GM Pulls Plug on Electric Car

davebo writes "General Motors' EV1, the all-electric dynamo of a car, has been pulled from the market. You can read the letter GM sent out to current EV1 drivers here. When the EV1 came out, the chairman of GM said it would "define the GM of the future". Guess he'd like to take that back now . . ." With Ford also cancelling their electric vehicle program, looks like hybrids are it for the next few years.

Comments

Did they expect different?

[aleonard]

What were they expecting? This is like walking into a country as well-gridded as ours and saying, ok, let's try this new type of electricity! But it needs completely new power plants to do it, and it is less convenient. People will look at you like you're crazy.

Electronic cars - even ones you have to plug in every few hundred miles - may have their day, someday. But not yet. Not while oil is so cheap. Cost of gas + Convenience of being about to fuel up anywhere at any time = Lower cost, for most people, all things considered (remember, price is but one factor) than driving an electric car.

I want to know why only 1000 were made. They spent a billion on a program and only sent it out to a wishlist? Or did they withhold it from the market because the infrastructure didn't exist?

When the time is right, both the cars and the infrastructure will change as needed. The time is not right.

Re:Did they expect different?

[jez9999]

Electronic cars - even ones you have to plug in every few hundred miles - may have their day, someday. But not yet. Not while oil is so cheap.

Actually, compared to electricity, oil's very expensive indeed. It's a shame this has been abandoned, because electricity generation benefits from both obvious economies of scale, and the fact that there are fewer generators than cars. If all cars became electric cars, you'd only have to upgrade the (relatively few) power stations to improve efficiency every time you found a better way of generating, rather than trying to persuade everyone in the population to change their car(s)!

Re:electric

[MavEtJu]

that the power plants that make the electricity probably spew more pollutants into the air

That is if your electricity power plant is using fossils fuels. Look a little bit further (or back, a couple of days ago on /.) and you see that electricity is a good step between the way you turn a natural source of energy and the movement you want in your vehicle.

Hybrids are the way to go ...

[egghat]

... IMHO.

An electric engine for the city and one of the new, very efficient diesel engine otherwise. My Audi A2 TDI runs around 50 mpq (4,5 l/100 km), which is quite good.

Remember that electricity is not emission free unless it's solar power/wind or water. Emissions are just made somewhere else.

Bye egghat.

Re:One word:

[YeeHaW_Jelte]

As far as I understand it, the profit is in the efficiency. A power plant is, due to its large scale, much more efficient in converting chemical energy to electrical energy than a single car engine is. From the power plant on, you've pretty low loss due to resistance etc.
Moreover, it's easier and cheaper to de-polute the gasses coming from a big power plant, also due to scale, than to de-polute the gasses coming from a single car. Also, a big advantage is you get to decide where the polution is released; aka not in the city.

Re:"Renewable" sources

[kfg]

I knew you'd show up. Hi. :)

Look, I'm not exactly unaware of the problems inherent in my choice. I live them every day, in upstate NY, year 'round.

I will make some points though. The reason I can do this and most can't is very simply because I do and they don't. I am not "genetically programmed" to be fit. In fact, if it were not for modern medical science I wouldn't even be alive. My own lungs are trying to kill me, and someday they will succeed. I am dwarf compared to the rest of my family and have a hard time digesting foods other people take for granted as standard fare. In fact, most of that standard fare will kill me. One of the side effects of this is arthritis in all my joints. I'm not Stephen Hawking, but I'm certainly not Mr. Olympia.

But an 11 year old girl who had never taken a long bicycle trip before pedaled with her family from California to NY. It really isn't that hard.

I can do what I do. And so could you, and 99.99% of the population *if they did.*

*Humans* are genetically programed for just this sort of energy output. Even the nearly dead ones without lungs, joints or digestive systems.

The downside is that they are clearly not as comfortable as an automobile. When it rains you get wet. When it's hot you sweat. When it snows you get cold. The wind is the cyclist's mortal enemy, not because it blows you off the road, it doesn't, because it slows you down.

If this stuff bothers you, don't do it. I'm not on a soap box saying you're evil if you drive.

However, I'm not going to say it's not a viable solution when I've found that it can be, and may be for you, even if you don't think so right now.

Fuel is cheap and pleasant to consume. Use makes you stronger instead of weaker. You spend nearly nothing on maintainence. You spend nothing on licenses, permits, insurance, etc. Having to worry about tickets is a virtually null issue, you never have to dig a bike out of a snow bank just to get started in the first place, and they're nifty, geeky little machines to boot.

And it may take you a bit longer to get where you're going, but. . .*you have to work that many fewer hours to pay for it.*

Am I an advocate? Yes, just as I'm an advocate for free software, and for the *same reasons.*

Am I a zealot? No. If you don't want to don't do it. But that's not the same as saying you *can't* do it. It's a choice.

KFG

Re:"Renewable" sources

[adolf]

Oil isn't going anywhere.

It will become increasingly difficult to find and extract, on a gradual basis. This difficulty will be reflected in the market price for oil, as it happens. It may be that, eventually, oil will be more precious than gold.

But I'll say it again: Oil isn't going anywhere. Even if it's as scarce as diamonds, it will still be available in some amount. The cycles which produce oil have not ceased: Believe it or not, even our own decomposing corpses will someday become a small puddle of crude.

It is not as if, 75 years from this moment, all oil will instantaneosly cease to exist. Instead, as the price of crude increases, our reliance on it will automatically decrease.

At some point, it will become more economically viable to drive an electric car which is plugged into a wind-powered grid than something which burns dinosaurs.

At the same point, there will plenty of oil left for manufacturing of the requisite wind machines, albeit at somewhat-elevated expense.

As the price continues to increase, other alternatives for crude will become apparent.

Another example:

We make consumer merchandise out of plastic because it's cheaper than other materials. And we make those plastics from crude because it's cheaper than other materials. When oil becomes so expensive that it's cheaper to make goods out of, say, hemp or soy, then that's what the market will direct companies and consumers to do.

An example in reverse:

Aluminum used to be amazingly valuable stuff, due to the difficulty in consolidating it. A big chunk of it tops the Washington Mounument, mostly for this reason. Nowadays, it's cheap enough to throw away after one finishes a can of Coke without thinking much of it, just as one currently burns through 20 gallons of gasoline without a second thought.

This isn't rocket science, nor does it take a PhD in microeconomics to understand and forecast these issues.

The market, with its greedy corporations and frugal consumers, will take care of the "oil problem" just fine by itself.

Nothing to see here, move along.

BioDiesel

[opkool]

I drive a VW Jetta TDi car, that is, a Diesel car. I can get 50mpg on highway driving at normal speed.

When speeding (I've done 115mph and there was some more left) and doing mostly city traffic I go down to only 44 mpg.

In Germany they have the VW Lupo, a car that gets ~80mpg. And also the bigger sedan VW Passat TDi, with ~45 mpg IIRC.

Now, those cars need zero modifications to use BioDiesel fuel. BioDiesel is vegetal oil. Nothing else could be more ecology-friendly. And, if needed, you can mixe it with regular petro-diesel, for older engines.

Now, Diesel fuel used here in the US are waaaay too dirty (this is what kills Diesel cars in the US when you look at EPA statistics). There are some laws in place to reduce pollutants in US Diesel to European/Japan levels (1/100th of current sulphur contents).

Also, my car drives like a sports car: very nice handling (corners, break...), it has side aribags and all kind of safety features... and I have to really try to drive it under 85 mph, 'cause it wants to go fast.

Then, the Wagon version has about the same cargo room as a Jeep Grand Cherokee. Good for soccer moms...or for carrying those plasma TVs and huge monitors for our computers :)

I say that current technology (Diesel/BioDiesel) is good to reduce pollutants and fuel consumption. In Europe, Diesel represent more than 50% of total new car sells.

The US has lots of land. The tobacco industry s looking for a replacement... Maybe all can go to soy for BioDiesel (or similar crops). This way we decrease our dependency of foreing oil, decrease pollutants in the air, provide a good income to our farmers (the new "bio-oil industry") and Detroit has a new field to innovate and generate new jobs. And Diesel engines last 200,000 - 400,000 miles. Not bad.

What do you all think?