanctioned monopoly to perpetuate. If solar development advances even marginally, the advent of distributed power production will become a viable option. For example THIS could be the roof on every home and business in a community; generating more than enough electricity to power the town's needs.

But there's one obvious problems with this concept: how do the power companies make any money? It's the reason nuclear was/is so attractive: 10% of $10 billion is a lot more than 0% of $0.

Yes, there are other serious costs associated with converting to a new basic fuel - monetary, environmental, moral, behavioral, etc. There will be winners and losers (if you own a gas station you might be in trouble) but it won't happen quickly - no matter how much its needed.

Just some rambling thoughts. My key message is: Don't limit your thinking to what's available today. Think about what needs to be available tomorrow.

__________________
I didn't mean to say it. But I meant what I said. J. McMurtry

In Vino Veritas

bruiser

Chode is correct that the Japanese companies were developing electric car technology in the nineties. Toyota even had one for sale. Test market was California. It didn't sell, so they dropped it. It was an all electric RAV4.