230mph Electric Car

An anonymous reader writes "It ain't cheap, but Hiroshi Shimizu has finally shown off his latest electric car 'Eliica'. It accelerates faster than a Porsche 911 Turbo, and will cruise for 200 miles on a one hour charge. Stories at drive.com.au, and an image video and tech video. Interestingly, Shimizu believes that the Japanese motor industry is deliberately ignoring his invention and instead focusing on complex hybrids, as a simple electric engine dramatically lowers the cost of manufacturing, and will lead to a flood of cheap, mass produced cars from Chinese factories." A UK auto site has a story as well, including a test drive.

Comments

Systemic Problems

[Oculus Habent]

Shimizu believes that the Japanese motor industry is deliberately ignoring his invention and instead focusing on complex hybrids

Of course they are. Electric cars may be more efficient and cheaper to build, but you have to plug them in and wait. That's not acceptable, if only once every year when your friend/family member needs a ride.

Re:Systemic Problems

[MKalus]

A couple of years ago somoene suggested a "Battery Exchange".

Think of it like the Propane tanks you can exchange at the Home Depot or Supermarket. You just simply would drive up to the "gas station", the empty battery gets pulled out, and a charged one installed.

Done, no muss, no fuss, no waiting.

This would also make sure that you always have a working battery AND it could also lower the entry level as you wouldn't need to replace the battery pack every couple of months.

Re:Systemic Problems

[miratrix]

Problem here is that batteries rely on chemical reactions and they become less and less efficient as you use it. It's more noticeable in certain chemicals (ie, Ni-Cad) than others (Li-Ion).

So, unless the charge station periodically takes out the old batteries and replaces them with brand new ones (which will cost a bundle of money, something they'll have to somehow pass on) people will start to see less and less mileage out from their "newly" replaced batteries. Would you be willing to trade in your brand new set of batteries and possibly get something that's close to dying?

Re:Systemic Problems

[Anonymous Coward]

With the dollars involved, we might finally have truly long-lasting batteries (both per charge and over time). What you describe as a down-fall is a technical problem which can surely be solved. Especially with battery packs which can be factory-remade between each and every charge. That opens a whole new avenue for making battery longevity a reality. I have no doubt this can be done.

And no more physical exposure to carcinogenic gasoline fumes and fluid every time you "fill" your car.

Re:Systemic Problems

[Waffle Iron]

The sensible thing would be to include built-in watt-hour meters on the batteries. You'd only pay for the amount of juice you actually consumed on that particular battery pack before you swapped it out. If you got an especially weak set of batteries, you would have to swap it out sooner, but you'd pay less for that swap.

(Unless you're returning a rental car. Then they'd be sure to always bill you for a 100% charge at 5X the standard rate + 23% tax no matter what you actually used.)

Re:Systemic Problems

[fireboy1919]

The same problem applies to money: dollar bills become less and less usable as time wears one - becoming frayed, ripped, and generally uglier.

So unless banks take out old bills and replace them with brand new ones (which, by the way, isn't completely free), we'd have to stick with substandard bills.

The system we have seems to work with bills, doesn't it? The government can put the cost of battery maintenence as a tax in the replacement service and contract out this creation and maintenence to qualified companies, or do it themselves. Considering the simplicity of the design, they could just come up with a standard set of batteries and uphold the spec.

Stations that gave out bad batteries rather than returning them "for free" to the replacement agencies would get a bad rap and go out of business or stop doing it.

Re:Systemic Problems

[phazethru]

Yeah, the Japanese are totally stumped. Even their Evas had to use power cords.

Re:Systemic Problems

[MKalus]

That was the idea behind it, you had a basic monthly "membership" and then you paid for each "refill" a small amount.

That idea actually is old, it was initially proposed back in Germany in the late 80s, the idea being used for Busses who would "drag" the battery on a cart behind them.

Re:Systemic Problems

[Mulletproof]

Or maybe just because it's ugly as sin? Naaaah.

Re:Systemic Problems

[RebelWebmaster]

If people are accustomed to paying for gasoline, would it be out of the question for them to pay a fee when they get a fresh battery? That fee could obviously cover the costs of battery replacements as needed.

Re:Systemic Problems

[miratrix]

I think it's little too much to ask the government to do something like that efficiently... :)

Politics aside, it's not fair to compare batteries to bills. Bills are basically the same, but batteries are not. Each car would have differing requirements in terms of pack voltage, peak current output, and total capacity. We can make the packs into smaller standardized cells (again, someone needs to standardize it which will be major pain) but then you may have cell and current inbalance problems which can be deadly in such a high capacity battery pack.

Re:Systemic Problems

[Malc]

How do those meters work? Laptop batteries lose 20% of their capacity after one year, yet we still seem to charge them for the same length of time and their meters show them at 100% capacity.

Re:Systemic Problems

[obdulio]

if they became mainstream, electric cars will bankrupt the oil companies. And now that the oil companies have a puppet at the WhiteHouse, it's unlikely that they will let electric`cars succeed.

Re:Systemic Problems

[fireboy1919]

Most batteries used today can go in almost any vehicle. There are a few exceptions to this, but considering that there isn't a standard at all, I think it's pretty good.

I don't think it'd be hard to make standards here in much the same manner as bills.

1) Pick an atomic battery unit with a specific RMS voltage, max current, and total capacity. There might be some other requirements...this would require expertise in battery design that I don't have.
2) Create different sizes that are multiples of this atomic unit - 2,4,10, whatever, based upon SAE's recommendations (I'm assuming that whenver something like this is actually about to happen, SAE will have some idea of how it'll work).
3) Require the usage of only these units from anyone who sells a vehicle in your country.

Imbalance problems are trivial compared to control problems that have already been dealt with in modern automobiles. I don't think that'll really be an issue.

Re:Systemic Problems

[dmaxwell]

These meters would actually measure the voltage and amperage drained from batteries while they are in use. This aspect of the tech is very straightforward and we've known how to do it for over a century.

The laptop meters you're thinking guestimate a percentage of charge left. The meters we're thinking of are more like the ones on the side of your house. They don't care what you are using in the house or what condition the generating station is in. They simply measure the amount of energy that has passed through them.

Re:Systemic Problems

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

The same problem applies to money: dollar bills become less and less usable as time wears one - becoming frayed, ripped, and generally uglier.

Uh, no they don't. Unlike batteries, a dollar bill has no intrinsic value, it is only an abstraction of value backed by the US government.

My raggedy dollar bill with a pair of horns and a mustache scribbled on ol' George's face will buy exactly the same amount of goods as a brand new, crisp and tidy, bill will.

On the other hand, a dead battery ain't going to produce any more juice even if George Bush and Alan Greenspan personally praise it on the floor during a joint session of congress.

Re:Systemic Problems

[Anonymous Coward]

Vast amounts of stored potential + insulation + trickle heating?

I mean, for crissake here, you've got 100kwh minimum here, running off half a kilowatt for heating the batteries to slightly above freezing is not an especially huge draw, assuming you're not going to leave it for over 200 hours... in -40 below... which would freeze gas in a normal car, btw.

Re:Systemic Problems

[fireboy1919]

This has to do with the actual value, not the intrinsic value, and this value is in its recognizability as currency. The point beyond which a dollar bill is unusable as currency is the point at which it is no longer recognizable.

If you bleached all the color out of a dollar bill, for example, you'd have a hard time convincing people it was a dollar bill. There would be a similar problem if you cut it up into tiny pieces, or if you scribbled until you couldn't see ol' George's face, or any other green part of the dollar.

The system works well enough that you are capable of making this mistake; very few, if any, unrecognizable dollar bills are in circulation.

Re:Systemic Problems

[gekko513]

All these so called problems are not really big problems if a city really wanted to do the switch, so to speak.

The only thing that is required is that it is done on a large scale and it would almost certainly require (local) government involvement.

Having to stop to recharge would not be a problem if all parking lots where required to have electric outlets. Very few people need to drive their cars non-stop.

Making a practical system for battery swapping is also just a matter of money and will.

The show-stopper is that such a large scale deployment of infrastructure to support electric cars is costly, at least in a short perspective. I'm guessing no city will do this until there is a large recognition of a financial model that takes environmental factors into account.

Re:Systemic Problems

[the angry liberal]

Why get the government involved at all. I'm sure the stations, battery companies, and auto manufactures can work out a deal. The knee-jerk reaction should not be let's tax it and have the government do it.

Yeah, look at how terrible the idea of a federal highway system turned out to be. Oh, and that Army. What about that enormous waste of money and resources sending people into space? What a big mess major government projects turn into! /sarcasm

For real, man. Don't let the media make you think we need to be safe from liberal spending. Without this type of crazy spending, we would have turned out "nice and safe" from liberals, in our puritan styled-cabins still use donkeys on dirt trails to haul things around and get work done.

I guess what I am leading to, in my rambling, is there sometimes needs to be government action to stimulate the rest of the system into accomplishing a goal. What goal would be greater? Giving up the dependancy on oil would cause terrorism to disappear as far as the US is concerned. We would lose all need to keep the mid-east stable -- we wouldn't even have to go there and start wars anymore! Then, the mid-east would lose all its wealth and collapse. Poof, no more islamic fundamentalists screaming that US foreign policy is holding them down. While on that note, I'll bet if we had used the money spent (and will be spent) on the war in Iraq and Afganistan on research and manufacture of highly efficient vehicles, we would have made great progress by now. All we seem to be doing at the moment is stirring up more trouble for our kids and grand kids to deal with. Oh yes, and doing nothing to quell our appetite for oil. And finally, I am not saying the parent post's idea was all that great, I just disagree with a blanket, negative approach to government action. If nothing else, it would sure as hell beat hearing about gay marriage and today's other "hot" partisan topics.

Re:Systemic Problems

[MrBigInThePants]

A bill does not have an "actual" value at all. Although I am not a historian, my understanding is thus:

Currency began life as a precious metal whose weight and value was standardised by the state. (e.g. gold floren) The value was in the precious metal contained in the coin, thus it had an actual value.
When banks came along, they had to now deal with larger amounts of money that made it impractical to carry around that much. Banks would issue checks/bills that gauranteed the holder to a certain arbitrary amount. Previously a letter of guarantee would have been used by nobles/wealthy people etc, but now it was standardised by a money lending institution.

Later the government decided to introduce a bill, which was given a standardised value. Unlike the coin, the component parts of a bill are worthless. At one time the federal reserve had enourmous amounts of gold to back the bills being issued, so in effect by exchanging bills, you were exchanging shares in government gold.

Paper money is an official document that the government guarantees to the holder is worth the amount written on the front. The amount is fixed because, like any other legal document, once "signed" (signiture is printed of course), you cannot alter the document without having it re-signed by the federal reserve bank. (altering a bill would be illegal of cause!)

So a bleached bill would have no value because the conditions of the document are no longer legible, not because the bill had any real value. If you were able to have copies like normal contracts, there would be no problem redeeming its worth.

Of course the confound is that every country has a special set of rules to do with money and it becomes a special case. (e.g. rules about how damaged/what kind of damage a bill can have before it is void/worth half as much etc) But that is the general idea as far as I understand it.

Re:Systemic Problems

[CharlesF]

Maybe they're on to something. If we can get these cars to run on 110VAC, then we can just connect the car to an extension cord.

Re:Systemic Problems

[0111 1110]

When you're only 15, it seems like every problem has a solution, like every problem can "surely be solved". Scientists, shmientists. What do they know. They're adults. All they know is what can't be done. Just give him an hour or two to think about it, and he'll surely come up with a portable fusion reactor or a fuel cell that makes its own hydrogen.

I just wish those scientists would hurry up with a cheap, fast charging, super-mega-ultra-high energy density battery chemistry. I have been waiting, arms crossed, for decades. I am starting to get impatient. Can't we just break the laws of physics once in a while? I don't see the harm if we just do it occasionally. Is a God-like creature going to strike us down with lightning or something?

Re:Systemic Problems

[AGMW]

I think it's little too much to ask the government to do something like that efficiently... :)

How about if the Gov. allowed your employer to charge your car during work whilst in the company car park without charging you tax on the perk.

Now look at the current cost of an electric car when the driving is essentially free. This could be the catalyst required to jump-start the electric car business. If more people buy them, the prices will come down and the technology will improve. As a bonus, the more people who decide to have the free ride to work will also not be polluting the towns and cities where they work.

If the Gov. commits to the perk for sufficient years (5 or 10 maybe?) it would be enough to have everyone driving around in electric vehicles for most of their journeys.

During this time, we have to think about how we generate the electricity too, but at least we have moved away from petrol/diesel to start the ball rolling.

Re:Systemic Problems

[Malc]

So what's to stop people tampering with the batteries and make them look better than they are before handing them over?

Re:Systemic Problems

[Waffle Iron]

It seems like a lot of people are focused on the batteries. What the consumer would be buying at the service station is electricity. They would simply be holding onto any particular set of batteries for a few hours to a few days. If the battery design were standardized, the energy companies could handle anyone's batteries and sort that out amongst themselves.

It would be like the old days when soda pop was sold in returnable bottles. You were paying for the pop. You got the bottles too, and you could return them for your deposit at any store. You cared about the pop, not about the bottles.

Re:Systemic Problems

[the morgawr]

Actually that's where the fuel cell idea came from. Electric cars worked great and solved lots of problems but the batteries were the major stumbling block. After some thought everyone realized that there was a type of battery that solved this problem, a fuel-cell (where the chemical reagents are passed through a catalytic material instead of manufactured in).

IMHO while all of this is great, overcomming the problems inherent in this type of electrical design is more expensive then the value society will get out. Investing in cleaner diesel fuel, and dieselectric engines for cars (they use them for trains alread) would have solved 90% of the problems with automobiles without a major shift.

It should be noted

[Dozix007]

I think that it should be noted that electric motors always accelerate faster than their combustion counterparts. That is because their torque begins at it's highest during the beginning of the acceleration cycle, not the end like a combustion.

Re:It should be noted

[ForestGrump]

correction. Torque in a combustion engine (in cars) is typically in the middle. somewhere between 2000 and 5000 rpm.

Horsepower is on the high end.

Re:It should be noted

[Fulcrum of Evil]

Horsepower is on the high end.

That's because HP is a function of engine RPM and gearing .

Re:It should be noted

[theLOUDroom]

I think that it should be noted that electric motors always accelerate faster than their combustion counterparts.

This isn't true.
They only accelerate fast IF YOU'RE STARING THE ENGINE AT ZERO RPM. Most of the time you gas-powered car doesn't sit there at ZERO RPM. It might be fair to say that an electric motor will always accelerate faster from ZERO RPM, but that sounds a lot less impressive (and with good reason)

Anyone who knows even a little about drag racing knows that you can get all the torque your tires can handle and then some while starting from a dead stop. This is because a gas-powered car has a clutch and transmission.

Re:It should be noted

[ForestGrump]

5252 is right.
Torque is instantenous force. Torque is what makes you accelerate.
Horsepower is a measurement of how much work an engine can do at a particular RPM.

When looking at car brochures/magazines, the hp/torque numbers quoted are maximum.

Ok, so lets put torque and HP into perspective and what each means to you, the driver.

Put these two cars side by side.
2003 Volkswagen Jetta with a 1.9 liter turbocharged diesel makes about 100 hp@ 5000 rpm, but 150 ftlb of torque at 1500 rpm.
2003 Mazda 6 with a 2.3 liter naturally aspirated gas engine makes about 160 hp@ 6000 rpm and 150 ftlb of troque at 3800 rpm.

Both cars weigh about 3000 pounds, give or take a few hundred. They both make make about the same amout of torque but the mazda makes 60 more hp than the VW.

Because the VW has the torque at 1500 rpm, its going to leave the mazda at the stoplight. However, once the mazda gets rolling, it is going to reach 60 mph faster than the VW would. Why? Because the mazda has more HP.

Note: numbers are approximate, i'm recaling from memory.

So what should you buy? Depends what you like. A diesel engine gives wonderful torque on the "low end" and thus gives alot of city drivablity and allows you to go up hills in a higher gear (for lazy manual tranny drivers who don't want to shift). Gas engines however are designed to produce torque in the midband and horsepower on the high end. If you like tearing up hills or want fast 0-60 times, go for gas.

In summary. Torque gives you acceleration, horsepower determines your 0-60 time.

Note: This is a very general explaination. As the previous poster mentioned gearing. Gearing is a way to multiply engine output to allow for maximum driveablity and mileage.

Re:It should be noted

[Xandu]

I think the point the parent poster was making was that given two 'similarly' sized motors, electrics' have more torque.

Look at the specs for the Prius:

Gas Engine:
76 hp @ 5000 rpm
82 ft-lb @ 4200 rpm

Electric Motor:
67 hp @ 1200-1540 rpm
295 ft-lb @ 0-1200 rpm

Both generate comperable max horsepower (albeit at different speeds), but the electric motor has "torque coming out the ass", and does so even at 0 rpm.

Re:It should be noted

[starm_]

That was a very poor explanation.

Really the only thing that counts for acceleration is HP. But you cannot get HP without torque since HP equals torque*engine speed(rpm).

The fact that the VW has high torque at low RPM just means that it gets to its MAX HP faster during acceleration. It doesn't need to rev-up to get its power. The Mazda does need to rev up but once the Mazda gets to its max HP it does have more HP so it wins. You could get to the mazda's max HP zone fast by reving the engine and popping the clutch and using low gears. Thats what the transmission is there for really. It's there to let you stay in your max HP zone for a longer period of time. I guess you could say skillfull shifting at takeoff in order to get to high RPM fast (and stay there) would be more important with the Mazda.

Re:It should be noted

[lar1]

Not only does the motor have "torque coming out the ass" even at 0 RPM, but its torque output is actually at its maximum at 0 RPM.

In fact, the torque vs speed curve for a DC motor is a linear function that passes through the points (0 RPM, StallTorque) and (FreeSpeed, 0 ft-lb) where StallTorque is the maximum torque the motor can produce (the rotor is locked under load) and FreeSpeed is the speed of the rotor under no load.

Also of interest is the fact that at either of the extremes, that is, at stall or at no load, the motor is actually performing no mechanical work, despite consuming a (potentially large) amount of electricity.

At any rate, most performance EVs use AC drive systems. My '75 Rabbit conversion, however, uses a 20HP DC motor. And, yes, I can reach and maintain highway speeds (65-70 mph) in a reasonable amount of time.

http://www.eaaev.org/ for some EV info.

Re:It should be noted

[Viol8]

"And just how many times do you start your car at zero MPH with an RPM above idling speed?"

All the time if you use a manual transmission. If you don't rev the engine before you drop the clutch you'll stall it unless you have some monster V8 or diesel with buckets of torque at idle rpm.

To bad for the competition

[JoeShmoe950]

Generally competition helps the costumers, yet here it is, damaging a very good car

Re:To bad for the competition

[ergo98]

Generally competition helps the costumers, yet here it is, damaging a very good car

More correctly, here it is purportedly damaging a very good car.

The reality is that these things are seldom as straightforward as they seem, and whenever someone claims that the industry is in some giant collusion to keep an innovation down (rather that the more credible scenario that they are mercilessly looking for an opportunity to devastate their competitors and capture the market) you really need to look for the tinfoil helmets, and look deeper than the surface.

In this case very little is said, at least in the non-slashdotted article, about things like range, yet that has traditionally been the killer of electric cars. The motors and other basic element of designs are very well understood (putting many motors on a car is hardly innovative), but without sufficient power reserves it simply won't sell -- the whole reason why hybrids exist is that they allow them to leverage the tremendous power reserves of gas because batteries on their own are insufficient. Hence why the industry has been vigorously exploring fuel cells and electricity storage systems, but the technology isn't there yet. The car part of the equation isn't the problem.

Re:To bad for the competition

[dasunt]

The reality is that these things are seldom as straightforward as they seem, and whenever someone claims that the industry is in some giant collusion to keep an innovation down (rather that the more credible scenario that they are mercilessly looking for an opportunity to devastate their competitors and capture the market) you really need to look for the tinfoil helmets, and look deeper than the surface.

You are just saying that because you are an industry mole. We all know that Detroit has a carburetor that will get 500 mpg on a gallon of tap water, but hasn't released it to the public because of the vast conspiracy with the oil companies, Saudi Arabia, and the global masonic conspiracy.

Re:To bad for the competition

[Anonymous Coward]

If it has a range of 200Miles on a 10 hour charge, I'd say that it's ready for production. In Japan, driving more than 200Miles a day is very unusual. I live in Tokyo, and used to commute by car for a while (yes, the gas and parking was insane), and that was about 35miles a day of driving. Once I get home and plug in my car, I probably wouldn't take it out to drive again for 10 hours, so I don't have a problem.

The only time I would imagine this would become a problem is when I go snowboarding, and the ski lodge doesn't have power to spare for my car. (Well, another issue is how well it would charge at -10degreesC, but that's another story.) IF, however, charge stations became cheap enough and common enough that long-term parking spaces would have them installed, I would have no problem. I don't even recall when the last time I drove more than 200miles in a single day was.

Some people oddly mention how no one would offer free charging in their parking lots. This is insane. I pay for gas now, and would have no problem paying for power at a parking lot. Power is not free, but neither is gas. People that aren't willing to pay for power probably aren't willing (or financially capable for that matter!) to buy a car in the first place.

Up to this point the only real problem I had with electric cars is that they're ugly, and not very sporty. The Eliica demonstrates that this doesn't have to be the case. Either way, for daily commutes, a lower horse power and thus cheaper electric vehicle seems very plausible.

I'd love a cheap, mass produced 200 mile electric!

[Futaba-chan]

Shimizu believes that the Japanese motor industry is deliberately ignoring his invention and instead focusing on complex hybrids, as a simple electric engine dramatically lowers the cost of manufacturing, and will lead to a flood of cheap, mass produced cars from Chinese factories.

Presumably, the Chinese could license and start building these themselves, without waiting for Japan's lead? 200 miles is the critical value that I've been waiting for for a range, assuming that the recharge time isn't any longer than overnight....

Ugly?

[Lord_Dweomer]

Just going out on a limb here, but maybe they're ignoring his car because its ugly?

All kidding aside, I'm not trying to troll, and I know that there's probably some merit to his claims. But for the love of god, why do all these new efficient cars have to be so damned ugly? The prius is hideous, so is the echo, and now this?

I know some people will disagree, as beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but come on...

Re:Ugly?

[miratrix]

It looks like all the wheels have their own separate motors (And as an aside, it looks like they're all direct-drive too, so we're probably looking at DC Brushless Motors). My guess is that they have 8 wheels because they need the outputs of all 8 motors to get the car to perform the way they wanted to.

Maybe the motors weren't available in more powerful configurations, it's somehow infeasible to get higher output motors.

Re:Ugly?

[Anonymous Coward]

An American would think its beautiful.

Re:Ugly?

[nomadic]

Just going out on a limb here, but maybe they're ignoring his car because its ugly?

Well unless they find the secret of immortality, the Future will still need Hearses...

Re:Ugly?

[Vireo]

In fact, the wheel themeselves are the motors. Each wheel is a 100-hp motor; the axle is the stator, and the rim is the rotor. They put 8 of them to have a 800-hp car; it could probably be easy to build a 4-wheeler with "only" 400 hp.

Re:Ugly?

[bleachy22]

Because Oil companies don't want nice-looking competition?

recharge time?

[Almost_anonymous_cow]

The UK auto link in the submission text says recharge time is 10 hours not the 1 hour quoted above. So whos right?

Re:recharge time?

[beerits]

Maybe they are both right. Perhaps a 1 hour charge gets you a 200 mile range and 10 hours fully charges the battery.

He had better be careful.

[Anonymous Coward]

USA may have to invade to stop this.

Re:He had better be careful.

[Anonymous Coward]

Well maybe it wasn't modded a "haha" type of funny, but more of a "muahahaha" type of funny.

Re:He had better be careful.

[n3wtonian]

No No No.
You have to say "USA may have to liberate them to stop this."

Kinda neat ...

[xmas2003]

At the risk of sounding like a shill for the /. editors, I recently became a paid subscriber and it was pretty sweet for this article as the video's were smooth, will be interested to see if they hold up under a /.'ing ... you may need to head over to MirrorDot if it slows down.

The "tech video" isn't worth much IMHO (unless you understand Japanese), but the image video was kinda amusing in that it had data shown on the screen, but the Japanese style of commercials is definitely different than I'm used to and was entertaining in a different type of way.

One more interesting thing not mentioned above is that it has 8 wheels.

I don't care how efficient it is...

[BiggerIsBetter]

Because it looks so damn cool. The designer appears to have overdosed on Thunderbirds during his youth.

Re:I don't care how efficient it is...

[frankmu]

i think you're right. just have to paint it pink, and give it the licence plate "FAB 1"

http://home.t-online.de/home/internationalrescue /t hunderbirds/machines/fab1/

Why We Hate Electric

[ReeprFlame]

American hated the concept of Electric Motors in cars for one simple fact. Speed. They like to go fast and with the ones introduced to us, they did not. They were slower, hybrid animals that may have accelerated faster, but were not up to par by American standards. At least in a few years this car proposed will develop into something more hormone ravaged teens will dream and adult driving enthusiasts will utilize. Only now, to develop a ample charging device...

Re:Why We Hate Electric

[theLOUDroom]

American hated the concept of Electric Motors in cars for one simple fact. Speed.

Actually, there are LOTS of reasons:

• Ever have trouble starting your car on a really cold day? Now imagine if you had to use those batteries to drive around.
• Ever want to go on a trip?
• Excited about the idea of replacing thousands of dollars in batteries every N years?
• Want a car that handles well? That means it needs to be light. Batteries just do not have the energy density of gasoline.
• I've never seen a electric car with very good crash protection. There's no way my dad is going to give up his Volvo for something that doesn't even have real side doors, let alone an acutally safe passenger compartment.

Sure it doesn't help that most electric cars are slow as hell, but they have tons of other inherent problems too. Every once in a while someone builds a fast electric car (there have been other fast electrics on the front page of /.), but it's never something that would actually work for mass consumption.

For $10,000 I could make a picnic table faster than a Porsche 911 Turbo but that doesn't make it the wave of the future.
The thing that sucks is not actually speed, but the inherent tradeoffs demanded by an electric car. You might get the speed but not the range, or like my picnic table you might get the speed and not even show up to compete on the other factors that make a car actually "good."

One thing at annoys me about this article people comparing acceleration of vehicles that aren't even in the same class. There are lots of cars out there faster than a Porsche IN A STRAIGHT LINE, but Porsches are not built to drive in a straight line.

The thing I have yet to see is an electric car that competes with ALL the perfomance characteristics of a good car. Automakers could easily fix your speed complaint but they would do so at the expense of equally important factors.

Re:Why We Hate Electric

[evilviper]

It's very clear that you're just trolling, but what the hell... I'll reply anyhow.

Ever have trouble starting your car on a really cold day? Now imagine if you had to use those batteries to drive around.

Your batteries aren't what makes your car hard to start (unless you've got a really crappy battery).

Plus, the batteries in this vehicle are NOT lead-acid like the ones in your car.

If it was actually an issue, the battery compartment could easily be insulated (a combustion engine compartment could not) and/or there could be a small electric heater to keep the batteries warm.

Ever want to go on a trip?

The money you would save from having an electric car for your day-to-day driving would MORE than make up for the cost of renting a conventional car when you want to go on a trip.

Or, companies could just build electric cars with a tiny generator and small gas tank.

Or you could hook-up one of these when you are going on a trip.

But most of the time, people would rather take a flight, or buy a much cheaper bus/train ticket when they are going more than a couple hundred miles.

Excited about the idea of replacing thousands of dollars in batteries every N years?

Since it'll cost less than replacing my oil, transmission fluid, oil/trans/fuel/air filters, belts, etc... I'm very excited about it!

Batteries just do not have the energy density of gasoline.

No, but they MORE than make up for it, by not requiring a HEAVY engine, transmission, radiator, and much more.

I've never seen a electric car with very good crash protection.

I've never seen a Kangaroo. That must mean they don't exist, right?

There's no way my dad is going to give up his Volvo for something that doesn't even have real side doors

Your dad must have an awful shitty volvo if it can only go 25MPH, like the glorified golf-cart you linked to. Plus, GEMs do in-fact have solid side-doors, costing litte more than the cloth doors in that picture.

For $10,000 I could make a picnic table faster than a Porsche 911 Turbo but that doesn't make it the wave of the future.

The revolution is in the propulsion, not the body/frame. Mounting a porsche engine to a picknic table is still just an internal combustion engine.

You might get the speed but not the range

Or you might get both.

Or you might get hit by lightning.

One thing at annoys me about this article people comparing acceleration of vehicles that aren't even in the same class

One thing that annoys me about this post, is your using a golf cart as if it's a typical example of a real electric car.

There are lots of cars out there faster than a Porsche IN A STRAIGHT LINE

YOU are the one complaining that (electric) cars aren't ready for the public because they happen to be slightly less capable than certain conventional cars in their strong suits. Clearly, you've proven that either the Porsche isn't ready for the public, or that this electric car *is* ready.

The thing I have yet to see is an electric car that competes with ALL the perfomance characteristics of a good car.

The thing I have yet to see is a Kangaroo.

It's all about batteries

[Anonymous Coward]

One of my favorite jokes: "There are liars, there are damn liars, and then there are battery chemists."

Electric cars don't become economical until batteries do. Don't hold your breath either. People have been working on this for a long time and there doesn't seem to be a breakthrough in the offing.

Re:It's all about batteries

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know, are they are battery chemists?

Re:It's all about batteries

[Russ Nelson]

No, it's not about the batteries. You need a road that charges your car, so you only use batteries when you're off that special road.
-russ

Actually....

[erroneus]

... that wouldn't be an issue with a replacable cell station.

Consider the gas station. We pull in, refuel and leave. How could the gas station business model work with an electric car? Simple. No one wants to wait for a battery to charge. But what if there was a cell-swap activity involved rather than a recharge? Perhaps in the future we'll be pulling into a station and they swap out our battery cells instead of adding more fuel? They make a profit by offering bad cell insurance or whatever and they get to own the cells... I dunno... I haven't really thought it through to the detail but on the outside it seems like a good way to continue our general business model and to continue to provide convenience to the end user. And most assuredly, the daily work-commuter would plug his machine in to charge each night.

But as for the idea that current auto makers intentionally suppressing electric cars? I'll go in on that since there is still too much money at stake for the old ways and the pressure would come from too many sources to determine any particular "bad guys." We just have to wait for the fossil fuels to run out before we can really expect electric cars to really take off...and then we can expect the current oligopoly to find a way to lock up the electric car and fuel systems in some other way... somehow they'll make a privately owned windmill to charge your car illegal...

Re:Actually....

[LiNKz]

Imagine trying to find storage for all that though. Lets say a gas station gets about a thousand people a day (depending on where it is located, more or less), how would you fit all those batteries?

This isn't knocking your idea, I like it alot actually. There would just need to be some method of storage.. perhaps an underground network with a robotic storage system? Once a spent battery is returned, its moved into a recharge area and charged until useful.. then throwed back into the population..

Then you get lamers doing 85% charges to save on costs..

Re:Actually....

[shirai]

Another way of making electric cars easier to live with is to have an automatic charging station in the garage much like a digital camera dock at home. One that you wouldn't have to think about. Granted, you'd have to own a garage but you have to start somewhere.

Basically, you'd drive in and the car would attach to a charger. Given that many people aren't ultra precision drivers, there would have to be some sort of robotic arm that could connect to the car.

Yes, it would cost money but in mass, it shouldn't add too much to the price tag of an expensive electric car. For daily commutes to the office, shopping and to friends it should work just fine with the added benefit of not having to go the gas station. Now the negative (always have to charge) becomes a positive (never having to think about fueling).

Re:Actually....

[TheAntiCrust]

you obviously have no idea how battery charging works. It isnt linear. It tapers off when you get neat the capcity of the battery. I have no idea what these particular batteries do, but Im sure if you got 2000 miles to a charge it would have stated it somewhere as that is MUCH bigger news than 200 MPH.

Re:Actually....

[Moraelin]

You raise basically two separate points, so I'll address them separately:

1. No battery comes even close to the energy density of gasoline. I.e., batteries are heavier and larger than the same energy stored gasoline. And unsurprisingly this car is a huge 8-wheeler behemoth just to store enough batteries for a 200 mile cruise.

Worse yet, you also have to move those batteries. If a car has an extra, say, 500 kilos worth of batteries, it needs to accelerate and decelerate that extra weight as well. I.e., to have the same range and acceleration an electric car actually needs _more_ energy, because it needs to move more weight. Or to put it otherwise, to have the same range and acceleration, it carries batteries not only to match the energy value of a tank full of gas, but probably twice that.

So the gas station needs to swap all that. Instead of storing, say, 20 kilos of gasoline to refill a car, they need to store some 500 kilos worth of batteries per car served.

Can you see yet why that's not an economical idea?

2. We're talking a car that takes 10 hours to refill, has only 200 miles range between refills, is huge, and would cost 170,000 dollars to produce.

Sorry, no offense, but it seems to me like you don't need a conspiracy theory there. The car manufacturers would actually _love_ to build a better mouse trap than the competitors. But this car is simply _not_ the better mouse trap.

Yes, everyone keeps saying how it could make a nice car to _only_ drive to work and back, so you don't need more range and don't mind the 10 hour refill time. But how many would actually pay, say, $180,000 for a car to drive to work and back? (Assuming that the manufacturer sells it at only 5.9% more than the production costs.)

I don't know about you, but if I actually bought an 180,000$ car, I'd expect a helluva lot more from it than this car can do.

There just isn't a market for this car. That's all. There's no need to reach for the tinfoil hat, when a perfectly logical business reason exists.

Utility

[sailforsingapore]

Hmm...I wouldn't buy a cell phone that took 10 hours to recharge, the downtime would be too hurtful to its overall usefulness. Why on earth would anyone use a car that was out of commision for 10 hours, when one could go refill their hybrid in less than 5 minutes?

Re:Utility

[zakezuke]

Hmm...I wouldn't buy a cell phone that took 10 hours to recharge, the downtime would be too hurtful to its overall usefulness. Why on earth would anyone use a car that was out of commision for 10 hours, when one could go refill their hybrid in less than 5 minutes?

Drive to work, drive home, and charge. Exactly what people did with older mobile phones. One could argue that something that "fills" overnight when you are sleeping saves you 5min at the pumps once a week.

I'm not going to say that this is better than a gas powered car. The range of a gas powered car is limited only by tank size, and the availability of fuel pumps along your path of travel. But for a daily driver this would be more than acceptable, esp. among those two car households.

Re:Utility

[cbiltcliffe]

18 hours a day for a cellphone is normal, if you use it for a business phone. If you spend 18 hours a day driving your car around, when the hell do you have time to make money?

Unless of course, you drive for UPS for a living, but you could still drive this to get to the UPS warehouse to pick up your truck.

Its the Homer !!!

[Dolphinzilla]

Someone actually made "The Homer" a reality !

I RTFA and...

[ThomasFlip]

Although it may goto 200 mph on a one hour charge, The only downsides, apart from the tiny cockpit, are that it takes 10 hours to recharge, and a production version would cost £170,000.

The slashdot post was a bit misleading I think, still pretty cool though.

Change insurance!

[Mr. Flibble]

Of course they are. Electric cars may be more efficient and cheaper to build, but you have to plug them in and wait. That's not acceptable, if only once every year when your friend/family member needs a ride.

I disagree - I would happily have one. First, it looks wicked! And second, by far the majority of my driving is less than 50 km / day on weekdays. There would be no problem using it as a commuting vehicle for me.

What I think really needs to change, is in the insurance arena. I own a 1989 Toyota 4runner. Reliable, but hellish on gas. I own this vehicle, because there are occasions when I *NEED* the carrying capacity and 4WD (hiking, whitewater kayaking etc). Yes, I own a SUV, and I am one of the few with a legitimate use for it.

Having said this, I don't need an SUV to commute to work. If it were possible for me to switch my plates to a more fuel efficent car - without taking out a separate policy - and only use my SUV when I needed it, I would be saving myself money, and doing a great deal for the environment. As it is, here in BC, if you have two vehicles, you have two insurance policies, there is no sharing allowed.

An electric car would be perfect for that.

Re:Change insurance!

[dschl]

Which allows the "moped sponge" technique. Rack up points on your policy, then buy a moped, transfer the "tainted" policy to the moped, and get a new policy on your Camaro, and continue driving like an idiot.

Going even further offtopic, that is not the case in BC. Your "points" accumulate to the driver, not to the policy. One of the benefits of an insurance monopoly operated by a crown corporation. Drive like an idiot, have lots of accidents, and you'll be paying high premiums for years (not high enough or long enough, though, imho). Only way around it is to borrow a friend or family members vehicle - a) if they'll let you, and b) no matter who owns the vehicle, the insurance rate is based on the driving record of the principal operator, so if you are the principal operator without being listed as such, ICBC can decline to provide coverage after a collision.

Not only that, but if a friend or family member crashes your car, I believe that both your insurance rates and their insurance rates go up. Cool, eh?

Re:Change insurance!

[Mr. Flibble]

BTW/OT: A lot fewer people need SUVs than think they need them. SUVs are responsible for most highway deaths in the Whistler area and the Cheakamus and Nahatalach are both very 2WD accessible (for example).

Very true - when I lived in the Okanagan skiing at Apex and Silver Star, almost universally the vehicles that were rolled or in ditches were 4X4 capable. People don't seem to realize that 4X4 helps you go it does not help you stop. This is why I drive in 2WD until I get stuck, then turn on 4WD.

Re:Change insurance!

[homebrewmike]

> Yes, I own a SUV, and I am one of the few with a legitimate use for it.

Don't kid yourself. Everyone who own's a SUV has a "legitimate" use for it.

Theres only one way around it

[CiXeL]

If you watched or know the story of Tucker you'd see that you cannot challenge a market with powerful players without being squashed. Theres only one way around this and that is to go overseas and establish the technology in another country under the protective wing of the government and then introduce it as an import everywhere around the globe.

Tucker was unable to win against the big three auto makers, nor was Delorean.

Mark my words, the only way we will ever see a flying car or radically advanced automobiles or cheap diamonds is if another government does it first.

If you dont want the powerful companies that control the US to stifle what you're doing take your innovation overseas and develop it there. That is the only way you can become a real player.

Re:Theres only one way around it

[Anonymous Coward]

Love the conspiracy theories.. keep it up guys.
These auto manufacturers are *not* allies trying to keep us all down. That's a bunch of hogwash. They are very different companies, all of whom want to bury the other guys with superior products.
What's going on here is there are a great number of reasons electric cars are not currently viable. Maybe that will change in the future.... who knows.
You develop an electric car which can be produced for $5k, has a range of 300 miles, and takes less than five minutes to refuel, and you'll be in business... That's just the way it is.
Sorry there's no conspiracy, you'll have to look elsewhere to feel oppressed. Our current crop of experimental electric vehicles have huge practical problems... just like this one.

And to be honest, nobody was *afraid* of drug dealer Delorean... because if you haven't noticed, his cars mainly sucked.

I have got to get me one of THESE!

[RealProgrammer]

I commute about 600 miles (1000km) per week, almost all on the Interstate. I would love to have one of these things.

• It bothers me to use the amount of gasoline I do, but the family has to eat
• It would probably save me $300/month in fuel and maintenance
• I'd much rather pay to own something than pay money to some multinational corporation
• I could probably get there *lots* faster >-)

Re:I have got to get me one of THESE!

[evilviper]

It bothers me to use the amount of gasoline I do, but the family has to eat

They eat gasoline?

Formula 1

[joshuaobrien]

If they can get electric cars to outperform others in Formula 1, that's when they'll break into public consciousness as legitimate vehicles.

No conspiracy here.

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a bunch of problems with electric only cars which aren't obvious at first glance:

1. Charging. You need to let these cars sit for a period of time between use to let the batteries top up. Without that, it's just a very expensive paperweight (and not a very good one at that.)
2. Battery life. A typical Li-ion battery will lose twenty percent of its capacity every year, from the day that they are manufactured. With a pure electric vehicle, that means a 20% drop in range. Would you buy a car that ranges up to 200 km the first year; 160 km the second; 128 km the third; and 102 km the fourth? (ie: a 50% drop in range every three and a bit years.) Would you buy a new set of batteries (see next point) every three years, or even more often?
3. Cost. How much will those Li-ion batteries cost? (Hint: they're not cheap. My PowerBook needs a battery that costs $US130. And that's just a tiny fraction of what a car engine would need...)
4. Charge cycles. The more you use a Li-ion battery, the faster it degrades. (The above 20% is regardless of usage, btw -- so even if the car sits in the garage...)

Those are just off the top of my head. There's probably plenty more. Car manufacturers know damn well that with disadvantages like the above, consumers won't buy. That's why they're not interested. There's no conspiracy here, folks. Move along.

Re:No conspiracy here.

[cartman]

Unfortunately, the difficulties are much greater than that. Li-ion batteries are incredibly heavy, and therefore difficult to transport in a car. The vast majority of the electricity expended is wasted in just carrying the extra weight of the batteries.

In this case, they probably achieved the 200 mile range by using 10 times the normal number of batteries. But the car probably weighs 10 tons. I bet that's why it's huge, and has eight wheels (including four in the front).

Just recharging that many Li-ion batteries would probably take more electricity than a city block uses in a month. To say nothing of the 180,000 gbp price tag, or the replacement costs (every 3-4 years!) for the batteries, or upgrading all the streets in the U.S. to handle the weight. Also, even if you only drive a short distance, you are still expending all the electricity of carrying batteries that are sufficient for a greater range.

The idea of using batteries to power cars was totally mistaken from the outset, and has been completely discredited by now. Batteries simply don't have the energy density required. They can't be used to power cars until there's a revolutionary advancement in battery technology, but none has been forthcoming after more than a century of research.

Of course, we should all be suspicious of those pepole who say: "I have a revolutionary idea that will transform the automobile industry -- but General Motors is trying to suppress me!!" Venture capital would chase you to the ends of the earth, if you had a real revolutionary idea. The difficulty is: some people overrate the importance of their ideas, and attribute their failure to a conspiracy to ignore them.

Re:No conspiracy here.

[Russ Nelson]

That's why you want to use a RUF. It only needs a small set of batteries, because the guideway powers the car on trips longer than ten miles.
-russ

Re:No conspiracy here.

[SnakeJG]

In this case, they probably achieved the 200 mile range by using 10 times the normal number of batteries. But the car probably weighs 10 tons. I bet that's why it's huge, and has eight wheels (including four in the front).

Actually, according the to the UK article, the car weighs 2,400kg, or 2.6455 tons. Also, the car has eight 100bhp in-wheel motors, so I am guessing that the eight wheels are there to provide the extra horsepower needed to have this thing go 0-60 in about 4 seconds.

Re:No conspiracy here.

[evilviper]

You need to let these cars sit for a period of time between use to let the batteries top up.

With the exception of road trips, this is not the slightest bit of a limitation. You plug-in your car at night, and then can drive it all day.

Even if you drive it more than the max range on a single charge, just leaving it plugged-in for just an hour or so (at work, at home, wherever you've stopped) will help greatly to increase your range. Most people will just need to plug it in once a day. A lot like golf carts.

A typical Li-ion battery will lose twenty percent of its capacity every year,

Don't use Wikipedia as a reference for anything. You could easily have just written that five minutes ago to suit your point. I've personally found MANY factual inaccuracies in Wikipedia.

In my personal experience, I haven't seen a loss of anywhere near that figure. I have old notebook and portable electronics LiIon batteries that continue to hold around 90% of their charge, several years after I first puchased them.

Would you buy a new set of batteries (see next point) every three years, or even more often?

Yes! The cost of buying new batteries every few years will be less than the cost of regular maintenance on a conventional car.

Oil and oil filter changes. Transmission fluid and transmission filter changes. Air filter replacements. Antifreeze... Power steering fluid... Drive belt replacement... Spark Plug replacements... Fuel filter replacement... And many more I'm just not thinking of, off the top of my head. If you want to talk about the cost of batteries, compare it with the cost of all these, and more!

There's no conspiracy here, folks. Move along

No, just a bunch of auto companies looking out for their own self interests, and some damn fool astroturfing on their behalf.

Re:No conspiracy here.

[evilviper]

Li-ion batteries are incredibly heavy, and therefore difficult to transport in a car. The vast majority of the electricity expended is wasted in just carrying the extra weight of the batteries.

This is pure bullshit.

First of all, LiIon is about as light as batteries get. Lead Acid and NiMH batteries are FAR heavier, and cars with lead-acid batteries have been getting ranges over 100miles for a long time.

There is nothing "difficult" about transfering them. They are quite light. Lighter in fact than the engine and transmission in conventional cars.

Plus, if the batteries were, in fact, as light as air, they'd have to put some lead weights into the car. Without the weight of an engine, or batteries, your car would be in real danger of getting blown off the road in high winds, or even stolen by just being picked up and caried away by a couple guys :-) Would you feel safe driving 80MPH down the freeway, in a car that only weighs 400 pounds?

But the car probably weighs 10 tons.
Very unlikely. It would be INCREDIBLY difficult to get up to 200MPH with electric motors having to hault 10 tons. Plus, the story mentions it's amazing acceleration, which would just not be possible if it weighed that much. I'm willing to guarantee it's doesn't weigh more than 2 tons.

I bet that's why it's huge, and has eight wheels

That's a ridiculous assumption to make. It's most likely got so many wheels because it needs serious traction for such acceleration. If you look at racing vehicles that have incredible acceleration, you see absolutely HUGE rear wheels. Increasing the number of standard wheels is a more practical way to get the increased traction needed.

The idea of using batteries to power cars was totally mistaken from the outset, and has been completely discredited by now. Batteries simply don't have the energy density required. They can't be used to power cars until there's a revolutionary advancement in battery technology, but none has been forthcoming after more than a century of research.

Every single point you made in the above paragraph is just completely and blatantly wrong.

Of course, we should all be suspicious of those pepole who say: "I have a revolutionary idea that will transform the automobile industry -- but General Motors is trying to suppress me!!"

Suspicious is fine, but there is plenty of evidence to support that fact. Just look at the story of GM pulling their EV1 from the market, despite great demand, or the similar story behind every other major manufacturer's story.

Venture capital would chase you to the ends of the earth, if you had a real revolutionary idea.

Funny how just about every revolution in history proves you wrong. When it happens, it's almost always luck that the revolutionaries get the money they need to make it happen.

Goddard never found any interest in rockets. Tesla died penniless, despite numerous revolutionary inventions.

some people overrate the importance of their ideas, and attribute their failure to a conspiracy to ignore them.

Where has this guy failed? His vehicle is a great success, and with some investors, he could make it more practical than conventional vehicles.

Re:No conspiracy here.

[mfarver]

1. Charging. You need to let these cars sit for a period of time between use to let the batteries top up. Without that, it's just a very expensive paperweight (and not a very good one at that.)

Most EVs can quick charge to 80% capacity in very short times (less than 1hr). Odds are your car will be charged by the time you need it again. It certainly works for the daily commuter where your driving a known trip and have overnight to charge. 80% of Americans drive less than 40 miles per day.

2. Battery life. A typical Li-ion battery will lose twenty percent of its capacity every year, from the day that they are manufactured.

Be careful quoting statitics from laptop scale Lithium Ion batteries. Large scale batteries are a different animal. The 20% loss in capacity per year for laptop and cell phone batteries is due to corrosion of the positive electrode. In a laptop battery each cell is about the size of an A battery and has a very small positive electrode. A car sized battery has much larger electrodes, and corrosion has a negligble effect on overall capacity.

Would you buy a new set of batteries (see next point) every three years, or even more often?

It depends... I would look at lifecycle costs. The higher efficency of EVs means that even though electricity costs more per unit of work, I still get a lower cost per mile. If the difference between cost per mile is enough to pay for battery replacement (however often) I still "win."

A odd sidenote.. Lithium Ion, like most battery chemistries, get more cycles if your average cycle is shallow. According to one battery manufacturer a 200 mile pack of LIon batteries used daily for my 12 mile trip to work, would last 10,000 cycles, or 120,000 miles and over 27 years of use. Now that same set of batteries used for 150 mile trips to work would only last 2000 cycles but would be driven 300,000 miles. Weird eh?

3. Cost. How much will those Li-ion batteries cost? (Hint: they're not cheap. My PowerBook needs a battery that costs $US130. And that's just a tiny fraction of what a car engine would need...)

Its all about economy of scale. Your laptop uses a standard sized lithium cell, that is mass produced and is fairly inexpensive. (Less than $2.50 each, and most batteries have about 8 of them.) Then those mass-produced cells are stuffed in a propriatary package with some simple, but also custom control electronics... and now competition is harder, and prices rise. Lithium isn't cheap, but in mass production car sized batteries would not effect the sticker price of a comparable car.

Car manufactureres tend to resist _any_ market change, usually by saying that consumers won't pay for it. Many SUVs are still selling with 10-15 year old 2 valve engine designs, becuase the auto manufacturers say that given the choice between paying $200-$300 more on the sticker for a 2-3 mpg improvement, or $300 for the DVD player that American consumers want the DVD. (4 or more valve designs are more expensive to build but are used on most cars becuase of stricter fuel economy and emissions requirements)

In the late 60's the auto companies said that consumers wouldn't pay for safer cars, or better emission controls... all of these things did make a difference. There might not be a conspiracy, just the normal behavior of a large company trying to maximize benefits to shareholders while ignoring society as a whole...

Unanswered question?

[JPriest]

How are you going to produce the electricity needed to power this 600kW beast? Diesel locomotives and fossil fuels? I am also sure the track version of the car has things like heater, AC, CD players, sound systems, power seats, all removed to reduce weight and power.
Also, in cold climate this car has to work to produce heat, where traditional cars have a natural heat source.

Re:Unanswered question?

[evilviper]

How are you going to produce the electricity needed to power this 600kW beast?

Hydro-electric. Wind turbines. Nuclear power plants. Geo thermal. Even if it is all produced by oil-burning power plants, the power plant will get FAR more effeciency out of it than your own car's engine ever could, and pollute far less at the same time.

The thing is, once people switch to electric cars, the whole world can switch to 100% clean energy sources, without negatively affecting everyone's vehicles... Unlike today, where a switch to ethanol, natural gas, propane, et al., will require everyone to buy a NEW car that runs on that fuel, and every gas station will have to be converted at great expense.

Also, in cold climate this car has to work to produce heat, where traditional cars have a natural heat source.

You can't get something for nothing. If you turn on your headlight in your car, you are using up more gasoline. If you are heating up the cab of your car, you are using up more gasoline.

Plus, in warm climates, outputting less heat is a HUGE advantage, all around.

Besides that, the motors on this vehicle will no doubt produce quite a bit of heat. The matter of putting that heat where you need it is only slightly tricky.

Re:I'd love a cheap, mass produced 200 mile electr

[InfiniteWisdom]

One hour is definitely less than overnight, assuming you don't live close to the arctic circle

transmission

[Karma Sucks]

Why is there no transmission?

Don't you still have to balance power vs speed with gears? Or I guess with electricity you can supply power and speed on demand?

It'll be sad day when standard transmission dies out!

Re:transmission

[miratrix]

There is no transmission because the motors are all direct drive - ie, they're attached directly to each of the 8 wheels. They are probably using DC Brushless Motor which requires an external motor controller, but does allow you to electronically control both the speed and torque (by changing the spacing between rotor and stator)

With electric motors, you get high torque at low speeds and you don't need to keep the engine/motor running at the ideal rpm. So you don't really need to worry about transmission since all it would do is basically introduce mechanical losses into the system.

"Why not?" you ask. Simple.

[bersl2]

Such a vehicle does not fit into the automotive industry's model of planned obselescence. Your car must wear out quickly so that you will buy a new car.

Re:"Why not?" you ask. Simple.

[Down8]

Except that the computer industry's planned obsolescence is even shorter than the motor industry's.

-bZj

Don't forget safety

[jfengel]

It's somewhat misleading to compare these to your car, because your car carries around a lot of extra weight for safety. The article doesn't say how much this weighs, but it wouldn't surprise me if the range were reduced by half by the time they made the thing safe enough to drive on a US road.

I'm sure I'll hear the usual arguments about how it wouldn't need all that if it didn't have to worry about splatting into a three ton SUV, but drivers (even electric car drivers) screw up and plow into things like trees. Cars have lots of extra metal to save passengers when that happens, and that metal is heavy. It's less heavy in a cleverly-designed Japanese car with crumple zones, as opposed to an American-built behemoth that depends on sheer mass to solve the problem, but it adds to the weight of every production car.

I'm not entirely certain what this car has that's new that allows it to be faster, and I hope whatever it is will scale to build a real car. Electric cars have a lot of potential to supplant gas and help break the dependence on Middle Eastern oil. But the figures can easily mislead you into believing that's closer than it is.

Re:Don't forget safety

[evilviper]

your car carries around a lot of extra weight for safety.

Really? Care to fill in the rest of the world on what this heavy stuff is? Airbags, seatbelt, and seats don't weight all that much. Consumer cars don't have roll-cages, even though they'd be a huge safety feature, and add very little weight.

This thing no doubt has a strong frame, otherwise it couldn't reach high speeds.

So, what are these heavy safety features that cars have? I've certainly not seen them in any cars I've worked on.

Re:Don't forget safety

[Emnar]

The UK article toward the end of the blurg did say: The car weighs 2400kg (5300 lbs).

No safety disadvantage there!

electric motors

[bmajik]

essentially have perfectly flat torque over their entire RPM range. They can keep spinning and making torque at really, really high RPMs so they dont need to be geared down as road speed increases.

ICE (internal combustion engines) really only produce torque in a VERY narrow range of revolutions, and are limited to a fairly low maximum rev count by mechanical issues..

an electric motor, comparatively, will spin as fast as you want it to, and make the same torque at any rpm (within reason)

as someone else pointed out, electric cars always out-accelerate ICE cars in these "electric sports car" tests for two reasons

1) instantaneous peak torque, held all the way up to V_max

2) car is a prototype with no basis in reality for production use.

The average ICE car engine is only usable from 1000 to 6000 rpm. Diesel truck engines are more like 500 to 2200 rpm. The enormous diesel ship engine everyone was sending the link to a few months back runs at _90_ rpm.

It is not uncommon for an electric motor to spin at 20,000 or more rpm. The only practical displacement motors going this fast are the Formula 1 3L V10s, which spin up to 19k rpm but need to be rebuilt after 1 weekend.

Public impact.....

[MEGAMAID]

We need to reach 400kmh to make an impact on a gasoline car-dependent world," Shimizu says.

WTF is this guy thinking. The car does 370kmh, if only he could get to 400 then the car will become popular?
The public has little interest in a top speed of 400. It's the fact that you need to charge batteries and it costs a shitload.

The Plan!

[Shag]

1. Acquire Citroen DS. Cheap!
   
2. Shoehorn in extra wheels and electric motor.
   
3. ???
   
4. Profit!
   

really great stuff

[csimicah]

Wow... somebody jammed a ton of batteries (literally) and eight big@ss motors into a chassis to create a car that weighs 5300 lbs yet has a 'tiny cockpit'. Really, really cutting edge stuff. I especially like the elegant solution of integrating power from 8 motors... just use 8 wheels! Really great solution there, just like something Bubba would have designed in the tinkerin' shop behind his barn. CN: There's nothing new or special here.

Re:Well then...

[ReeprFlame]

Fuel Cells I believe will the the ideal way to generate current. Not only can you get a renewable fuel source, but can make Water and Hydrogen in either process of creating or burning the fuel. It is efficient, non-polluting, and will power something great to come. Even better is if we can create an fuel cell to power the car directly to the motors so there are less batteries and thus less weight on the car to make it go even FASTER and FURTHER! [maybe even combine the power of both to the drivetrain...]

Lest We Forget

[somethinghollow]

Don't forget TZero.

For the record. . .

[noewun]

Not faster than a 911 Turbo. As a long-time Porsche fan, I feel the need to set the record straight. . .

Re:the zero emissions fallacy

[Edmund Blackadder]

Yeah but power produced at a power plant (as long as it is not coal) is much usually less polluting per unit of energy than the one produced at your engine. Power plants can use industrial strngth technology to remove pollutants from their exhaust. Also they can afford complex large reactors that capture more energy than car engines.

That does not work for coal powerplants as burning coal is just inherently dirty (and one could say poisonous). This is especially true for Bush's "grandfathered" coal plants which can avoid pollution standards because they are really old (try to figure out the logic behind that reasoning).

So the first thing we should do for the quality of our air is get rid of coal plants. Even if we replace them with nukes, it would be an improvement.

But after coal plants are done away with one can be reasonably sure that the plants will produce less pollution than cars' engines.

Re:WTF!

[Creepy Crawler]

Speeders future punishments...

1 KPH over, 1KV BZZZZTTT!

Some Issues with EVT's

[hackus]

Some issues I see that are not being discussed:

1) Ok so we decide to do electric.

How do we deal with the fact that over the past 100 years we have had time to build GAS fuel/support infrastructure to a convienant level?

I think it will take conservatively half that amount of time till every 7/11 is a EVT quick stop.

Training new Technicians.
Converting EVERY Gas station to a EVT stop.
(Thats a LOT of stations.)
Manufacturing plants/parts for the Power source.

2) The car...well the car has a lot of the same issues as the power.

How well does it work in hot/cold environments? How far can the motors really go?
Safety Regulations need to be revamped for this technoloy. With no past history, we start from scratch.

These are justa couple issues, that I see could amount to about 30 years and about a trillion dollars to make it all happen.
(Everyone Drives EVT's and they are just as convienant to use as liquid fueled or GAS cars.)

I just do not see how such a wide spread adoption could happen in a really short time, it is really a people issue in my opinion.

My point is that people I think are not putting into perspective what it takes to build the support structures required to support a pure EVT economy.

It will take a very long time, and it will cost a great deal.

I would also like to point out that ANY technology we select for an alternative to get from A -> B will have this problem.

How do we address it?

What do you think?

-Hack

Already Solved - Vanadium Redox

[StCredZero]

Vanadium Redox batteries solve a lot of these problems. You can fill them with charged solution in the same way you fill up a tank of gasoline.

These are already in industrial use. They are discussed here

Re:Already Solved - Vanadium Redox

[Kiryat Malachi]

Vanadium in a sulfuric acid solvent.

Vanadium (atomic number 23) is present in bauxite, which is an important aluminum ore, so it shouldn't be impossible to up the current feedstock of vanadium to support using it in this application. Costwise, due to the fact that there isn't a ton of need for it, the price is not indicative of what it would be in a situation where there was heavy supply/demand effects; that said, in 98 it went for about $5.50 per pound.

Sulfuric acid is currently manufactured in large quantities for, amongst other things, many industrial chemistry processes and car batteries. Probably not an issue.

Re:Already Solved - Vanadium Redox

[Kiryat Malachi]

Well, technically *everything we use* is non-renewable. Steel. Aluminum. Etc. Even sunlight, on a long enough time scale.

But it isn't like gasoline; the vanadium isn't actually used up. The vanadium is in solution; when you charge it, you chemically change it; discharge reverses the change. Think of it like a lead-acid battery; how often do you have to replace the lead and acid in one of those?

What car do you own?

[Shihar]

I own a 1990 Honda Accord. I don't know what pieces of shit you are buying, but my nearly 15 year old car has had absolutely no major problems and I take no special car of it. Hell, I don't even know how to change my own oil.

Cars are not computers. When people buy a new car every 3 years, it is because they want to. If they are buying a new car every 3 years, it is because it is breaking down, then they are a god damn idiot because they keep buying crap.

There is no 3vil corporate consipracy to force people to keep getting new cars. Car companies get all of their parts from suppliers. The only thing a car company does is put the stuff together. If a supplier sells a car company bad parts that break down, then they lose their contract. If I buy a car and it turns out to be crap, I just don't buy from that same company again. Take off the tin foil hat. Car companies want to sell cars. If electric cars could be made cheaply and even come close to having the same characteristics as a combustion car in all areas, car companies would be killing each other to sell the most.

I'd love one of these

[multiplexo]

I commute between 40 and 50 kilometers a day depending upon what errands I have to run, and my car sits in a a garage at work for hours at a time. If the charging stations could be made cheaply enough you could park your car in a garage and pay for a charge up, and when I come home at night the car is in the driveway for 10 or 12 hours. So that means that doing a full charge every night wouldn't be that much of a problem. I'll bet that I'm not the only person that this is true for. Now we just need to drive the price down on cars like this and improve the life of the batteries.

Chep Pallets Re:Systemic Problems

[PhYrE2k2]

This is very similar to Chep pallets. You (as a company who ships stuff) simply reports who you shipped pallets to, and in the end, Chep has a good idea of what everyone has (also noting what breaks). In the end, you get a higher quality pallet than a standard wood one. Similarly, you 'subscribe' to the service, they always know which battery you have and what the life is on it (X charges), and you pay for each 'fill up'. At the end of the month, you get a bill for the number of swaps you made. Include some fancy monitoring gadgets on the top that measure their effeciency of their last few runs and you can easily see what you should expect out of this run (and even calibrate a fuel guage acurately). Think about it :) What we really need is better battery cell technology that doesn't have these issues.

Charging issues

[laughingcoyote]

I work in the field of electric storage, including batteries, and there is absolutely no reason they cannot come out with a vehicle that can't use batteries that can be rapid-charged, nor set up the charger to do them. (Granted, you would still be looking at a charge time of roughly an half-hour to an hour, little longer than it takes to get gas.) The standard deep-cycle batteries used for applications like RV's and boats cannot be charged like this, but those like the Optima and Odyssey do have this capability.

This begs the question, then, why is there not a workable electric car out there? 200 miles is plenty for the average person's daily driving, and it would be a simple matter to charge the vehicle every night. (In fact, this is better for the health of deep cycle batteries than full discharge.)

Further, a half hour recharge would only be a slight inconvenience on cross-country trips, especially since recharging stations could be set up right along the interstate, or set up in rest stops, not requiring the underground tanks and the like that a gas station does. Generally, after driving 200 miles, I for one am ready to get out of the car for a little while anyway.

The biggest downside that I see is that the cost of replacing the batteries (especially premium batteries like the Odyssey or Optima) would be considerable, given that these cars would have to use banks of 10-15 batteries, at a current cost of about $160 per battery. Of course, the massive boost to production of these would probably create competition and an economy of scale, driving the price down, as more and more migrated to electric cars. The savings on gas (which will only get more expensive) would also be considerable, although a high volume of these cars would create additional demand on the electrical grid.

Wrong path in my opinion....

[GrpA]

The real threat to the existing car industry isn't this. It's the electric scooters that already come out of china for around $50 in bulk. They are light, easy to maintain and do around 20Kph.

But you can already get electric scooters that go up to 100kph, and just 1Kw of electric motor will get you up to around 50 to 60 Kph.

How long before a 5 to 10 Kw electric car, weighing around 300Kg, with a lightweight tube-steel frame for a single person comes out under $2000 using the same technology as they build into present bikes and scooters?

The biggest hurdle to this was cheap electric motors in mass supply. Battery technology was at the right level a few years back. Now the motors are available because of scooters with hub drives appearing. Mostly being built for use *in* China.

And the niche for a vehicle that carries a single person around at 80 to 100 Kph for daily commuting that could park in a MC bay still exists (Clive Sinclair's M5 was a realisation of this niche, but failed for a number of reasons, although they are still worth more than when new)

I'm waiting for the $2000 model.... Even if I do have to license it, it will actually make it cheaper to drive to work...

Besides, I have a much more serious car to drive for when I want to have fun, which is wasted on the daily commute trip!

GrpA

Re:Wrong path in my opinion....

[Viol8]

If manufacturers could get a car down to 300kg today then they would. But its not possible with all the equipment people want and with safety requirements. The average family car these days weighs 1.5 tons, take out the weight of the engine (say 200kg), transmission (200kg) and fuel (say 50kg) and you're still looking at over a ton and most of that is down to the bodyshell, suspension, air con systems, comfy seats, electric windows etc etc. Now add back in a large battery and electric motor(s) and the weight goes off into the stratosphere. Sure , a 300kg car *could* be built but I can guaruntee that 99.9% of drivers wouldn't touch it with a bargepole because it would be like driving a go-cart (and not a very safe one either).

Re:Wrong path in my opinion....

[Ex-MislTech]

Hyper Car is reasonable and driveable, and does well to beat
the fuel efficiency requirements to make it viable .

Chk it out:

http://www.rmi.org/sitepages/pid386.php

Ex-MislTech

Re:Wrong path in my opinion....

[Viol8]

Lighweight composites - ie carbon fibre or kevlar type materials. Like i said - $$$$$$ plus also they're almost impossible to make on an automated production line unlike steel (which is part of the reason they cost so much) - the stuff has to be layered on manually. Do they seriously think that no one has ever thought of using composites in mass production cars before?

Re:Wrong path in my opinion....

[Ex-MislTech]

They can now do it automated, BMW does it for the roof section of the
new M5 with carbon fiber .

*yawn*

[NerveGas]

An electric car isn't hard to make. An electric car that goes fast isn't hard to make. An electric car with a long cruising range isn't hard to make. And an electric car that goes fast *and* has a long cruising range still isn't too hard to make.

On the other hand, making an electric car that can go reasonably fast, has a reasonably long cruising range, has a reasonably long battery life span, and is reasonably affordable does seem to be pretty tough to do. If you want to do some good for the planet in the area of electric cars, work on that problem.

steve

Uh, that MUST be 230 kph, not mph

[shanen]

All the units I can find on all of the linked pages are metric. It's still plenty fast enough for normal folks, but let's not get ridiculous. The ridiculous part is America clinging to weird archaic units and the even weirder Dubya Bush.

Someone else mentioned battery exchange. I don't know if I was the source for that, but I described it some time ago as part of the necessary infrastructure for electric taxis. In that case, the battery ownership can be "globalized" to the cab companies, but I think it would be harder to do for privately owned cars.

Also, the troublesome side effect of battery exchange would be like having different size gas tanks depending on the condition of your current battery. I don't think this approach would be very practical for long distance travel, though it would be fine for commuters and cabs. It depends on your personal confidence level, but in my case, if my daily travel was less than about 2/3 of the normal charge state, I'd feel secure enough. If I was able to charge it up while I was at work or parked elsewhere, that would of course improve the effective range without battery swapping. You'd notice your battery deteriorating over time, but it would be a gradual thing, not like a sudden shock when you exchanged a factory fresh battery for an almost unchargeable one.

Not practical for consumer use, but....

[ldhertert]

Students at Ohio State have designed, built and run a car called the Buckeye Bullet that topped out at 321 mph. It holds the world land speed record for electric cars, and was tested at the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah. It obviously isn't in the running to challenge hybrids or gas powered cars, but is quite an accomplishment. Go Bucks!

Re:I'd love a cheap, mass produced 200 mile electr

[Dr. Spork]

No, I think the point is that the Chinese want to wait until owning an electric car is a realistic proposition for normal people, which means densely-distributed filling/charging stations and other infrastructure. They would understandably want Japanese, European and American auto makers to put that stuff in place (probably by pulling political strings, as they certainly can).

You could have an awesome electric car for sale now, and nobody will buy it, for fear of being stranded.

I always knew that we've got "combustion lock-in" which always seemed a bit irrational to me. I guess I didn't think it might be because of a conspiracy to shut out emerging auto competition. But is that a crazy explanation? Not really.

But... here's a way China could really kick our ass if they wanted to: They set up the infrastructure in their own country to run electric cars, get good at making them, and laugh at us while we're sending billions per week to the Middle East. It's not like the Chinese market is small, and I bet they could export the tech to India, Thailand, etc. That's enough to get this caught on. China is beginning to realize that they have the luxury of giving the world the finger. They can make their own DVD format, their own fancy cell phones, etc., and just aim those things at the domestic market... and they do fine! It might not be easy for them to break through with auto manufacturing, but I expect them to try (I don't know, have they already? I know they had some Porsche engineers meeting with the government asking them to propose a Wagen for the Chinese Volk....) The Chinese government might still have enough power to "give incentives" to large numbers of people to buy domestic cars once they're made. Of course, they could do that more effectively still if they start taxing gas at $10/gallon and using the proceeds to subsidize electric cars. It's in their interest anyway; they don't have a lot of domestic oil either.

Liquid fuels could still be used

[grunter]

...If you use either fuel cells or hybrid motor arrangements to generate your electricity. Our existing transport infrastructure is almost entirely structured around the use of liquid fuels in vehicles, and it makes sense to leverage this to make electric vehicles more widely used.

It would be fairly straightforward to introduce ethanol/methanol liquid refuelling capacity, (gas stations could dedicate one or two bowsers to these fuels, much like they do with deisel (at least here in Europe)

And by using plant derived liquid fuels such as ethanol or methanol which ultiamtely derive their energy content from the sun, we could reduce our dependence on fossil fuels.

Using biomass derived fuels would seem to offer an alternative to all the worrying about batter lifespan and charge time etc.

Re:the zero emissions fallacy

[Vulcann]

Another mistaken assumption is that batteries themselves are "pollution free". Just because it doesnt let out gaseous emissions from an exhaust doesnt necessarily mean it wont damage the environment. I'm sure even the first gasoline powered engine designers never thought the pollution caused by they're creations would be enough to impact global climate. But when you multiply these cars (and hence they're batteries) by a few million times you will eventually lead up to a pollution problem of some kind or the other. Hell even unused plastic computer cases these days are a pollution hazard, let alone millions of unused car batteries with all sorts of lethal pollutants in them leaking out into the environment.

Re:Solved

[ishmaelflood]

You screw them up to the floor from underneath using a jack.

Out in the bush you operate the jack and the screws yourself, in the city there'll be some fancy pants automatic system.

Alternatively some vehicles already use a crane to carry the spare wheel under the car, you just do the same thing, but with electric drive, and bigger.

The disadvantage of putting the batteries under the car is that the floor is raised, so the aerodynamics will be worse, but it keeps the batteries outside the cabin, and the handling will be excellent due to the low cg.

what sup with..

[verrol]

the chick drinking coffee in the image.mwv movie clip? :) Look to me like there is something going on between the here and the dude in the office.

Re:the zero emissions fallacy

[bm_luethke]

" This is especially true for Bush's "grandfathered" coal plants which can avoid pollution standards because they are really old (try to figure out the logic behind that reasoning)."

Don't know where you got that piece of info, but it is not correct.

The plants were grandfathered in because we can not pass laws that are retroactive - you can not currently be held to laws that will be passed in the future. That is in the constitution - the law had to have been made that way. That's the logic in that.

Bush did not pass the laws requiring cleaner emissions so they are not his laws anyway, they were passed well before Bush the Elder also.

You want to know fucked up logic? Here is how it stands now (and what Bush the Younger tried to change against the wishes of the "environmentalist"). If you have an old power plant you are grandfathered in - you have no need to follow current emissions guidlines. Current technology is also cheaper to produce power, if one could simply change them over then they would make back thier money plus in a few years (and thus, power companies prefer newer technology). But, should you take any of the grandfathered plants and put anything new on them the must, at that point, comply with all existing emissions standards. They can not comply with current emissions standards without putting new parts on them. See the deadlock? See why there *must* be something that gives - namely allowing them to maintain thier *current* level of pollution while installing new, clean, and cheap production facilities? It's not like they were saying "You can now produce 50% more pollution" - what problem do you have with "You can continue to pollute at your current rate while you switch to environmentally friendly equipment" given the "You can pollute at your current rate" is true otherwise?

It's not just power plants that have this. My family has worked on this project off and on since the 80's. Locally a river had raw sewage leak into it for over 20 years. In order to contain the sewage they needed to build a new sewage system, in order to get the EPA to allow them to build the new sewage system they had to contain the sewage. Again - deadlock. The person over our little section of the EPA saw nothing wrong with this, retired under Clinton's term, and the next one in immediatly recinded said laws. We saw the same type of rhetoric for a few years hear about how the EPA was allowing the utilities district to pollute the river (from a few environmentalist groups). In the end some people took a good deal of political heat but made the river capable of suporting fish again.

Instead of reading someone else synopsis go read the actual bill next time. You may very well find that someone has more of a political (vs actually improving the environment) agenda than you would think.

[OT] Re:Change insurance!

[dave420]

They have a car sharing scheme in London, which is pretty cool:

You sign up and get a smartcard. You use the web to select what make/model car you want, and when you need it from/to. It gives you the pickup location nearest your house.

When you want to use the car, you go to the point at the right time, and place your smartcard on the windscreen. The doors and glove compartment open, giving you the keys. You then have full use of the car until your time's up. The cars are always gassed, always clean, and always available. You save money on taxes, congestion charge (toll), initial payment, maintenance, etc. Very, very useful. As I mentioned, you can select the type of car you want, so if you need an SUV, you select SUV. If you need to drive somewhere, you select a smaller car, and drop it off when you get to your destination, at the nearest car point.

Re:the zero emissions fallacy

[Politburo]

The plants were grandfathered in because we can not pass laws that are retroactive - you can not currently be held to laws that will be passed in the future. That is in the constitution - the law had to have been made that way. That's the logic in that. But, should you take any of the grandfathered plants and put anything new on them the must, at that point, comply with all existing emissions standards. They can not comply with current emissions standards without putting new parts on them. See the deadlock?

That is correct, on its face. However, the devil's in the details, as always. If you have a power plant (or any significant source) that is grandfathered, you are exempt from new regs. However, once you modify that equipment, you must bring it into compliance. What the Bush Administration did was change the rules of what was considered a 'modification', allowing plant operators to continue to operate their old equipment where the purpose of the law was to force them to change to cleaner technology.

While there does appear to be a 'deadlock' in the regs, my experience in the air permitting business says otherwise. State DEPs and EPA are usually very willing to accomodate you, assuming the end goal is a reduction in pollution. If you just read regulations, you won't get this sense. However, there are many provisions in regulations for non-compliant sources, and being non-compliant is not an automatic sanction or fine.

State DEPs and EPA do *not* like you when you try to run around the regs for 10 years, and then come forward and try to make nice. If you're upfront from the start, they are extremely accomodating.

No, really: No conspiracy here!

[claussenvenable]

>Would you feel safe driving 80MPH down the freeway, >in a car that only weighs 400 pounds?

Yes, actually, I would. It's called a "motorcycle", and it's two or three times as fuel-efficent as a car. Well, actually, maybe "safe" isn't quite the right word. Would you settle for "well, I'm not dead *yet*?" ;)

>Suspicious is fine, but there is plenty of
>evidence to support that fact. Just look at the
>story of GM pulling their EV1 from the market,
>despite great demand, or the similar story behind
> every other major manufacturer's story.

Disclaimer: I'm 100% for the adoption full-electrics for daily transport. It makes monetary and statistical sense to me, at least in urban areas. Of course, I'm also for CarShare programs and mass transit, which I think are considerably more effective at reducing unnecessary driving, but that's a bit more challenging to Americans (I am one).

Anyway:
I worked at a company that helped design the EV1 (several years prior), and when I started there we had one as a company car. I hear the EV1 held up quite frequently as the example of all that is great and wonderful and yet being smashed down by the iron fist of GM, and I am highly skeptical. Why is this?

Prepare yourselves...

The EV1 was a poorly built, miserably designed junker of an electric car. I've seen nice EVs, which I would gladly own, like the little Honda and Th!nk cars, but the EV1 plain sucked. Build quality was below unfinished prototype, all the buttons and dash controls were mounted terribly and felt worse, it had the *worst* windshield in the history of automotive design (made me feel like I was wearing coke-bottle glasses [I'm 20/20]), and it was in the shop at least once a month to repair all the random stuff that kept breaking. The cabin was uncomfortable, the visibility poor, and the stereo sucked.

Driving it was similarly underwhelming. The narrow rear axle gave a very loose, sliding, tail-happy turn, but the drive was in the front wheels, preventing the driver from *utilizing* said tail motion for anything save sideswiping bushes. Acceleration was brisk, but kneecapped by the front wheel drive and poor tires -- you could probably keep up in a stock 4-cylinder camry.

Now, I understand that environmental soundness is not about performance. I am all for small, fuel-efficient cars. However, I also think that a small, fuel-efficient car CAN be fun to drive -- just as racing 50cc GP bikes takes incredible skill to maintain speed around a track, driving a small, efficient car to the limits is *way* more entertaining for me than having to rein in a 300hp monster.

To this end, the EV1 was a dismal failure. Sure, everyone who had one wanted to keep it, because it was neat and there *weren't any other options* for an electric. To some people it was worthwhile as a novelty, or simply as an environmental statement, both valid concerns. However, I personally watched the amount of time/money that went into keeping the thing running, and I am *quite* willing to believe that GM would have had a financial fiasco on its hands had it continued to build/sell them.

Not to bag on EVs in general -- they're great and becoming more viable all the time. But the EV1 is a poor choice of idols for the EV movement. Take a look at Th!nk if you want to see a cool little EV that's really been oppressed by The Man.