Below is a link to "Who Killed The Electric Car?" and its free to watch. I would suggest everyone watchs it and if you could pass it around to friends and so forth http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5599073542041338932
here is more information on the subject and the claims the movie makes: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_killed_the_electric_car?
Foregone conclusion: When a major portion of the free worlds money is tied up in oil. It's going to be outrageously difficult to do anything that may damage the profit margins.
^ bump to old thread This link is dead now (this video's easy to find though).. I finally watched this last night. It was great. Very neat to see the EV1 was such a great car for its time, but it was sad to see them erased from history. Big oil sucks.. Thanks for the recommendation Mattdev.
Big companies suck in general. Beyond a certain point, incompetence and those who rise to their level of such, end up running a vast sprawling mess, in which job one is CYOA and keep your job at all costs! It's the classic case for the song "Live and let Die"
But with the advances of the hybrid industry, how relevant is this film? I know for me and everyone in my neighborhood (who work anywhere near downtown), that car would have very limited appeal. Just look at the number of hybrid vehicles available compared to just a few short years ago. Toyota has also committed to becoming 100% hybrid by 2020. The hybrid is a much more practical offering.
Yeah the hybrid does change things quite a bit, but the US automakers are doing horrible jobs implementing it (which is okay, and more a marketing mistake than anything else). The Japanese hybrids are good and getting better all the time (the next Prius will have plug-in features and double capacity batteries or something) and they get on average around double the MPG of the US versions. In the bay area, there are more Priuses than any other car on the road now it seems. They're freakin' everywhere. The hybrid is more practical, but for *many* people, a pure electric that went 65 miles on a charge (or 100+ which is what they'd probably do now, before Lithium ion catches on) is perfect, since many drive under 30 miles in a day on average (hell I probably drive like 1 mile per day average ) Plug-in hybrids will change things drastically when people can choose to run on pure electric mode for extended range (at least a few miles)... the next Prius will only go <10 miles on a plug-in charge, but that's a big improvement over 0 so I'm pretty optimistic. It'll be nice using electric mode in town then only a few gallons of gas to take a long trip.
2009 and 2010 are going to be really exciting for automobiles. Toyota's plug-in hybrid, the Honda FCX, and Smart selling their cars in the US (they already began in some cities). I think about how far the technology could have been by now had they kept making the EV1 and other electric cars. Within 20 years I'm predicting that everyone will drive electrics and we will get all/most of our power from nuclear. We just need the environmental crybabies to get out of the way.
QFT. France is already mostly nuclear, we're SO far behind. Or at least it seems to me we are. Depending on your commute distance and weather some of us could already go electric. Amazon.com: Sparrow 4825: Sports & Outdoors
Heh. Replacing oil with coal and uranium. How many watt-hours are consumed by an electric car going 30 miles? Biofuels are already pushing up the prices of food crops; wanna bet that an all-electric auto industry does the same with electricity?
Of course it will. Anything that gets created as an alternative will end up costing us more elsewhere to get it. The corporations want to keep their wallets fat and the only way is to charge more on the main consumption item that the alternative fuel vehicle is using....oh no I've gone cross-eyed....
The thing with electric stuff is that you can always put in solar panels or a windmill to supplement or completely cover your needs. I've got a few 60-75 watt solar panels on my Christmas list. A few of those, a battery powered vehicle (such as the bike kit I've been on about), and the energy companies can suck my balls. A larger system will ultimately be required, as I can't really ride a bike to work here in the winter, but I fully intend to be as energy independent as possible within 10 years. Once I get my debt paid down I'm converting my house to solar. Amazon.com: Sunforce 50044 60Watt Solar Charging Kit: Automotive
Why doe we need hybrids? Because they only take half the fossile fuel? well, if the fossile fuel costs twice as much, it ends up costing just as much as the strait gas engine, doesn't it? The public has been brainwashed for along time. We're led to believe that there is no technology to replace the gas engine.....BULSHITTT!!! There has been since the 70's oil embargo.everyone is led also, to believe that hydrogen is too explosive to put in tanks and drive around with....more bullshit. There is no need to even carry hydrogen around at all. just a tank full of tap water and make hydrogen on demand....fuck, it's so simple. imaging backing your car up to the garden hose instead of driving into a service station and paying a guy (or gal) in a booth your hard earned money. we all think we have no options other than to be the huge assed oil company's chumps. that's exactly what we are.....chumps. YouTube - The Moe Joe Cell Stage3 Part 1- Spherical Joe Cell YouTube - HHOFromWater Lots of it YouTube - Moe Joe Cell Car Installation in a 2001 Honda Accord electricity is the answer. it can be produced rather easily. shit, i make juice from garbage as a hobby. the little permenant magnet motor I showed off in the vid, I hooked up to a rectifier 9all parts that would have ended up in a landfill someplace. put this out today: with a 18 volt, 2 amp drill: 22.9 volts DC (This is with the drill turned off, holding a dimminishing charge through that little capacitor on the rectifier out of a wall wart. Before the drill was turned off and the charge started to drop it was 24 volts and leveled off at 22.6vdc) .45 DC amps 5 of these hooked up in parrallel (delta configuration would give me3.8 amps) and i'm getting out 4 volts more than I put in.
the tesla roadster claims to get 220 miles per charge, i dont see why some company makes a full production model of a economy car based on the same technology, that can get maybe 150 miles on a charge, similar to a civic or corolla, plane sedan, if it costs less then 20 grand ill buy the first one. i rarely drive more then 50 miles in a day and i doubt even most commuters will see any different, maybe charging stations will start popping up again. the plug in hybrids are a great idea, they will go longer distances if needed and are a perfect solution.
i don't know why we don't use truly free resources like wind and solar. i saw on the history channel that wind mills in north and south Dakota could completely power the entire united states. i think every other source of power has a draw back.
The problem with wind power is, while demand will always continue to rise, some years are just not as windy as others. Which make solar thee answer. If the sun goes away, we're fucked. As I've been raving about, the Earth is actually one big dynamo. A generator of electricity. Why is electricity not free? because, in the name of commerce, we got duped into believing that we have to pay for it. Simple as that. There are actual working production models available and ready to hit the market, of home sized self sufficient electrical generators. I'm willing to bet we'll not see them in oyur lifetime. PS: They've been around almost all of this and the last century. YouTube - Electromagnetic Over Unity Power Plant YouTube - ELECTRIC VEHICLE SURGE TECHNOLOGY NO BATTERIES NO GAS And for a real utility company ass kicker: YouTube - FUELLESS HEATER NO FUEL NO GAS NO WOOD NO GREEN HOUSE GASES
