I highly recommend that everybody watch the movie "Who Killed the Electric Car?" The fact that anybody can be as corrupt as those responsible for the destruction of the EV1 and other electric cars is sickening. We had in the EV1 and electric car that, if given the best batteries of it's time (NiMH), could've made up to 140 miles per charge. If this model had not been obliterated and were given the lithium ion batteries of today, as demonstrated by Alan Cocconi in the T-zero, it could have made 300 miles per charge.
The following rant has a few "spoilers" as far as information contained in the documentary, so if you don't want to watch it but want the gist of it, read on. If you're going to watch it, then just go do it now. If you have digital cable it's On Demand as of my writing this under Premium Channels, then Encore.
To everyone out there: boycott General Motors, and don't put all your faith in this hope of hydrogen fuel cells. They're not going to be all they're cracked up to be. Once the trillion or so known barrels worth of oil out there in the world are gone, gas companies will then become providers of all the hydrogen we would fill our cars with, and then what? prices would be just as bad as gasoline. The costs of building the fueling infrastructure would be insane. As for the electric car, it would be next to nothing in comparison. Your work-place could provide a simple plug-in in the parking lot, and various charging station/parking lots would spring up allowing even further mileage per charge. Many of these could be powered by all the wind and solar power, and even those that were still powered by coal power plants and others would be better than the oil we depend on now.
People die every day for this oil that's just going to run out anyway. Why, when we already have an alternative that would satisfy most needs of everybody? let's even suppose you DO need to go beyond the range of your electric car, if we had a few models of hybrids out there, we'd probably have plenty of domestic oil to meet those needs for quite some time until further developments of battery technology and solar panels allow the car to run as long as you can.
Why did this car disappear you ask? Think of all the components present in your combustion engine right now. Car manufacturers would no longer profit from installing each and every one of those components. Then, think of how many of those components will be replaced throughout the life of the car. The electric car requires only a tire rotation and wiper fluid every 5000 miles. Nothing more.
Sunday, December 9, 2007
Who Killed the Electric Car?
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7 comments:
Good comments, all in all. The only correction I would make would be that with NiMH batteries, the EV1 would have a range of about 140 miles, and with li-ion it would go about 300 miles.
That may be. I thought that guy near the end had claimed his yellow electric car he was showing off at some kind of car show at a park got 300 miles from a series of NiMH batteries. If it's still running On Demand I'll double check it ;)
That was Alan Cocconi using about 6731 18650 laptop (li-ion) batteries in the T-zero.
I'll admit that I'm at a bit of an advantage here, having done numerous Q&A sessions after movie showings. ; )
Al Benoit
Plug In America
Well then thanks for your advantage :) I appreciate the info.
I so much want an affordable electric car. I'm looking at the Aptera and the Ampmobile conversions. I have a dead eary 90's Ford Ranger that will make a perfect AmpMobile just coming up with all the money upfront to do the conversion is quite daunting. Somehow I'll get there and replace my gas burning truck with an all electric or plug in hybrid some way some how.
I know what you mean. Prices for those conversions are out of my reach right now. Lucky for me though, my work provides yearly bus passes. It's better than nothing.
Watched "Who Killed the Electric Car" recently, great documentary, yay for progress!
I noticed some similarities between the oil industry and the tobacco industry: They both exploit people's addictions (nicotine in tobacco, the convenience of gas). Also, both industries have stifled better alternatives (not smoking is healthier than smoking, not using gas pollutes less). People have successfully resisted tobacco companies...
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