Here's what I can imagine: Suppose, instead of destroying an oil-producing country (or two) in what will probably be a futile effort to ensure a steady supply of (environment destroying) oil and gasoline, we had built an infrastructure for recharging electric cars? Set up a sytem so that every restaurant and every park and every mall, hell, every parking lot had a recharge station. No, they wouldnt be free, you'd swipe a card through, or feed quarters or something like that, but you could do it everywhere.As more and more people switched over to electric cars (or modified hybrids), business owners would perhaps notice that sales were increasing as people, having stopped for a while to charge their cars, look for things to do including shopping at the retail outlets next to the charging stations. Parks, which should be among the first places that charging stations are set up, would also see increased usage (and I bet there would be a drop in accidents and incidents of road-rage as people are forced to take breaks every few hours to recharge their batteries (literally and figuretively). GM's EV-1 proved that the electric car can be a viable option (despite the destruction of all the cars and what I suspect is a bit of the Assasination Effect), and I'll bet right now that GM is perhaps rethinking their earlier strategy (had GM continued to develop, market and build the EV-1, imagine the position they'd be in right now).
Unfortunately, that hasnt happened. But hey! Dont dispair. One of the advantage of America having spent decades building crap cars is that there's plenty of rolling stock out there just waiting to be converted to electric. Sure it's a pain in the ass, but it'll be your gasoline avoiding, non-carbon emitting, I'm-greener-than-you-so-suck-it-neighbor pain in the ass.Oh, and for anyone who'd like to extoll the virtues of the hybrid engine, I'm with you and all, but I'd also point out that a hybrid engine is even more complicated (and therefore prone to breakdown and profitable repairwork) than a regular internal combustion engine. The primary reason that people prefer a hybrid over a straight electric vehicle is range, and the lack thereof in a vehicle powered solely by battery.
Oh, and here's a question for any engineering types out there: Why cant you have an electric car that has an auxillary gas-powered generator sending juice to the batteries? I assume that there is a good reason why no one seems to set up a car that way, so what is it? Just curious.
6 comments:
Look at what a fictitious film can do to historical accuracy. "Who Killed the Electric Car?" has convinced this yokel that the EV-1 proved that an electric car is viable. The EV-1 proved just the opposite and that without a practical battery, no practical EV can exist. That car with the gas motor to charge the batteries is called a serial hybrid and has been used by diesel locomotives for the past 50 years. The upcoming Chevy VOLT uses one after the bateries charge is depleted - you see, GM learned why the EV-1 was such a flop - being limited to destinations no more than 40 miles away has a tendendcy to make people believe that the car wasn't a viable alternative to anything. Time recently named the EV-1 one of the worst 50 cars ever built. And why aren't Toyota and Honda mentioned as killers of electric cars? They both cancelled their EV programs (Honda after a mere 6 months). Of course, Chris Paine had a backroom deal with Toyota and in return agreed not to make themm villians in his film. Chris Paine is an asshole liar.
wow dave, you getting some heat.
In a strange way, or not so strange, I think the answers to the questions and points raised here lie one step away from engineering over to regulation and the homogeny crisis, something like 'it doesn't work for me, so I'm gonna make damn sure you don't do it either' We all apply emotion to physics and physics to emotion and it becomes so complex for our small monkey minds and we snap and throw prohibitions on tailoring sense to situational practice. Something like that. Anonymous is an asshole obfuscator.
As someone who actually drives an EV that was designed ten years ago by Toyota, and built 5 years ago by the same company, let me tell you how it really is. I've got 5 years and 54,000 miles on my RAV4 EV and it drives today exactly like it di when I bought, no change whatsoever. I get at least 120 miles per charge and it cost practically nothing to run it. There has been zero cost for maintenence. Nothing has ever gone wrong with this car. There are still several hundred of these vehicles riding all over California and many other states. We saved about 800 RAVs and 200 Ford Ranger EVs from the crusher with our protests of a few years ago. All of these vehicles are pretty much trouble free and of course, pollution free.
Like over 50% of the EV owners in California, I charge my car with solar power from the panels on my house. My 3 kW PV system has generated all the power I need for my house and car for five years now. My electric bill for all of last year was $48.08. Not one dime of my money went to the oil companies.
If the anonymous poster wasn't such a coward he'd have printed his name. He's good at hiding and calling peopel names, but he can't prove his assertions that Chris Paine lied. Every fact in that film was triple checked for accuracy. I'd bet him a thousand dollars he can't find one thing in "Who Killed the Electric Car?" that is not true, but then, he'd have to come out of his spider hole to take the bet, so chances are he won't.
We see people like him all the time taking pot shots at the film, but they are always afraid to show their faces. They are either shills for the auto companies or oil companies, or just plain stupid. Hard to tell in this case.
Paul Scott
Plug In America
dave, i could really use your help if you are willing. i need to get the link count up on that video up on my blog now. if people put the code on their blog, even if it is buried back three months ago so you do not have it on the front page, if it is clicked on a few times it will jack up the link count at youtube and force it up in the rankings, and maybe we can force the candidates to consider the american worker next year. if not, they are not going to bother at all. thanks dave.
Doop-de-do, yuck-yuck-yuck. A "yokel", boy-howdy, that's me! Did I not use the term "Assasination Effect" (meaning, for all you folks not from the sticks, the act of looking at the dead through rose-colored glasses)? I'm aware of the 40 mile limit. I'm also aware that I drive about 24 miles to work and own an extension cord*. If I had a few thousand bucks available, I'd yank the motor out of my 14-year old Escort and go to town (cleanly and quietly), with no regrets. (I'm also aware that 40-mile limit is a lead-acid battery limit, and that lithium-ion batteries have a much larger range, but are far more expensive).
Why did everyone kill their electric car programs? To me, the complexity of the hybrid engine suggests that the loss of after-market repair and replacement represented by the purely electric car may have been a prime factor, which is why the hybrid was pursued over the EV. Yes, the short range is a problem, and it would cause trouble for any 1-car family or individual. But the obvious answer to that problem is to market the car as a second auto. In a nation where people spend $3000 on a fucking television, what's a second car? Especially one that'll save you hundreds on gasoline costs (I currently spend $40 a week on gas, or over $2000 a year - this is easily enough savings to finance a rental car for long trips, or a big-screen TV for the bedroom).
As for a diesel-electric train engine, I'm not sure that's what I was thinking of. See, when the train starts to speed up, so does the diesel engine, which tells me that there isnt a battery pack, which means you have to run the diesel engine at various speeds (I'm speculating here, and too lazy to look it up). I was envisioning something where the fuel-powered engine runs steadily at its most efficient speed, powering the batteries as it does so, and the car is always powered by the batteries. This seems an obvious fix to me, since acceleration is where a lot of the waste in an internal combustion engine occurs. Thing is, if it's so obvious to a non-engineer, then it would have been done already, but it doesnt seem to have been, so I must be wrong about it, and I'm curious as to how I'm wrong.
* to plug in at work, duh!
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