A car that could have saved Detroit
- Thread starter StevieC
- Start date
- Status
I just watched that "Who Killed the Electric Car?" video in my Sociology class, really interesting bit of automotive history. I wasn't even aware of the EV-1. A little bit biased, obviously, but still a great film IMO.
Yeah, when I put this post in about it I wasn't trying to say we could save the world over night but this vehicle would fit the needs of a lot commuters out there that drive short distances to work and back with some to spare for shopping. Would help the earth out plenty...
Originally Posted By: ThirdeYe
I just watched that "Who Killed the Electric Car?" video in my Sociology class, really interesting bit of automotive history. I wasn't even aware of the EV-1. A little bit biased, obviously, but still a great film IMO.
They're showing this in school? Geez... Conspiracy theory in school.
I actually saw an EV-1. It would barely fit two people. Very little range, and very expensive. It was a science project! It was not something that GM could make money on. And yes, making money is very important, as we're all about to see.......
I just watched that "Who Killed the Electric Car?" video in my Sociology class, really interesting bit of automotive history. I wasn't even aware of the EV-1. A little bit biased, obviously, but still a great film IMO.
They're showing this in school? Geez... Conspiracy theory in school.
I actually saw an EV-1. It would barely fit two people. Very little range, and very expensive. It was a science project! It was not something that GM could make money on. And yes, making money is very important, as we're all about to see.......
Originally Posted By: moribundman
Originally Posted By: ekpolk
I could be wrong, and I'm not an engineer
Oh...
I am an engineer, and I officially take all bets, of everything I own, that you can't drive a car coast to coast on $2.00 of compressed air, unless that car is a Matchbox, or the two coasts are one side of Long Island New York to the other side of the island.
Originally Posted By: ekpolk
I could be wrong, and I'm not an engineer
Oh...
I am an engineer, and I officially take all bets, of everything I own, that you can't drive a car coast to coast on $2.00 of compressed air, unless that car is a Matchbox, or the two coasts are one side of Long Island New York to the other side of the island.
By the way Tata in India has made a compressed air car. It goes a few miles on a "compression", and is made primarily of plastics and held together with glue.
I'm not saying the idea doesn't have merit. It's one of the better ideas out there. Probably way better than batteries. But the claim of coast to coast.... is way out of line.
I'm not saying the idea doesn't have merit. It's one of the better ideas out there. Probably way better than batteries. But the claim of coast to coast.... is way out of line.
"Who Killed The Electric Car?" is one of those films, not unlike another set of documentaries by a certain political blowhard, that for whatever "truthiness" it may represent; it loses all credibility whatsoever by the rest of its extravagant claims and downright cold hard lies. The EV-1 was little more than an experiment; with as limited a market as a multi million dollar Lambo or Maybach. To suggest that this car in any way could have saved Detroit, or the world for that matter, is ludicrously overblown.
There is often, then more than now, documented cases of underhanded and sleazy business ethics among car companies. Case in point would be Preston Tucker's alleged blackballing by GM, but a lot of these schemes are concocted by conspiracy nuts with too much time on their hands.
I read a book years back, the name escapes me at this point, that set out to "uncover" the plot by the Big Three and the US Government to eradicate the scientists that were building a car that would run on pure water. When I hear about car conspiracies this book always comes to mind. It was pure schlock journalism written by some guy that had previously wrote for the National Enquirer. 'Nuff said.
There is often, then more than now, documented cases of underhanded and sleazy business ethics among car companies. Case in point would be Preston Tucker's alleged blackballing by GM, but a lot of these schemes are concocted by conspiracy nuts with too much time on their hands.
I read a book years back, the name escapes me at this point, that set out to "uncover" the plot by the Big Three and the US Government to eradicate the scientists that were building a car that would run on pure water. When I hear about car conspiracies this book always comes to mind. It was pure schlock journalism written by some guy that had previously wrote for the National Enquirer. 'Nuff said.
Now you are going too far. You are missing the original point. Of course mass production of EV1 would not save GM. However, if they kept the EV1 program going and perfected it before Toyota came up with Prius *THEN* GM would be saved. Already back then they were going to look at a range extender wich is pretty much the Volt design. So they wasted a number of years, plus a lot of money by killing EV1 program only to restart it now as Volt.
Not to mention that Toyota learned a lot from both EV1 and Honda's insight thus enabling them to build Prius and gain all the positive publicity, a green leader.
So while EV1 itsefl wouldn't sell, its successors would have been huge hits by the time oil prices started to rise. They would have done it at the time when they had plenty of money, resources and time. Instead now they are racing to complete Volt in the middle of this massive crisis.
EV1 car was not important. EV1 program was important. EV1 program "could have saved Detroit"
Not to mention that Toyota learned a lot from both EV1 and Honda's insight thus enabling them to build Prius and gain all the positive publicity, a green leader.
So while EV1 itsefl wouldn't sell, its successors would have been huge hits by the time oil prices started to rise. They would have done it at the time when they had plenty of money, resources and time. Instead now they are racing to complete Volt in the middle of this massive crisis.
EV1 car was not important. EV1 program was important. EV1 program "could have saved Detroit"
- Joined
- Jun 2, 2003
- Messages
- 23,587
Originally Posted By: crw
Originally Posted By: moribundman
Originally Posted By: ekpolk
I could be wrong, and I'm not an engineer
Oh...
I am an engineer, and I officially take all bets, of everything I own, that you can't drive a car coast to coast on $2.00 of compressed air, unless that car is a Matchbox, or the two coasts are one side of Long Island New York to the other side of the island.
I never said it was doable, or that I believed it to be doable. My mock surprise was merely directed at ekpolk's admission of not being remotely an expert, after all, everybody here is an expert.
What kind of engineer in what field of expertise are you?
Originally Posted By: moribundman
Originally Posted By: ekpolk
I could be wrong, and I'm not an engineer
Oh...
I am an engineer, and I officially take all bets, of everything I own, that you can't drive a car coast to coast on $2.00 of compressed air, unless that car is a Matchbox, or the two coasts are one side of Long Island New York to the other side of the island.
I never said it was doable, or that I believed it to be doable. My mock surprise was merely directed at ekpolk's admission of not being remotely an expert, after all, everybody here is an expert.
Originally Posted By: bob_ninja
Now you are going too far. You are missing the original point. Of course mass production of EV1 would not save GM. However, if they kept the EV1 program going and perfected it before Toyota came up with Prius *THEN* GM would be saved. Already back then they were going to look at a range extender wich is pretty much the Volt design. So they wasted a number of years, plus a lot of money by killing EV1 program only to restart it now as Volt.
Not to mention that Toyota learned a lot from both EV1 and Honda's insight thus enabling them to build Prius and gain all the positive publicity, a green leader.
So while EV1 itsefl wouldn't sell, its successors would have been huge hits by the time oil prices started to rise. They would have done it at the time when they had plenty of money, resources and time. Instead now they are racing to complete Volt in the middle of this massive crisis.
EV1 car was not important. EV1 program was important. EV1 program "could have saved Detroit"
But the thing is, I don't think range extension (if you mean via the Volt's gas engine) is the issue, it's batteries now like it was batteries then.
As an aside, I heard something on the radio this morning on good ol' NPR about lithium ion. In the discussion on batteries, the "expert" pointed out that 100 years ago Edison told Henry Ford he'd have a battery with enough range to run his wife's car 100 miles by her next birthday. Pretty funny.
Now you are going too far. You are missing the original point. Of course mass production of EV1 would not save GM. However, if they kept the EV1 program going and perfected it before Toyota came up with Prius *THEN* GM would be saved. Already back then they were going to look at a range extender wich is pretty much the Volt design. So they wasted a number of years, plus a lot of money by killing EV1 program only to restart it now as Volt.
Not to mention that Toyota learned a lot from both EV1 and Honda's insight thus enabling them to build Prius and gain all the positive publicity, a green leader.
So while EV1 itsefl wouldn't sell, its successors would have been huge hits by the time oil prices started to rise. They would have done it at the time when they had plenty of money, resources and time. Instead now they are racing to complete Volt in the middle of this massive crisis.
EV1 car was not important. EV1 program was important. EV1 program "could have saved Detroit"
But the thing is, I don't think range extension (if you mean via the Volt's gas engine) is the issue, it's batteries now like it was batteries then.
As an aside, I heard something on the radio this morning on good ol' NPR about lithium ion. In the discussion on batteries, the "expert" pointed out that 100 years ago Edison told Henry Ford he'd have a battery with enough range to run his wife's car 100 miles by her next birthday. Pretty funny.
Originally Posted By: moribundman
Originally Posted By: crw
Originally Posted By: moribundman
Originally Posted By: ekpolk
I could be wrong, and I'm not an engineer
Oh...
I am an engineer, and I officially take all bets, of everything I own, that you can't drive a car coast to coast on $2.00 of compressed air, unless that car is a Matchbox, or the two coasts are one side of Long Island New York to the other side of the island.
I never said it was doable, or that I believed it to be doable. My mock surprise was merely directed at ekpolk's admission of not being remotely an expert, after all, everybody here is an expert.
What kind of engineer in what field of expertise are you?
I'm actually a semiconductor engineer. But of course the training bleeds over into other specialties. There are really just a few basic "laws" one needs to know and the rest is just being able to quantify things and relate it back to the math.
As far as an energy storage device goes, lets pit a compression tank against batteries.
Batteries are very expensive. Perhaps they double the price of the car. A tank for air is relatively very cheap. Nothing new in the way of technology. It would last for eons, and is recyclable. (Lithium ion batteries *might* be recyclable, but strangely, we don't know yet.)
Batteries take a long time to charge. An air tank could probably (OK, I'm not sure) be charged in the same amount of time that it takes to fill a gasoline tank up with fuel, if you're at a special service station that has high-power filling devices.
Tata has shown that a super light weight dork-mobile can travel on air a comparable distance to a battery powered car. 300km for the Tata (187 miles) is actually right in the ballpark with the Tesla, which "Car and Driver" claimed a "real-world" 180. The Tesla costs $100K, while I think the Tata is around $5k (but it's certainly not crash worthy).
Of course, in performance there is no comparing the two. The Tesla is a supercar, and the Tata is a little faster than a golf cart.
My own opinion is that all of this will get postponed again, because there is no oil shortage. We are NOT at peak oil. (Remember, this is my OPINION.) You need to separate the emotion from the equation. The recent run-up was a bunch of speculation. A lot of fools lost a lot of money. Will it happen again? Maybe, but who's gonna buy oil at over $100? I'm not.
The other PC component in this is the concept of "man made global warming", the biggest crock of lies ever foisted upon the world. This is really about power over people. An argument is made, and a bunch of "believers" join in for the ride. Pretty soon the masses are controlled by those in power. I could write all day on this subject, but I think I better get back to my real job.
Just ask yourself this, "If increased CO2 follows an increase in temperature, rather than preceding it, how can CO2 cause warming?" (If CO2 preceded temp rise, the earth would have burned up long ago. Fortunately for us, the earth has a negative feedback system in place.) The only global warming going on comes from the sun. Don't mess with the sun.
Originally Posted By: crw
Originally Posted By: moribundman
Originally Posted By: ekpolk
I could be wrong, and I'm not an engineer
Oh...
I am an engineer, and I officially take all bets, of everything I own, that you can't drive a car coast to coast on $2.00 of compressed air, unless that car is a Matchbox, or the two coasts are one side of Long Island New York to the other side of the island.
I never said it was doable, or that I believed it to be doable. My mock surprise was merely directed at ekpolk's admission of not being remotely an expert, after all, everybody here is an expert.
I'm actually a semiconductor engineer. But of course the training bleeds over into other specialties. There are really just a few basic "laws" one needs to know and the rest is just being able to quantify things and relate it back to the math.
As far as an energy storage device goes, lets pit a compression tank against batteries.
Batteries are very expensive. Perhaps they double the price of the car. A tank for air is relatively very cheap. Nothing new in the way of technology. It would last for eons, and is recyclable. (Lithium ion batteries *might* be recyclable, but strangely, we don't know yet.)
Batteries take a long time to charge. An air tank could probably (OK, I'm not sure) be charged in the same amount of time that it takes to fill a gasoline tank up with fuel, if you're at a special service station that has high-power filling devices.
Tata has shown that a super light weight dork-mobile can travel on air a comparable distance to a battery powered car. 300km for the Tata (187 miles) is actually right in the ballpark with the Tesla, which "Car and Driver" claimed a "real-world" 180. The Tesla costs $100K, while I think the Tata is around $5k (but it's certainly not crash worthy).
Of course, in performance there is no comparing the two. The Tesla is a supercar, and the Tata is a little faster than a golf cart.
My own opinion is that all of this will get postponed again, because there is no oil shortage. We are NOT at peak oil. (Remember, this is my OPINION.) You need to separate the emotion from the equation. The recent run-up was a bunch of speculation. A lot of fools lost a lot of money. Will it happen again? Maybe, but who's gonna buy oil at over $100? I'm not.
The other PC component in this is the concept of "man made global warming", the biggest crock of lies ever foisted upon the world. This is really about power over people. An argument is made, and a bunch of "believers" join in for the ride. Pretty soon the masses are controlled by those in power. I could write all day on this subject, but I think I better get back to my real job.
Just ask yourself this, "If increased CO2 follows an increase in temperature, rather than preceding it, how can CO2 cause warming?" (If CO2 preceded temp rise, the earth would have burned up long ago. Fortunately for us, the earth has a negative feedback system in place.) The only global warming going on comes from the sun. Don't mess with the sun.
Originally Posted By: crw
Originally Posted By: moribundman
Originally Posted By: ekpolk
I could be wrong, and I'm not an engineer
Oh...
I am an engineer, and I officially take all bets, of everything I own, that you can't drive a car coast to coast on $2.00 of compressed air, unless that car is a Matchbox, or the two coasts are one side of Long Island New York to the other side of the island.
I also bet that they forgot to count the additional energy you have to get from another source. Like how people claim 120mpg with plug in hybrid when they assume you get infinite amount of free electricity and electricity does not cost liquid fuel.
Originally Posted By: moribundman
Originally Posted By: ekpolk
I could be wrong, and I'm not an engineer
Oh...
I am an engineer, and I officially take all bets, of everything I own, that you can't drive a car coast to coast on $2.00 of compressed air, unless that car is a Matchbox, or the two coasts are one side of Long Island New York to the other side of the island.
I also bet that they forgot to count the additional energy you have to get from another source. Like how people claim 120mpg with plug in hybrid when they assume you get infinite amount of free electricity and electricity does not cost liquid fuel.
Originally Posted By: bob_ninja
Now you are going too far. You are missing the original point. Of course mass production of EV1 would not save GM. However, if they kept the EV1 program going and perfected it before Toyota came up with Prius *THEN* GM would be saved. Already back then they were going to look at a range extender wich is pretty much the Volt design. So they wasted a number of years, plus a lot of money by killing EV1 program only to restart it now as Volt.
Not to mention that Toyota learned a lot from both EV1 and Honda's insight thus enabling them to build Prius and gain all the positive publicity, a green leader.
So while EV1 itsefl wouldn't sell, its successors would have been huge hits by the time oil prices started to rise. They would have done it at the time when they had plenty of money, resources and time. Instead now they are racing to complete Volt in the middle of this massive crisis.
EV1 car was not important. EV1 program was important. EV1 program "could have saved Detroit"
You will be surprised how many engineers Toyota and Honda sent to the US university (i.e. Wisconsin, Davis, Illinois, etc) that did hybrid projects for competitions to learn what to do and what not to do, and how many additional projects and money the JAPANESE GOVERNMENT subsidize Toyota and Honda on these projects.
It could be a huge flop, and need a government bailout (from Japan), if Prius and Insight flop.
True, I dislike the way our big 3 do businesses, but you should never underestimate how much advantage foreign governments give their own industries in competition with ours.
Now you are going too far. You are missing the original point. Of course mass production of EV1 would not save GM. However, if they kept the EV1 program going and perfected it before Toyota came up with Prius *THEN* GM would be saved. Already back then they were going to look at a range extender wich is pretty much the Volt design. So they wasted a number of years, plus a lot of money by killing EV1 program only to restart it now as Volt.
Not to mention that Toyota learned a lot from both EV1 and Honda's insight thus enabling them to build Prius and gain all the positive publicity, a green leader.
So while EV1 itsefl wouldn't sell, its successors would have been huge hits by the time oil prices started to rise. They would have done it at the time when they had plenty of money, resources and time. Instead now they are racing to complete Volt in the middle of this massive crisis.
EV1 car was not important. EV1 program was important. EV1 program "could have saved Detroit"
You will be surprised how many engineers Toyota and Honda sent to the US university (i.e. Wisconsin, Davis, Illinois, etc) that did hybrid projects for competitions to learn what to do and what not to do, and how many additional projects and money the JAPANESE GOVERNMENT subsidize Toyota and Honda on these projects.
It could be a huge flop, and need a government bailout (from Japan), if Prius and Insight flop.
True, I dislike the way our big 3 do businesses, but you should never underestimate how much advantage foreign governments give their own industries in competition with ours.
Where did you get the information about Japanese Government subsidizes Toyota and Honda on hybrid projects ? Is this your base:
http://www.leftlanenews.com/toyota-refut...us-project.html
"...
In a March 24th interview with Business Week, Press told the publication that “The Japanese government paid for 100 percent of the development of the battery and hybrid system that went into the Toyota Prius.”
...
However, since no one has ever heard or made these claims before, it seems a little hard to believe that Toyota would have received such funding — which would have been worth at least tens of millions of dollars — without anyone else knowing.
"
One person said something without any support document/fact is not an evident that it is true.
http://www.leftlanenews.com/toyota-refut...us-project.html
"...
In a March 24th interview with Business Week, Press told the publication that “The Japanese government paid for 100 percent of the development of the battery and hybrid system that went into the Toyota Prius.”
...
However, since no one has ever heard or made these claims before, it seems a little hard to believe that Toyota would have received such funding — which would have been worth at least tens of millions of dollars — without anyone else knowing.
"
One person said something without any support document/fact is not an evident that it is true.
Early commercial trucks based in large metro areas like Boston and NYC at about 1906 mostly used electric vehicles for their simplicity. The ownwers said that "someday when batteries become bigger and stronger" that this is the way to go. Well... its 100 years later and we're still waiting on those batteries! The VOLT, out the door, is expected to be over $40,000.00. One last thing, when are we going to see all those new power lines erected as the GRID in its current state would fry-up if we went to this mode. And by the way, Totota isn't any smarter than anyone else, they just picked up the fumble and ran with it as GM with its deisel-electric trains certainly had HYBRID experience long before Toyota and just like ALL of their other decisions... they guessed wrong for like the 15th time in a row.
Brian and Guru,
There is no question that batteries have problems and are still *FAR* inferior to gasoline/diesel as energy storage. Maybe compressed air might work better, maybe hydrogen, maybe batteries improve, etc. No improvements are going to be made without trying - money and engineering resources. There has been a lack of progress 1st and foremost due to the lack of both.
From economic perspective gasoline makes tons of sense. No major R&D investments are needed and it provides huge amount of energy for relatively low extraction costs (in the past). The difficulty is that extraction costs are going up and the rate of increase is only going to increase. If you consider expensive and difficult oil sands extraction process, think about the next big sources: oil shale and polar cap. Both oil sands and shale are expensive and hardl polar cap with be even worse.
So we are forced to move on to something else - no choice.
We won't really know the full potential of batteries until the proper level of inestments and R&D is done. Lithium ion seems to have still more potential. Not sure how far they'll get.
The big difference is that we can all generate our own local energy using panels and turbines when oil supply becomes tight. We just need to find the optimum storage mechanism, be it batteries or something else.
All that being said, a car company had to have a long term perspective and forward planning (10+ years) to understand in which direction it needs to innovate and keep going despite temporary gasoline price volatility.
If EV1 were kept as a R&D project without rushing to commercial production then GM would have 10+ years to develop electrical components that they are now trying to do in 2-3 years for Volt. Not to mention the green cred, good publicity, etc.
So yes, batteries are far from perfect even today.
There is no question that batteries have problems and are still *FAR* inferior to gasoline/diesel as energy storage. Maybe compressed air might work better, maybe hydrogen, maybe batteries improve, etc. No improvements are going to be made without trying - money and engineering resources. There has been a lack of progress 1st and foremost due to the lack of both.
From economic perspective gasoline makes tons of sense. No major R&D investments are needed and it provides huge amount of energy for relatively low extraction costs (in the past). The difficulty is that extraction costs are going up and the rate of increase is only going to increase. If you consider expensive and difficult oil sands extraction process, think about the next big sources: oil shale and polar cap. Both oil sands and shale are expensive and hardl polar cap with be even worse.
So we are forced to move on to something else - no choice.
We won't really know the full potential of batteries until the proper level of inestments and R&D is done. Lithium ion seems to have still more potential. Not sure how far they'll get.
The big difference is that we can all generate our own local energy using panels and turbines when oil supply becomes tight. We just need to find the optimum storage mechanism, be it batteries or something else.
All that being said, a car company had to have a long term perspective and forward planning (10+ years) to understand in which direction it needs to innovate and keep going despite temporary gasoline price volatility.
If EV1 were kept as a R&D project without rushing to commercial production then GM would have 10+ years to develop electrical components that they are now trying to do in 2-3 years for Volt. Not to mention the green cred, good publicity, etc.
So yes, batteries are far from perfect even today.
- Status
