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Ford Pulls The Plug on Electric Cars
Cytos writes "Apparently Ford has called it quits on their EV program Th!nk Mobility, stating "... we don't believe that this is the future of environmental transport for the mass market." Ford had purchased Think in 1990 and did a short run of advertisments in California for it's lease trial, even involving Hertz in helping out. I was really hoping to see this pan out, I guess our only hope for an EV now is the Toyota Rav4 EV." From the sound of it, most companies are looking at hybrid cars.
I know that I would never buy an electric car for a multitude of reasons...
1: How am i going to charge it in my parking lot at work? at my dorm?
2: It just wont get me very far here in Kansas
3: Lack of speed. When I need to merge, I need to get up and GO damn it.
4: Small. I like big cars, or better yet Trucks. You cant have an electric Truck - it just makes no sense unless you haul barbie furniture
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I hope you don't think this decision was reached without considerable input from the oil industry and its captains and advisers (one of whom happens to be a high ranking republican in a high seat...)
Eventually, we're going to be at a point where we deal with electric or bio-fuel whether we like it or not. There is just not an infinte supply of petroleum.
The hell of it is, if we were to start *now* working on getting all the kinks and problems worked out of things like bio-fuel or solar-panels with the same energy and resources that the auto industry spends on developing new models every year, when the time comes that petroleum is so rare as to inspire strife, war, and conflict, we will be far enough ahead of the curve not to be affected.
While hybrid cars may be a step in the right direction, they're only postponing the inevitable.
Luckily, I rather like bicycling.
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Electric cars are not the wave of the future. Has anyone ever seen an electric car that could compare to a gasoline car in terms of range and acceleration? Imagine being in cold weather with the radio and the heat on. Anyway, all electric cars do is move the pollution from a mobile vehicle to a stationary powerplant.
Incidentally there is a good articles in a recent Time magazine and Wired.
They are quite right. Car is not the future of environmental transport. There are dozens over dozens of cities in the world where the transport situation is totally unsustainable due to constant grows of the cities themselves and consequently the number of vehicles on the streets.
What city or country has the best public transportation system?
I wonder if hybrids (which seem to be the practical transitional cars) are only the stop gap till the real 'next' car, fuel cell powered vehicles.
i think ford saw ev as that stop gap, but they got the beta instead of the vhs in this case.
There's nothing Intelligent about Intelligent Design.
On the other hand, automobiles spread the pollutants all over the place, whereas at a plant, it is a little easier to control the output of pollutants, and there is a single, concentrated source.
re: nuclear: Yes, and it is troubling that so many people tend to think that fossil fuel is cleaner and better than nuclear. I have at least five friends with cancer right now. I sometimes wonder how the current high cancer levels in our society correlates to the burning of fossil fuels. It seems that fossil fuels, in the way that we burn them now, are probably orders of magnitude more deadly than radioactive waste. The only problem is, since pollutants are so dispersed, it is very difficult to track their effects. At least with nuclear waste, you know where it is, and you can measure it.
I would remind gentle /. readers that the electricity a Ford Think (or any electric car) would use has to be generated somehow. This was an attractive solution for California, as most of the electricity-generating plants that serve (my) state are in Arizona and Nevada.
Further, when the California power grid goes down again, not only will you have no TV, you will have no car.
Hydrogen, my friends. Dubya might be wrong about lots of things, but he knows the future of energy. Check out the new developments in extracting hydrogen from shale and rock, much like natural gas. Its only pollution is water vapor, which can be electrolyzed back into hydrogen fuel and ozygen if required.
Hydrogen can also be produced by the electrolysis of seawater using solar cells for power or by heating coal dust in the presence of a catalyst using solar collectors.
California simply tried to legislate a market that will never exist, and, if by some freak it did, would shift the pollution to other states.
Don't rule out the other fuel cell technologies. Ethanol and methanol fuel cell technologies are even better than hydrogen since we already have large industries capable of producing them. Not to mention they don't have to be stored at high pressure and supercooled while they are in the vehicle.
Mostly watching.
Actually, from what I understand, electric vehicles were never really expected to succeed and each of the big automakers purposefully limited performance, features, and production numbers. Now before you lump me in with the big-oil-bush-presidency conspiracy theorists, let me tell you why this is actually a good thing.
Initially, EV development was influenced by government pressure and companies did try to market these vehicles to niche markets. However, once the car companies realized that battery technology was already mature and has already had years and years and billions of dollars thrown at development, they pretty well gave up on pure electric vehicles as the future of the automobile. However, they did not immediately give up on their EV programs (EV1, Th!nk, etc.). Apart from political reasons, why is this?
Well, the most promising technologies (hybrids, fuel cells) were still out on the horizon but shared many simularities with battery driven vehicles. EV technology was mature enough to be put on the road immediately so they could learn about the issues they would run into with these cars. However, if they offered a particularly attractive EV with lots of features then Joe Average might buy one and become very frustrated with the beta level technology, swear off ever buying any future hybrid or fuel cell car, and tell all his friends how much they suck. Instead, they limited the market to early adopters who wouldn't be turned off by the problems of bleeding edge technology. This is also why the first hybrids had such long waiting lists and were only offered in very basic, unsexy models. Again, they intentionally restricted supply for trial purposes and made sure that only real geeks would ever buy them.
Effectively, they used enthusiasts to fund the testing of their new technologies in real world conditions without risking widespread customer dissatisfaction and without the expense of designing normal creature comforts. Now, with real production model hybrids, the early programs have served their purpose and the limited functionality models have less catchet with enthusiasts, so the manufacturers are removing them from the road to avoid confusing the average consumer.
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If you could chill out a moment and not rush to nonsensical defense of your country you would see that there is a certain amount of sense to the argument, even from your point of view.
If we had the balls to keep our military *out* of other people's disputes, they would settle the problem one way or another. The problem is in part, ours, our agendas, overt and otherwise, will not let us keep our noses out of it.
If they think they need the US to help them out, they can ask for our help. Until that, they can handle it however they see fit. From your point of view it means making their own bed and lying in it, from their point of view it means the US lets sleeping dogs lie and/or stops playing big brother.
I just found out there's no such thing as the real world. It's just a lie you've got to rise above. - John Mayer