Smithsonian Removes EV1 Exhibit 420
johnMG writes to mention a Seattle PI article on the Smithsonian's move to remove the EV1 electric sedan from display. From the article: "The upcoming film 'Who Killed the Electric Car?' questions why General Motors created the battery-powered vehicles and then crushed the program a few years later. The film opens June 30th. GM happens to be one of the Smithsonian's biggest contributors. But museum and GM officials say that had nothing to do with the removal of the EV1 from display."
"Crushed" sounds so much better than "Cancelled" (Score:5, Insightful)
The time will come when all electric cars will be more practical, but in the meantime do we have to be so sensationalistic when something we like vanishes?
Perhaps if there had been a cool movie about electric cars BEFORE they were cancelled we might still have them. If you really like something then now is the time to drum up support for it! Be an evangelist, not a mere consumer.
NAH! Of course it didn't. (Score:4, Insightful)
Also, the insistence on making electric vehicles look as unsexy and unstylish as possible was not a deliberate ploy intended to kill public interest in them. We all know that most people would just love the chance to be seen driving around in something which looks like a French milkvendors cart.
GM loves corn (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Who killed the electric car? (Score:5, Insightful)
They need better ads, depicting them zooming along, speed of a dead dinosaur vs. speed of a lightning bolt... meanwhile, last I heard, people were selling Hybrids for more than they paid, and some delivery/shuttle fleets are getting them. Like with Natural Gas vehicles, they may be more economical if your business is willing to provide the infrastructure themselves.
Or saw the pollution to supply the e-cars... (Score:3, Insightful)
Since most electricity is still generated by burning fossil fuels, an all-electric car would most likely be worse than one burning the fuel directly. I have never heard of a perfectly efficient method of transmitting electricty from where it was produced to where it was needed (e.g. charge up the car). Ergo, there would be a net increase in "environmental badness" to use the e-car vs what we have now.
All the fossil fuels that are economically reachable will be burned. Do you want them burned in nice epa-mandated catalytic converter equiped cars or some 3rd world 2-stroke putt-putt cars?
Either way we will eventually get to "the next thing" - I'd say let us use it up the way we are going now.
Re:Or saw the pollution to supply the e-cars... (Score:2, Insightful)
The key issue is that the energy density and "recharge time" of gasoline make batteries look like toys. Batteries recycle pretty well, so that isn't that big of a deal.
Not as market-driven as you'd hope (Score:5, Insightful)
But at least according to the film, more was at work than the market in that decision. They blame the oil companies for anti-market tactics like astroturf groups to oppose charging stations, as well as buying congressmen to give tax credits to SUV owners. (SUVs over 3 tons, most famously the Hummer, were treated as commercial vehicles, and given huge tax breaks. And non-enormous SUVs got to count their potential carrying capacity towards that 3 tons under a 2002 "economic stimulus package").
Oil companies also campaigned vigorously against emissions restrictions and higher CAFE standards. In market terms, those are attempts to monetize externalized expenses.
So the cards were stacked in favor of SUVs and against the electric car. Not by the market, but precisely counter to the market, when powerful companies get a larger say in regulations than consumers do.
who stands to lose the most? (Score:5, Insightful)
Electric cars are a threat to auto makers because there is much less stuff to break and they are simpler to make (think about that one for a long time, it is a critical part of the equation), and they are a threat to governments because there is no way to apply the road fuel tax to them (short of the GPS tracking deal they just started in oregon). You can theoretically own an electric vehicle, own some solar panels, and eventually be driving for pretty darn cheap per mile. Many people are happily doing that today, proving it is possible and can fill a lot of niche driving. As to range,50-100 miles on a charge is doable *now*, which would handle just millions of commuter profiles, that is *easily* extended and handled by having an additional tow behind trailer with a fuel burning generator in it for trips, which would then morph your ride "on demand" into a hybrid vehicle..
Pure electric cars are a clear cut example of what is called "disruptive technology" that threatens big auto, big oil and big government. A lot of big money and big juice there that doesn't want that sort of threat, yes? That is why electric cars "failed",not that they don't work or can't be built in mass productyion style, of course they can,but they were never offered in the first place.
When is the last time you saw a pure electric car at a normal mainstream dealer *for sale*? I'm an old gear head,and I have *never* seen one for sale, never. I have seen anything and everything else under the sun with an engine that moves for sale, the only electric "car" I ever saw for sale was a golf cart, not a real car. I have seen a few low production prototypes that people hand built, and you were able to buy them used that way as one or two-offs,but that's it, nothing mass produced.
They say "there is no market", well it is a self fullfilling prophecy if you never even try to sell them.
Re:Or saw the pollution to supply the e-cars... (Score:5, Insightful)
Since most electricity is still generated by burning fossil fuels, an all-electric car would most likely be worse than one burning the fuel directly. I have never heard of a perfectly efficient method of transmitting electricty from where it was produced to where it was needed (e.g. charge up the car). Ergo, there would be a net increase in "environmental badness" to use the e-car vs what we have now.
Not necessarily. Your argument is only true if the electric power plant and the gasoline-powered car operate at the same efficiency. If the power plant is significantly more efficient than a gasoline engine, then it is quite possible for the electric car to be more environmentally friendly than the gasoline car, even with transmission losses.
Your argument also ignores the fact that its generally easier to implement and upgrade pollution controls on a few dozen power plants versus several million automobiles.
Re:Not as market-driven as you'd hope (Score:3, Insightful)
In CA there were charging station going up everywhere.
"as well as buying congressmen to give tax credits to SUV owners. (SUVs over 3 tons, most famously the Hummer, were treated as commercial vehicles, and given huge tax breaks. And non-enormous SUVs got to count their potential carrying capacity towards that 3 tons under a 2002 "economic stimulus package")."
It was a loophole in a bill to help farmers.
Also, the EV-1 was very expensive(30K, lease only), and had limited range, and it was imparatical with a family of more then 3. Or two with a dog.
There where far more SUV option then electric car options. I don't think people were ready to consider a car that was that small.
I lokoed at them, but the cost kept me away. They were loosing so much money in an attempt to be first to market. they might as well made the 15K.
No doubt the oil companies make moves against clean air.
One last thing, had the type of electric car been marketable, why aren't there anythings similiar? how come coutries like china? they would benefit greatly from electric cars, why aren't they used there?
For there to be Alternatives to Fossil Feuls (Score:1, Insightful)
That is what is missing. They have to have devistatingly destructive power, while being Eco friendly.
$10K? (Score:3, Insightful)
From the site:
"The interesting thing about the EXAR-1 was, that the pictures never did the car justice. When seen in person, the car was as beautiful as any foreigh exotic costing 7 or 8 times more; as well as the fact, that the EXAR-1 sported advances that even the most expensive automobiles in the world would not have for many years in the future."
"Mr. Ramirez, actually built an electric automobile, making sure that details, such as matching ring and pinion gears to tire and wheel size for optimum operation, were implemented, regardless of cost."
"Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company provided special tires developed expermintal future characteristics to be implemented into the design of the EXAR-1.
"Bell Helicoptor and Ling Tempco Vaught Aerospace engineers provided structural design and metalurgical analysis. 4130 chromally steel would be used as the roll cage to protect passengers and provide a body on frame,for inexpensive repair and maintance."
Doesn't sound cheap to me...
As for development/production costs:
"Pietro Frua provided the body design while the Department of Transportation cooperated in technical recommendations and asistance in overall safety design and new materials analysis...suffice to say that Ramirez built an electric automobile for approximately $18 million dollars, that General Motors (with government funding assistance, etc.) could not do for $360 million dollars..."
It seems pretty unlikely that they could produce such a car in large numbers for 10,000 USD each.
But ok, even granting the claim that they could, you have to account for inflation. Using a little calculator found here (http://www.westegg.com/inflation/), $10,000 US in 1970 is approximately equal to $50379.13 US in 2005. That's not exactly conveniently priced, by a long shot.
Re:Or saw the pollution to supply the e-cars... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Who killed the electric car? (Score:3, Insightful)
About that Corn (Score:4, Insightful)
As it stands, the US Gov't pays farmers not to plant fields, subsidizes the farmland that is planted, and buys up excess product to keep prices up. This practice isn't limited to corn, most independant/corporate farmers recieve gov't handouts.
Ontop of that, the Feds have tariffs to keep the domestic price of ethanol up, because ethanol production (like farming) is heavily subsidized and not exactly profitable.
The entire market that is/would be involved in large-scale ethanol production is heavily skewed because of subsidies. The cheapest route would be to import ethanol from places where it is cheap.
On a side note: Why do SUVs belong in museums?
Like trucks and the TUV (Truck-UV), they fill an important niche.
The SUV is just a vehicle, maybe your problem is with the people who drive them.
Re:Or saw the pollution to supply the e-cars... (Score:3, Insightful)
Winter. Have you ever driven in a vehicle for any length of time when the heater didn't work? When it was below 0F? I had an old blazer that was like that - the hearer fan didn't work below 32F. I don't drive that much so I never bothered to fix it, but one's feet certainly get cold when there's no heat to be had.
In an all-battery powered car, there's only one source of heat. Electric heat from the batteries. Running the heater will shorten your driving range. And if you're stuck in transit somewhere with no power (and no heat!) when it's cold out, you're dead.
efficancy not the REAL point (Score:2, Insightful)
as i see it, we should still be changing to electric cars or hydrogen based ones, even if it produces more nasty stuff at the beginning, if you take the power plants into consideration (which is not even proven at this point, because of efficancy differences)
the really important thing is to change the energy-transmitting infrastructure - by changing it from fossil fuels to hydrogen or electricity, we create another level of abstraction (to use programmer's speak), and we can tackle the other parts later (someday, in spite of the old joke that fusion is always only a couple of years away, it will arrive). there are zillions of ways to produce electricity, but only one way to "produce" normal gasoline (i love the idea of bio-petrol, but i think it's more of a temporary crutch than a real solution). with electric or hydrogen based cars, we'd open the energy producing market to a broader competition, so to speak.
it's kind of like developing cross-platform applications. it allows you to switch the underlying layers depending on your needs.
but right now, we have this massive monolithic problem that the whole infrastructure, from the moment the oil is pumped out, upto the moment the gas explodes in your cylinders, is extremly unflexibly based on fossil fuels. so the only reasonable way out of this is the good old 'divide & conquer', IMHO.
Re:Riiiiiight (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Not as market-driven as you'd hope (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh, and do you think the car companies would have been able to make the money they did without the massive taxpayer investment in car transportation? By which I mean the interstate system, traffic lights, safety regulation, traffic cops, paving roads, yearly maintenance, etc, etc. Total cost to taxpayers in 2005 dollars since 1957? At least 5 trillion dollars by my hasty calculations.
Re:Not as market-driven as you'd hope (Score:4, Insightful)
You have some apples and some oranges. (Score:5, Insightful)
The *SAME* car? No - the problem is that the American consumer will pay more for a car that is heavier (safer) and has more features/trunk space/acceleration/handling/etc than they will a car that has the weight, trunk space, acceleration and handling of a car from the 1950's that gets 80 MPG.
We have gotten REMARKABLY more efficient with engines in the past 50 years. We just spend that efficiency on things OTHER than MPG because that's what the consumer wants.
When I drove the EV1. . . (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:GM loves corn (Score:4, Insightful)
That's because there is this nasty little law that allows car makers to in effect grossly inflate the stated mpg of flex-fuel vehicles %20 over what they actually get. Many good selling vehicles (i.e., pickups) actually are flex-fuel, but the only way that you'd know it is from the VIN. You see, they don't actually *care* about you being able to burn flex-fuels; what they care about is artificially raising the fleet average fuel economy rating.
Cheat number two:
MTBE was added to gasoline as an "oxygenate" to make it burn cleaner. Only one company (arco?) was making it at the time and they lobbied heavily to make sure that the specs in the law pretty much spelled out that only MTBE would fit the bill, if you will excuse the pun. It gave them a six month lead on the market until other manufacturers could ramp up. Well, it turns out MTBE is really nasty stuff that gets into ground water, and causes the birth of three headed monkeys from otherwise normal canaries. And they had no idea. Oh, and Congress is working hard to make sure that you can't sue them. Anywhoo, now that it is acknowledged that MTBE is bad, new law has been constructed that pretty much guarantees that Ethanol will replace the previous 10% by volume oxygenate. Problem is, Ethanol gets something like 20% worse mileage than MTBU (Ethanol 76,000 btu/gallon, MTBE 93,500 btu/gallon, US gas 115,000 btu/gallon). Work out the math and you see that once again, the oil industry wins big time. Under the guise of "cleaner fuel, cleaner air, cleaner water", we are going to be filling up MORE often with MORE expensive gasoline that will create MORE pollution! Oh, and Ethanol might be worse for groundwater, as it is totally mixable in water and carries lots of other things from the gas with it. Can't smell it like you can MTBU, though, so you'll be drinking it for years before you realize it. Of course, the replacement of MTBU with Ethanol was enacted within a day or so of the Big Head Cheese giving a big "I understand the concerns of the simple folk" speech about how we are going to cut our reliance on foreign oil and clean the air and water by "doing things" with alternate energy. Same time that the alternate energy budget allocations were cut. Doublespeak at it's best...
Re:Not as market-driven as you'd hope (Score:5, Insightful)
GM knew they could sell electric cars.
I think the point you're missing is this:
Way simpler than ICE (internal combustion engine) vehicles. ICE's have to have many many moving parts working in sync to even run at all. There's even fluid dynamics involved for air, fuel, and lubricant flow. It's insanely complicated compared to an electric car which happens to consist of only 4 major parts:
That's it. Any other fancy features (like regenerative braking) are just gravy, and you don't need them for a simple functional vehicle.
Car companies could make an electric "VW Bug" type car in their sleep. Hobbyists have been making them in their garages for decades.
The fact of the matter is not that car companies can't make money on them, the fact is that they wouldn't be able to make nearly as much money on them as they do with ICE vehicles. Here's some reasons why:
1. Energy efficiency. All the extras that car companies like to change extra for (power windows, power doorlocks, automatic transmissions, big stereos, heated seats, etc.) become much less viable with small economical energy efficient vehicles. Instead of "features" they become things that reduce how many miles you can go on a charge.
2. Size. EV's tend to be fairly small. Car companies like to charge big money for big vehicles.
3. Parts. EV's are very reliable. We're used to driving vehicles around which have explosions going on inside their engines. This wears ICE's out fast. Electric motors last an very very long time with minimal maintenance. This means car companies will not make much money selling parts. Batteries, OTOH, do wear out. But they're dimensions are currently pretty standardized, and so you wouldn't have to go to the dealership to recycle them.
4. Lifetime. As mentioned, EV's last a very long time. Car companies like their customers to drive disposable cars, so they can be sold another car in a few years.
5. Oil. You can't discount the relationship that car companies almost assuredly have with oil companies. It's symbiotic. Do you think maybe GM has heavy investments in several oil companies? I'm sure they certainly do. And widespread EV sales would hammer oil company profits. Do you think maybe oil companies have large investments in automobile companies? Let's listen in on a possible future phone call:
Open Source GNU-Car (Score:3, Insightful)
Why not create a set of plans based on the Open Source model that could be used to bypass GM like FOSS bypasses Micro$oft.
Eventually, a RedHat will come along and produce the hardware for the masses.
It may not look sexy like a Jaguar, but it will get you there.
Thanks for posting (Score:3, Insightful)
By and large, corporations are full of good people who understand that making money ultimately comes from pleasing your customers. If GM dropped the electric car idea, it is not for some nefarious reason, but because the things just couldn't provide a competitive balance of brice and performance at the time. It is also ludicrious to claim that "Big Oil" and the car companies are not pouring tons of R&D into alternative fuels and transporation. On the contrary, they are putting in as much as anyone. I think this myth comes from the mistaken belief that companies only think about the short-term. Not only does a basic understanding of markets dispel this (a stock price is the value of ALL future profits), but so would the experience of actually working in any high-tech company. In my company, I work in an sub-group where product life cycles are extremely short. Yet we are routinely projecting potential revenues a decade or more into the future, and betting on products that will produce no revenue for several years.
Re:Not as market-driven as you'd hope (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Or saw the pollution to supply the e-cars... (Score:3, Insightful)
If anything, the best point at this point would be the possibility that your plant uses a domestically produced fuel, so we don't have to trash our economy any more handing our dough over to people who want to blow us up.
Anyway, it's a pointless argument, The video strikes me as a sensationalist look at a product that just failed. It's hard to sell people on cars that require special infastructure, perform poorly... and that Occam's Razor indicates are only minimally going to help the environment in the end... not that the majority of motorists care. The market is not thinking, "I can't wait to pass up that badass Corvette for a commensurately priced economy style vehicle that caps out at 55 and can't be filled up at a regular station. Sign me up!" The market is purchasing even larger SUVs, despite soaring gas prices. Do you think they care that the car promises to improve the environment?
Re:About that Corn (Score:5, Insightful)
Ethanol can only be efficiently produced from very high-energy crops like sugar beets - or even better, sugar cane. Unfortunately most of the land that's being used to grow corn doesn't do very well growing sugar beets, and can't be used to grow sugar cane at all. In fact, the places best suited for both of these crops are in central and south America. That is, places where there aren't any American farmers, nor any representatives in Congress.
You ever wonder why corn syrup is used as a sugar substitute in so many things, like, for instance, cola drinks? Because Congress, in it's infinite wisdom, outright bans the import of sugar past a certain allowed tonnage each and every year. The sole reason for doing so is to support corn farmers, who'd otherwise lose the corn syrup business to sugar cane farmers in other countries (it takes far less sugar to make something taste sweet than it does corn syrup, and sugar tastes better than corn syrup). It makes no economic sense for the rest of the country, but there you have it - your tax dollars at work in a government protection racket.
These same farmers push for corn-derived ethanol despite the fact that it can never be efficient, nor can it ever be economical for the rest of us - those of us who aren't corn farmers. Ethanol from corn is a bust, but don't expect the government to ever admit to that, or to admit that the only truly productive ethanol will come from places like central or south America, or Hawaii, or perhaps southern Florida. Too many Congresscritters would be out of a job if they ever admitted to that.
Max
Re:Riiiiiight (Score:3, Insightful)
$1 billion dollars to prove a point? (Score:3, Insightful)