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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
The ultimate network admin tool needs HELP!
Incidentally there is a good articles in a recent Time magazine and Wired.
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...)
Normally I let crap like this go by, but this time I'm calling you out. Prove it. JUST PROVE IT. And no, cynicism is not proof (aka "I just know and you would too if you weren't so naive").
Of course, it CAN'T be that the electric car TOTALLY F'ING SUCKS. It can't be that battery technology is not even close to being ready (6.5 hour charging time, 100 mile range?).
It can't be that every car manufacture has invested 100s of millions, if not billions (GM) in electric cars, and have TOTALLY FAILED.
Of course, we JUST KNOW that oil companies will "buy off" car companies. Never mind that car companies MAKE CARS and the first one that really makes a practical electric car will make a ton of money. Never mind that car companies DON'T PRODUCE OIL and do give a shit about how cars are powered, as long as they sell cars.
And by the way...
There is just not an infinte supply of petroleum.
Sorry, but yes, there IS AN INFINITE SUPPLY OF PETROLEUM. Yes, I said infinite. WE WILL NEVER RUN OUT OF PETROLEUM. Never. Ever. You know why?
Very simple. Because as the reserves get lower, it simply gets more expensive to pull out of the ground. Eventually, the price is higher than alternatives, and we start using alternatives. WE WILL NEVER RUN OUT OF OIL. EVER.
And even if we could, please explain to me exactly why it would be a bad thing if we ran out of oil in the ground. Big deal. We use something else.
//end rant.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
Inevitability of "Resource" Wars? I have to say that wars for resources are the only sort of war. Ok so its not as easy as Persian Gulf == Oil War but war comes from two societies' sharing a border. To keep the growth of their "lifestyle" both jockey for position with each other. Trade, culture, politics. At its most extreme extension is war. It is foolish to think that a society will every be so self-sufficient that it will no longer feel the need to expand. As its population grows so does its hunger for territory.
Of course what is a society and what is a border are up to debate. Usually the rule of thumb is that if it can be broken down to an Us and Them scenario.
It is an implicit delcaration of war every time you gas up your car or go for a drive. Your right to drive at 10 MPG is worth fighting for.
What is music when you despise all sound?
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.
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.
It is true that oil is dirty. However, it's also true that we're not going to run out.
The alternatives the previous poster mentioned are already being worked on.
Basically, what's going to happen is that as oil reserves are depleted, the price will increase. Eventually, it will rise above the price of alternative sources of oil.
What are these alternative sources? Well, for starters, it's possible to refine oil from coal. This process is more expensive than just pumping it out of the ground, so we don't do it right now. When the price of oil rises enough, it will make more sense to use coal.
There's a lot of coal in the world.
When the coal runs down, after a few thousand years, the price will again start to rise a bit, at which point a second alternative will be attractive, if it isn't already: oil shale.
When the oil shale runs out, after many more millennia, we'll either find a new energy-rich source, or we'll go full synthetic. Of course, full synthetic production will run at an energy loss, so it will need a real power source such as solar or nuclear power to drive it.
Synthetic oil production will be viable for more or less the lifetime of the universe.
One example of a form of "synthetic" oil production here is refined vegetable oil, by the way. Solar powered crops can be replanted every year, and thus won't run out.
Of course, actual oil from the ground won't run out either. It's just that new reserves won't form at nearly the rate we like to use it, so it'll always be insufficient to fill demand after the current fields are depleted.
So, no, we'll never "run out" of oil.
We will, on the other hand, want to stop using it because it's dirty long before we reach synthetic production. When we actually do stop using it, who can say?
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.
My next sig will be ready soon, but friends can beat the rush!
Hehehee...yeah. Herd mentality...right. I would hardly classify those supporting alternative energies as "the herd." But maybe herd has been re-defined.
Nope, same definition as always. One who doesn't do any of his own thinking, but just follows the herd. Your herd just happens to be smaller than a lot of other herds. Of course, people like you think that the farther out of the fringe you go, you must be getting closer to the truth.
What you want is magic technology. And if the magic doesn't exist, then it must be a conspiracy of someone to keep the magic away from the masses.
WHY? Because Stalinism is obviously the only alternative to Multi-National Corporate Run capitalist government.
OK, if the failure of electric cars is just a big capitalist conspiracy, then why aren't your non-capitalistic paradises producing them? Only stupid people live there and have no engineers? Come on, if it's just a big conspiracy, then I'm sure one of your oh-so-moral countries will start producing them tomorrow and gloriously fill the world with non-polluting, electric vehicles that recharge in 5 minutes and run for 1000 miles. And of course, all produced by a non-profit entity.
So please, tell us all. What country is it, and when will the utopia begin? We're all anxious to hear about it./p
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.