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I was opposed to bailing out Wall Street, Banks and AIG.

As was I. I also oppose the bailout of Detroit. Chrysler and GM should go to court and declare bankruptcy, and it looks like GM is.

I mean these CEOs of the banks were making billions of dollars and banks were turning TRILLIONS in record profits every year. Where did all that profit go?

The profits banks made, unlike their CEOs, were only on paper. Worthless paper it turned out. Banks are now reporting profits again. Citi Group reported 6.30% net profit margin for Q1. Bank of America reported 11.88% and Wells Fargo & Company 14.70%.

GM and Chrysler are a bit less responsible for their predicament than those previously discussed.

Chrysler and GM are victims of the recession but they have to share some of the blame too. Their market shares dropped as those of Honda, Mazda, Nissan, and Toyota increased. The Japanese companies built what people wanted. This goes back to the 1970s and the oil crisises. Back then Detroit didn't build fuel efficient vehicles but the Japanese did so they ate Detroit's breakfast. In the 1980s Ronald Reagan bailed out Chrysler because of it. In the '90s GM came out with the EV1 but killed it. First GM only leased them, it didn't sell them. And they were only leased in CA, AZ, and Atlanta, GA. Chris Paine made the movie "Who Killed the Electric Car". The thing is too is that electric cars predate internal combustion engine cars.

If I had the money I WOULD NOT pay a red cent on a vehicle that was not electric knowing that in a year or two they will have either full blown electric cars or 'plug-in hybrids' which I'd probably prefer since they only have electric motors but have a small ICE generator to convert gas to electricity for extended range.

I wouldn't want to waste my money either and like you would rather buy a plug-in hybrid. The Chevrolet Volt is one. Sales are supposed to start in November 2010, about a year and a half away. However it only has a 40 mile range when using only the battery. As an option though there's a planned solar roof panel.

Falcon

I'm going to assume that you're not a troll, your argument has so many weeknesses so I don't know where to begin. How about this... Lithium is indeed expensive but electric car engines and their batteries are cheaper than building gas engines due to greatly reduced complexity and mechanics. Peru is not the only source of Lithium. You're also making the assumption that lithium is the only thing good batteries can be made of. Also what are you talking about when you refer to the "dangerous business of discarding the batteries" and "the energy for manufacturing". The car lobby actually hates electric cars, especially GM which they have prooved.

I mean, drivers would only ever have a vigil and risk getting arrested for a sucky car....(ever heard of a vigil for any petrol powered car? me neither)

I guess they sucked so much, perhaps the former drivers wanted to pay the nearly 2 million offered to stop GM crushing them just so they could smash them themselves? Sure wish I had that much money to throw away on sucky cars...

In other words, do a little research yourself and realise something very important.

One Hint: You're a moron. (not everyone needs to drive further than 122 miles per day. In fact, not many (as a percentage) really do)

The school system in this country also needs to be radically improved.

dood, talk to the children: almost all of them hate their government schools. School is the problem. Read some John Taylor Gatto and you'll understand why.

You're right on about needing CEOs who are Engineers and not Beancounters, though... Read about what happened at General Motors with their EV1 project. The engineer-CEO & board members who said "we can do this!" (meet California's Zero Emission Vehicle mandate) got kicked out in 1992 after a recession caused them to miss profit expectations. They were replaced with Beancounters, who gave the EV1 project lipservice, but did everything they could to kill the mandate. Now look at GM: giving away their cars for 3+ months (employee discount program, losing >$1,000/car). There are no profit expectations because the analysts expect that they're going to lose lots of money.

http://ev1-club.power.net/ - 100+ people offered GM $24,000/each for USED compact-sized EV1's. GM said "no thanks" and took the cars to Mesa, Arizona where they were uncerimoniously crushed.
GM Deathwatch (part 1 of 34+)

>>Won't somebody think of the CARS!!!
I can understand some of GMs thinking, especially the part about litigation, but it seems a waste to crush so many perfectly usable automobiles.

Before and after photos of at least 60 EV1s being crushed: http://ev1-club.power.net/

Too bad. Seems odd, though, that GM sites lack of parts and liability as reasons. After all, if they were really worried about liability, why would they have allowed them to be purchased in the first place.

Here a link to pics of the remains.

:-(

I don't know about the "pot smoking hippies" part, but I tend to agree that this is not a major contribution to science or technology. I'm not so sure that Canadians should be proud that $600,000 of what was probably taxpayer's money were spent on this project.

Having said that, someone down below posted taht "Solar powered transportation is not practical." Well, these guys did it. I think the fact that they have ridden it hundreds of km around the city shows it can be done. They are not engineering prodigies, but they have shown that you can do it AND in the end you can do it fairly cheaply.

PSSST Electric cars can be practical. Some think there is a conspiracy to kill electric powered vehicles like the GM EV-1 (I would have sent you a link to GM's official information on the car, but I can't find it!).

Yes, American companies produced electric cars, but once Bush removed the mandate that 10 percent of cars sold must be electric by 2003, all that work stopped. In fact, companies like GM not only stopped producing electric cars, but ordered all 1,100 fully functional EV1s destroyed. The only ones that were spared from the crusher were stripped of all electronic componants and donated to museums.

The martians will actually have to destroy the Rover because electric cars will never work, nobody wants them, and they must destroy the evidence that they ever existed...

Humm, seems to me that the root of the problem is that the general public, business, and industry is dependant on "the grid"(like duh). What I mean is each of us is dependant on power generation and delivery systems which are out of our individule control.(ok, so)...

Please keep in mind that had we spoke in person you would not have had the opportunity to observe my poor spelling, it's my message and not my grammer that you aught pay attention to.

To demonstrate, smaller co-op type wind farms would place more of the power generation in closer proximity to the loads. Reducing vulnerability to falures at the generation sources and transmission grid(s). They would provide jobs in construction and maintainance, and stabalize prices for power from a near-constant, free, renewable, and clean source.

Rather than investing in more Dirty Coal fireing plants that rob us all of our non-renewable natural resources; Instead of pushing the envelope with contriversal nuclear power, how about simply start utilizing our existing fision reactor, The Sun, in more direct methods? Such as Solar, which is about as direct as you can get at ~20% effeciency. Wind is probably the best solution powered near-directly by the sun aswell. Hydro-electric is already being extensively utilized, relying on the evaporative powers of the sun to circulate water to the highest peaks. If you think about it, coal and oil resources are also powered by the sun, which grew the plants that eventually turned into "fosil"-fuels. I wonder just how effecient this very-non-direct use of sunlight is. My guess, about 0.02% or less. Even Solar power starts to look a whole lot better put this way.

Or how about smarter tansportation that would actually Help correct this and many other problems that we are currently facing (Oil dependency, pollution, corruption, wars)... This T-Zero and other Electric Vehicles could aid grid overloading, utilize nightly power over-production provide clean reliable and FUN daily transportation producing zero emmissions and using zero oil. period. Check out their White Papers. and What's New area (especially the ev-based vehicle-to-grid demonstration project)! I know it's a little pricy, how about the GM EV1 with an MSRP of less than $40K, in low volume production (Oh ya, if it had ever been for sale). There we go, More Jobs again... And Imagin how the cost would come down if we built 100,000 of them here at home.

And for all of you that are going to diss on electric cars, keep in mind that you know nothing about them. They have power and range, and are very effecient at 80% to 90% from the outlet. Batteries are recyclable and safe.

Hybrids are not Electric cars. Gas cars are brute force machines, their ICE's only push, Friction breaks slow them down. Hybrids are the "Missing Links". They Push just the same, but are capable of "Recycling Kinetic Energy", however all power originates from the gassoline. EV's are the Answer, The Push even harder, Regenerate Better, use about 1/4 the energy, and produce Zero Emissions. Infinite MPG.

To Bring this full circle, I can make my own electricity, and more of us should. It shines down on us each day and blows above our homes durring each of our lifetimes. Build something usefull to our children, not more problems.

L8r
Ryan

• Starve a terrorist, drive an electric vehicle.
• I love plugging in! Do you like pumping gas?
• Would you drive your car if the exhaust came out of the steering wheel?
• Sorry about your "GAS PROBLEM".
• It's not Electric if you Can't Plug It In.

The electric car manufacturers tried inductive charging for years and gave up, in particular because the California Air Resources Board (CARB) in June 2001 decided to standardize on conductive. Now, this may only indicate a problem with inductive charging in high-power applications, and maybe gadget power is fine, but it's worth pointing out.

See my EV1 web page or the EV1 club web page.

Why bother, when you can build an electric car that gets 4 miles per gallon?

Think about it. Then click the damned link.

<grin>