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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.
Wrong wrong and, uh wrong. You forget that a sizable portion of the electricity that ends up at your outlet comes from clean renewable resources, such as hydro electric and wind and solar power. Also, producing power centrally is more efficent than widely distributed power production, as pollution controls can be supervised much easier. The electric car is fantastic because it allow this flexibility in power sources -- you can charge your electric car with whatever you want. Install a fuel cell at home, bam, your car is charged. Install a generator, bam, it's charged. You get the idea.
After looking at the article a bit, it's very interesting to note that the main reason the car was being discontinued was not sales nor popularity issues, but rather CHARGING issues! Apparently CARB (California's nazi regime of pollution control) mandated a new charger system that basically requires a redesign of the EV1 in order to be compatible. Hopefully with these new standards now set, we'll see electric cars back on the market soo.
To explain the charger problem, CARB mandated a conductive charger, or one that uses a direct electrical connection to the charging system. Many vehicles, including the EV1, currently use the Inductive charging system, which utilizes no electrical contact (for safety reasons) between the charger and the vehicle, but rather a inductive magnetic coupling. There is no cheap way to convert between the two systems, hence the discontinuing of the EV1.
I think it makes sense, It would be nice for the world to switch over to electric cars in a year, but in reality, it's not going to work that way.
What will probably happen is that for the next several years, we will start to switch over to hybrid cars, and ease into the electric car idea, and as the prices of gasoline continue to rise, we'll start to switch to completely electric cars. I think it will be at least ten to fifteen years though, before such a thing happens. It's such a massive change to our economy, infrastructure, etc, that we can't really switch overnight like some manufacturers seem to think. This is probably a smart move on GM's part.
I would expect such blatant racism on Fark, but on Slashdot? Mods please ban this asshole.
I've heard a lot in this thread about how electric is a good, clean, cheap energy source etc.etc.etc. Then I read a post which said how the electricity is produced by coal, gas, etc.-burning stations. Perfectly correct. That's where the majority of all our energy on Earth comes from. Then someone flamed them for not thinking about renewable, e.g. solar, wind, wave.
The CHEMICAL and ENGINEERING power costs of making the plastics and metals, the chemicals in batteries, damn, even the wires means that we would use up most of what remains of our (i.e. the world's) oil supplies just building enough "renewable energy" equipment to keep us going for a few years.
We've got, maybe, far less than 75 years of oil left. That means we have about 50 years to become totally dependent on renewable sources, enough for us to use them to produce everything we know and use today.
I have a close friend, who's got more degrees, PhD's and Doctorates than I've had hot dinners and he was the first to show me the figures and open my eyes to this. How do you build and maintain a wind farm of giant metal and plastic structures without oil, coal and gas to power the factories and foundries? It's EXTREMELY difficult.
This is why the scientists are worrying. It's no longer just a matter of "Hey, let's just switch to solar." The manufacturing and maintenance power-cost of anything new is phenomenally expensive if we've got no fossil fuel left to make the damn things and keep them running.
(1) Power plants are more efficient than your car engine (typically twice as efficient).
(2) Oil is not universally cheap. I pay 4-5x more for petrol than you do. I think Europe has a similar high price for oil.
(3) Dense cities cannot cope with pollution from fuel-burning cars. A perfect example is your own LA. Moving the pollution away is good for the city even if it doesn't greatly help the planet.
(4) Power plants don't have to burn oil or gas or coal. There are plenty of alternatives (though none of them quite as cheap as oil or gas or coal, yet). Hot rock and solar are my personal bets for the future of electricity production; both have potential to be cheaper than fuel-burning plants.
(5) It takes decades to develop technology from concept to production line. It's important that research into EV continues so that the technology is fully developed when (if) the cheap sources of electricity finally appear. This may seem "absurd" to you but many people thought the Altair was absurd too. Look where it got Bill Gates. Being on the bleeding edge can often pay off in the long run. Companies with deep pockets (ie, GM) are willing to sink billions into "absurd" concepts because every now and then one of those crazy ideas will pay off big.