who killed the electric car?

[jim mcglinchey]

Has anyone else seen this film? It recounts the development and release followd by the very bloody quick recall and crushing by General Motors of all of their GM EV1's. It would seem that alot of interested parties did not want it to take off despite a demand and all the usual suspects are mentioned, car manufacturers, oil companies, gutless politicians etc.

The actual car was a cool looking thing that could spin the wheels and do about 75 with a useful range even with the batteries of about 6 years ago.
Interestingly it said that the hydrogen fuel cell approach is a pure time buying exercise by the car companies when electric vehicles could easily have been produced and sold in huge numbers

[Daniel]

The Stonecutters did :mark:

I do wonder if our love affair with burning fossil fuels postponed the electric car. I still want clean electricity to power these "clean" cars :)

[luvracin]

You did. By not paying a bucketload of cash for an electric car that has a range of 50 miles.

GM's Volt which they are planning to release i think around 2009/2010 will be the first serious production Electric Vehicle. The EV1 was more a technology test bed - IMO.

[schmenke]

...I still want clean electricity to power these "clean" cars :)

As do I. Operating cars powered by electricity is not necessarily greener for the planet.

Personally, I think we should all be driving one of these :) :

[Drew]

I still liked the fact that people were so crazy about electric cars saying it was oh so green, when the power plants that gave the car its energy weren't oh so green :p :

I don't really understand about hydrogen power. How exactly do they harness the hydrogen power, from fresh water, sea water, something else?

[jim mcglinchey]

Coupla' points. Firstly, the average daily mileage of the Californian( where the EV1 was sold ) driver was 29, so an electric car that could do say 80 miles on a charge was totally viable for most, and secondly although most owners charged their cars with mains electricity derived from a coal fired power station, that was still a great improvement on thousands of 36% efficient petrol powered cars driving around.

With photovoltaic panels on the car and in your garage roof, that problem could be greatly reduced.

[Mark]

It's all well and good but these city car concepts never break into the mass market for a simple reason.

95% of the time you might spend your time doing journies of less than 20 miles. But every so often you are going to want to drive to a place 150 miles away (and come back again).. and you can't afford to buy two cars.

[Dave B]

Correct, but this could be overcome with either rapid recharging or replacable cells - after all you still have to fill up with bad ol' petrol every now and then. If service stations offered recharging, the range of electric cars ceases to be a problem.

[Mark]

Filling up with petrol takes minutes, charging can take hours. You could have replacement cells but first you have to standarise on them, which is easier said than done. And if they are anythink like standard car batteries they will weigh a tonne! (perhaps literally!)

[Kneeslider]

Just a thought Jim, but the 'average' coal fired power station makes a thermal efficiency of a bit less than 36%. Even the current best one in the UK, Drax, is undergoing a turbine upgrade at the moment to get to 40%, and the oldest and least efficient stations on the grid will struggle to get much over 30%. Because of economies of scale, bigger is better, and Drax does 6 x 645MW/unit. Uskmouth by comparison only has 3x 121MW/unit. ;)

[Kneeslider]

Just a thought Jim, but the 'average' coal fired power station makes a thermal efficiency of a bit less than 36%. Even the current best one in the UK, Drax, is undergoing a turbine upgrade at the moment to get to 40%, and the oldest and least efficient stations on the grid will struggle to get much over 30%. Because of economies of scale, bigger is better, and Drax does 6 x 645MW/unit. Uskmouth by comparison only has 3x 121MW/unit.

[jim mcglinchey]

Agreed, but the rest of the energy is lost to the atmosphere as heat and its alot more practical to recover the heat, that would otherwise go to waste, from a power staion using combined heat and power, than it is to do anything useful with all of the heat that is radiated by a petrol engine.

[Malbec]

There aren't that many countries in the world that are 100% dependent on coal for electricity. Hydro and nuclear power contribute to a lot of the electricity production in most countries and they help to make electric cars slightly cleaner than their petrol equivalents overall. Also cars tend to do most of their polluting in the city whereas power stations tend to be away from major population centres so the effect on urban health would be quite significant if electric cars took off.

Problem is as people have already said that electric cars cater to 95% of most peoples needs but people will always be thinking of the other 5% when they make their purchase.

Electric cars need to be a better purchasing proposition or have incentives in order for them to sell. The Gee-wiz isn't doing too badly in London since the congestion charge came in.

[rah]

I still liked the fact that people were so crazy about electric cars saying it was oh so green, when the power plants that gave the car its energy weren't oh so green :p :

I don't really understand about hydrogen power. How exactly do they harness the hydrogen power, from fresh water, sea water, something else?

Your right, electric cars are only as green as their power source. Although you could incorporate some PV cells into the car to help.

Hydrogen comes from mostly fossil fuels at the moment. i really don't think that is the answer.

One positive thing about an electric car is that you can charge it at home overnight and have it ready for the morning. This will cost a lot less than a petrol car.

On another note there are two companies that I know of that are experimenting with an engine that runs on compressed air. Now that would not take long to fill up and it would be cheap to run.

[peterpaul]

Hi,
Did you mean who has not going with the electric cars and have left using them.If it is yes then I would like to know that who had made the vanishing of the car........Please post for me..........