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General Motor's EV1 Electric Cars Scrapped
jangobongo writes "Yesterday, the last of General Motors EV1 electric cars were transported to their final resting place, the GM Desert Proving Grounds in Arizona, for "final disposition," which for most of them means crushing and recycling. The experimental GM cars were originally leased (starting in 1996) to owners in California and Arizona for three years while GM developed electric battery technology, but the expected breakthrough in battery technology failed to materialize. GM spent more than $1 billion developing and marketing the EV1, but concluded that the electric cars would not be profitable. The EV1 program was ended in 2003. Some of the cars were donated to engineering departments of colleges and universities, while others went to museums, including the Smithsonian Institution. Despite protests and petitions, GM would not sell the last available cars to the public due to the lack of replacement parts for repairs, and because of potential liability claims. It's sad to see this chapter on electric cars close."
gas prices are up 50% for the last 12 months
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I took one for a spin at a GM proving grounds, and floored it from every stop sign. After about 10 minutes, a fully changed car was almost dead. A kick to drive, but I'd never buy one.
There's a reason GM didn't sell them, and chose to only lease them. GM knew they were just a big experiment, and had no intention of supporting pre-first generation EV parts for the Federally mandiated period of time (5 years?).
-MrLogic
Um, they didn't allow them to be purchased. They were leased, so that GM maintained control over them and their eventual disposal.
Hydrides currently achieve volumetric energy densities 50% better than liquid hydrogen (and safer than gasoline). There's no mention of this on the page you've linked -- but then the writer clearly has a pro-gasoline axe to grind.
There's no question that gasoline is the most convenient vehicle fuel available right now, but it's stupid not to look for alternatives -- including more fuel-efficient gasoline-powered vehicles, hybrids, and electric cars (of various kinds).
Well, my 2005 Prius has a 8 year/100,000 mile warranty on all the hybrid related parts, which includes the batteries. Toyota is going be losing a lot of money on battery replacements if that were true.
I think you'll find whatever you read is wrong. There are in fact many prius' more than 3 years old still on the road with fully operational battery packs.
Also, the fun of the high torque electric engine made 0-60 pretty darn quick. Of course that took about half your battery life right there. =)
That said the car was wicked small and hardly practical for much beyond putting to a very close office and maybe the grocery store. (at least here in Phoenix where density isn't very high). I was really hoping they could get the density up so that range could get to the 200-250 mile range. That would have made it much more practical. Of course it still means long trips would have been broken up, but at least you could drive around on the freeway all day without worrying about your car running out of battery.
Sad to see it go... it was a fun car. But I doubt we've seen the end of electric car experiments.
While your comment was humorus, alot of people actually believe this. While the battery-based electic car is nice in theory, it is really brain dead idea in practice. Batteries just don't provide enough energy density for something like a car, and they don't recharge quickly enough. So oil is pretty much only option for fueling cars until the technology for using hydrogen or renewable hydrocarbons matures. So while the oil companies may be Evil(tm), no one is really offering a better solution just yet.
>>Won't somebody think of the CARS!!!
I can understand some of GMs thinking, especially the part about litigation, but it seems a waste to crush so many perfectly usable automobiles.
Before and after photos of at least 60 EV1s being crushed: http://ev1-club.power.net/
Now the part about not driving around like crazy makes a lot more sense.
TCAP-Abort
2 words: Attractive Nuisance.
It is the same legal principle that allows one to be sued for a drowning of a stranger in their swimming pool, when the stranger was trespassing to begin with.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
The interesting thing is that there is (kind of) an alternative to nuclear for generating hydrogen from water.
;) (ok, not quite ;) And you still need power to convert aluminum oxide to aluminum, however that means you can set up nuclear power plants in a few key distribution centers, and ship aluminum out to everyone else for local energy generation, vehicle propulsion, etc.
;)
Aluminum + Water + mercury = Aluminum Oxide + Hydrogen + mercury (take a look at the other reactions on there as well. There are some that don't use dangerous stuff like mercury as a catalyst, though you can do it slower without the mercury.)
The best part? Aluminum Oxide can be recycled straight into the middle of the smelting process (aluminum is extracted from bauxite ore as aluminum hydroxide, which is then converted to aluminum oxide, which is then converted to aluminum.
Of course, it might play havoc with the market for used aluminum cans, but I can just drop the soda cans into my engine
Not sure what the energy density and efficiency for this process is though. Could be that you'd need 1 ton of aluminum to generate enough hydrogen to generate enough energy to propel a 1 ton car
Transport solutions like this solve another problem as well: Hydrogen seepage. Hydrogen can't easily be stored for long periods of time as it seeps through cracks just larger than its own atom, and sealing these cracks is very difficult.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
- Multicrystalline: 3.7 years
- Thin film: 3.0 years
- Multicrystalline, anticipated: 2.1 years
- Thin film, anticipated: 1.1 years
Warranty on today's PV panels is typically 25 years, and panels can be expected to go on producing well beyond the warranty period.Sustainability and energy independence essay
And, better yet (IMHO) are cars that trade off some of the increased efficiency for increased performance. The 2005 Accord Hybrid has both more power and better fuel economy than its prececessors.
You won't get any argument from me about what assholes GM has been over the EV-1. These are the same guys who went out in front of the public and told everyone that the EV-1 wasn't selling well, in order to justify scrapping the program (and just as they were about to begin replacing the lead-acid batteries with NiMH batteries.) Of course, they didn't actually lie - not one EV-1 was sold during the entire lifespan of the vehicle, because the EV-1 was only LEASED and NEVER SOLD.
Actually, yes they did. The problem that GM has is that, if a car is on the road, they are required to provide spare parts (either by manufacturing them or providing diagrams for third-party manufacturers) for those cars for 10 years past the date of building that particular vehicle. In other words, GM would have to come up with suppliers (or themselves) for parts for these cars until at least 2009, and with the problem of the suppliers not being willing to make those parts, it puts GM into a bad situation.
GM was fortunate in that, with these cars only being leased to customers, they could pull them off the roads and thus limit their liability. I would love to own one of these vehicles myself, but I can understand GM's position.
Disclosure: I used to work for GM, and work for one of their automotive suppliers now, so I do know a little about what goes into these types of decisions.
I wonder if this is a red herring or not. Sure, lawyers have turned the U.S. into a lawsuit-happy country where people are visited in the hospital right after surgery with promises of grand malpractice suits (I work in a hospital, so that's the only example that comes to my mind right away).
Until congress passed a limitation on the liability of aircraft manufacturers under Clinton in the 1990s the production of private, single engine aircraft had fallen to zero. Why? Because some boneheaded pilot could decide he could fly IFR (instrument conditions, bad weather) despite not having the rating ("what does the damn gubmint know that I don't"), crash the plane killing himself (and maybe some others who had the misfortune to trust him/her and climb aboard), and the aircraft manufacturer would not only be sued, but often lose and have idiot juries award tens of millions to the relatives of the idiot pilot! I kid you not. It happened enough times that virtually every manufacturer of small aircraft ceased production. They simply could not clear a profit once liability costs were factered in.
It wasn't until congress limited this liability to a mere 19 years after manufactur that the industry rebounded, and one can buy new personal aircraft once again.
Look to software patents as another example where, in the not too distant future, patent attorneys and bad governance will converge to kill another innovative industry: ours.
While I believe there are real technical issues vis-a-vis the energy storage density of batteries that probably killed the EV1, liability was probably a non-negligable factor in decreasing the overall profitability beneath the threashhold required for the car to survive.
Innovation is far riskier than doing the staid, "tried and true" thing. That is one of the reasons why most aircraft engine designs are decades old (the design of mine dates back to the 1930s), and manufacturers are loathe to modernize them despite the plethora of good ideas out there. Patents are another reason, but compared to litigation risks, probably secondary in this instance.
So don't kid yourself, lawyers can and do kill entire industries, dead. The lucky ones rebound, the unlucky ones disappear for good, or for decades at a time.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Hydro; a clean, infinitely renewable resouce.
Sorry, but hydro is not "infinitely renewable" as it is really just an expression of solar energy. Riverbeds move, climate changes, and reservoirs fill with sediment. Second, we have already dammed something like 50% of all the available waterways for power to produce something like 7% of all the needed energy on the planet. What are we going to do to get to 100%? Additionally, damming rivers is devastating to the downstream environment. 200 years ago the Colorado River drained into the sea of Baja, now it just dries up somewhere in Arizona...
And finally, hydro power is not clean! Several studies have shown that the average hydro plant produces more environmental destruction and greenhouse gasses than a similar (in power production) coal plant. So your "clean" energy source is worse for the environment than a filth-belching coal plant. Congratulations.
Me, I'd rather have a nuke plant...
Life, the Universe, and Everything... in my image.
Warning! Hybrid battery cycles are nothing like EV battery cycles. In an EV, the battery is repeatedly drained from 100% to (typically) a very low charge, resulting in a short life between replacements. On the other hand, a hybrid batery, which is just used for short-term energy buffering, can be pampered by the control electronics.
In the Toyota Prius, the battery is tightly controlled for state-of-charge (SOC) between about 50% and about 90%, and not allowed to deep discharge or overcharge. The battery temperature is also controlled. This results in the battery not being overworked. In accelerated lifetime tests published a couple years ago by Toyota, it appeared that the internal resistance of the batteries in a 1st generation Prius would be expected to decrease (effectively making the batteries better) for the first 80,000 miles (or so) and to return to the as-delivered resistance at about 150,000 miles. After that, the resistance is rising, and one could really say the pack will be wearing out between then and 200,000+ miles. Also, the $8,000 battery cost is nonsense. Even a new Hybrid battery direct from Toyota was only about $5000 in the early Priuses. If a replacement market has to develop, one can bet that off-brand packs will be available for a lot less than that once competition cuts in. Of course, if the packs outlive the cars anyway, thuis may not happen.
The oldest (that I know of) Prius was a taxi in Vancouver, BC which was retired with its original battery pack at 200,000 miles. There is no evidence that hybrid battery packs will not, in general, live as long as the rest of the vehicle. IIRC, the car was then bought back by Toyota for engineering analysis, to what really does start to wear out.
Note: I am an extremely happy Prius driver... I am also an advocate for green technology that really works. Nothing makes me happier than technology which is not only cleaner than its predecessors, but nicer to use. This is the case with the Prius. It is peppy, extremely quiet, and smooth to drive. Since it has no transmission as you normally think of one, and even the term continuously-variable transmission doesn't really describe the power splitting transaxle, one can drive up and down hills, and accelerate briskly, with no bump from a transmission upshifting & downshifting. It's really nice!
Why are you maliciously spreading lies, or are you just stupid?
"Studies have shown that, depending on the type of PV technology, the clean energy payback of a PV system ranges from one to four years. With life expectancies of 30 years, 87% to 97% of the energy produced by PV systems will be free of pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. For more information, see the NREL report, "Energy Payback: Clean Energy from PV""
I like the Integral Fast Breeder design, which could be the closest we get to safe, unlimited, and abundant energy for a long time. But it needs to be demonstrated in well-publicized tests and aggressively marketed to a public that is ignorant of physics. Then it needs to be mass-produced to make it cheap.
But before any of this happens, it has to get funding. The IFBR got the last of it's funding pulled in 1996, even though there was an example operating in Idaho.
"OH SHIT, THERE'S A HORSE IN THE HOSPITAL!"
LS1's are pretty damn efficient and Corvettes are pretty damn light. With a bit of modification you can hit 28+ crusing. Not too shabby for a sports car.
Slashdot is proof that Sturgeon's Law applies to mankind.
Well it's not entirely true you'll have total control of your own energy. You'll still need to mine uranium for nuclear fuel. Uranium mines aren't present in every country on earth.
Oh, Edmund, can it be true? that I hold here, in my mortal hand, a nugget of purest green?
You are right, they are not mutually exclusive at all. However, there are some minor technical issues that meant that gas-electric hybrids got developed first.
The main reason is that the torque curves for gas and electric motors are complementary. Electric motors produce maximum torque at (or near) 0 RPM. Gas motors produce maximum torque far higher. It depends on the engine, but a typical four banger that gets used in a hybrid may have max torque up around 4000RPM. Diesels produce their highest torque lower, around 1500RPM. So what happens in a hybrid is that you step on the gas and get a rush from the electric motor, then the diesel gives its max torque soon after, then...nothing, they both peter out and you have to shift early and often to compensate.
Another issue is that in a couple of cases, hybrid vehicles were developed with a CVT (continuously variable transmission). Again, the torque presents a problem. CVT's of a given size can only handle so much torque at once. If the electric motor and the diesel are both producing a lot of torque at the same time, you'd have to provide a larger, heavier CVT to accomodate.
Finally, hybrids gained a lot of popularity for environmental reasons. This made them popular in "green" places like California. Unfortunately, CA has strict emissions standards and currently very few diesel passenger car engines meet these standards. A hybrid vehicle that cannot be sold in CA would limit its success drastically. As low-sulfur fuel is phased in, this might change.
None of these are reasons that diesel-electric hybrids could not be brought to market, but together they added up to a "not yet" decision pm the part of automakers.
http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/aer/txt/ptb0102.html
That's about 6.00485039 × 10^19 Joules. Let's be generous and assume a very high 5 kw-Hr/m^2 solar intensity over our land mass, and a very generous collection/Hydrogen conversion efficiency of 20%, in effect yielding 1 kw-Hr/m^2 in hydrogen. 1 kilowatt hour = 3 600 000 Joules, and we need to produce 6.00485039 × 10^19 Joules, so that works out to be 1.668014 × 10^13 kilowatt hours that we need to produce in a year. A production rate of 1 kw-hr/day = 365.25 kw-hr/year, so we need 4.56990137 × 10^10 m^2 to generate the same number of kw-hrs in the same year, or 17,644.4878 square miles. Delaware is 2,489 square miles. Now, Arizona is the sixth largest state, so it looks like this facility could still rest entirely in its borders. But I think you can see why this is not an even remotely cost-effective solution.
If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
Diesel Electric locos can't do regenerative braking because they have no where to put the energy. Instead the electric braking energy is shunted into some very large resistors. The reasons for doing it is to save on brake blocks more than anything.
Ford doesn't sell Model T cars or parts any longer, thus, no liability. However, the company making the parts used by people to restore old Model Ts has potential liability.
Ditto GM with the EV1. Even if the buyer were to sign a release exempting GM from liability for any problems or harm, that isn't the point. It is everyone else that GM has to worry about.
Example: say I buy an EV1. I sign a release exempting GM from liability. Time goes by, I replace a critical part in my EV1 with something I diddled together in my garage. I promptly drive it, but the part I made gives out and I end up killing someone as I crash. In this scenario GM doesn't have to worry about me...they have to worry about the family and estate of the person I killed.
I'm not saying GM would lose such a case, that's up to a jury. My point is, why bother? Why risk it? Why incur the cost? GM has enough cost problems as it is without risking more just to please 100 people.
The fact is that all EV1s were leased. This means they were always the property of GM no matter who was driving them. As such, GM can do whatever they want with them, and that's that.
Especially since one of the largest builders, EMD Locomotives, is owned by General Motors.
Eternity: will that be smoking, or non-smoking? I Corinthians 6:9-10
Interesting, interesting car. I was only 10 or 12 at the time, I don't recall the details of the arrangement with GM, but we certainly weren't paying the lease price. Or any price, for that matter.
A few things stand out in my mind. The inductive charging system in particular was pretty cool. They installed a futuristic charging unit some five feet high in our garage attached to a wire and plastic paddle. Shove the paddle in a slot where the engine would traditionally be, and in a few hours we'd have a 75% charge. Impossible to electrocute yourself.
I don't agree with the poster above comparing it with a Geo. The EV1 has the second lowest drag coefficient of all time of any vehicle, and the lowest of anything mass produced. If GM removed the speed limiter (80 MPH, I think), it'd top out north of 170 MPH. There was no wind noise at any speed, nor motor noise. Slight tire noise was the sum of it.. given the craptastic rubber the Ev1 was shod in, it's no surprise that was the only sound apparent. Absolutely eerie compared to our old GMC Suburban and any car at the time, luxury of otherwise.
The dashboard was another trick feature. It was a thin digital panel that wrapped around the plastic just below the windshield. Range and battery meters, obviously, standard equipment. I could never get enough of it, I wish they'd put something similar in a traditional car.
Range on our EV1 blew. It was quick, definitely.. 0-60 in the 8s, which was nice, but regular driving wouldn't push us far beyond 45 miles. Max range would have been 75 miles or so, if we'd driven like a grandmother and were actually willing to run it to empty.. but you don't do that when there's no good way to charge away from the house. Given how badly lead-acid batteries respond to a full discharge, it wouldn't have been in the interests of the car to try it anyway.
Surprisingly however, there were a number of places with driving distance of our place that had EV1 charging stations. I question if they still exist. Doubtful.
Anyway, the EV1 was as much an engineering project for GM as anything else. In that, it was a success. When a key component of the business plan was 'incorporate awesome yet-to-be-invented technology', they couldn't have been seriously banking on it as a mass-produced alternative.
-u15
I watched a documentary about the damming of a river in the amazon. No tree felling, animal rescue or anything. There were just a bunch of environmentalists going around in boats to save what primates and other assorted creatures they could from the above-water treetops. It was a long time ago, and late at night, so the details are a bit fuzzy.
The commentator was going on about how the trees would rot, acidify the water, release methane and corrode the turbines, thus shortening the lifespan of the dam. There was also a bit about how the siltation rate was 10X or so what had been anticipated, which was going to render the reservoir useless in 20-50 years IIRC. Sorry for being vague.
Here in Scotland, there's generally negligable siltation, no trees, no large animal life that can't get out of the way itself and the temperature keeps methane production low (thus why all our peat bogs don't decompose faster than they form).
Despite all the advantages to hydro in this country, it still only makes about 10% of our electricity, and I doubt if there's much room for expansion on that. Still, criticising any energy source for not delivering 100% of our needs isn't going to get us anywhere. We have the best wind resource in Europe (40% of European wind potential is in the UK), and are deploying off-shore wind farms to minimise environmental disturbance (we don't want to scare away the tourists).
http://www.iesd.dmu.ac.uk/wind_energy/sustainable_ dev/wcwind.html
Most of our current production comes from nuclear, though the plants are gradually being decomissioned. We haven't had very good experiences here with the first generation reactors, and they've proved far more costly than expected.
http://www.bopcris.ac.uk/bopall/ref20494.html
Hopefully, the new reactor designs will prove to be better value for money. The rest of Europe lacks our renewable resources, so nuclear power will be essential for making up the difference.
Well, that is how you work the figures. The design cost is spead across however many vehicles you sell. If you don't sell many, it's very hard to make a profit. GM didn't come off quite so badly as these numbers would suggest, however, as the Cali government pais a massive subsidy for each one.
Car and Driver also wrote about that. For the cost of the subsidy, Car could have done several times more to improve air quality by having police officers look for the worst pollution offenders, sieze and crush those cars, and replace them with free new cars to avoid complaint.
The difference in pollution between an old beater and a new ULEV car is 10-100 times as much as the difference between a ULEV car and an electric car. Not an efficient approach to increasing air quality, but hey, it's Cali.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
To produce enough nuclear power to equal the power we currently get from fossil fuels, you would have to build 10,000 of the largest possible nuclear power plants.
"Only in their dreams can men truly be free 'twas always thus, and always thus will be."
--Tom Schulman
Sorry, but hydro is not "infinitely renewable" as it is really just an expression of solar energy.
No energy source is infinite, but as long as there's evaporation, condensation, and gravity, I don't think we'll run out of Hydro power.
Me, I'd rather have a nuke plant without the waste.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
Goto some Prius enthusiast sites, or this specific page and you'll find there something called warp stealth.
:)
If the battery is topped off, you're coasting, and you're not going uphill, the gas engine will just spin without being fed gasoline.
Plus, technology like regenerative braking, regenerative motion (charges battery when coasting), the fact that the gas engine's output is ALWAYS split 70% (drive wheels) / 30% feed electric motor/generator, this higher efficiency setup gives you the better mileage.
You're not using extra energy to charge the batteries. You're just using the excess gas engine energy to charge when driving at a constant speed. How much HP do you need to beat down wind-resistance?
I drive ~75mph and I routinely get 47mph on the highway - and I'm just breaking it in! In high traffic situations (stop & go) which resemble city driving, I've gotten 51mpg so far; so traffic is a GOOD thing.
EPA's posted numbers are not realworld numbers, but EPA is inaccurate for EVERY car out there. Consider that.
AND, don't forget emissions - even if Echo gets comparable mpg, it's not a AT-PZEV vehicle where the air coming out is basically cleaner than the dirty city air going in. This is vastly more important than mpg if you care about your health longterm.
How is it more complex and heavier?
In the Prius: no alternator, no timing belt, no-multigear transmission and linkage.
Just a single-gear direct drive small (less weight!) gas-engine that only runs at certain RPMs, and electric motors.
An equivalent HP gas car of the same class and internal room weights more, currently.
And MPG is not the only part of the game - emissions is also, and there isn't a diesel engine (by itself) using USA diesel that puts out less emissions than a gas-hybrid.
Now, if you're talking about a diesel-hybrid using low-sulfur diesel, or a hydrogen-hybrid then WOOO!
Sooner or later someone from out of town is going to drive through your area in a Prius. Even if the vehicles aren't sold there, it's a good idea for the fire department to familiarize themselves with the specifics of a hybrid power systems, and associated rescue procedures. This especially a good idea, as we'll be seeing more of this technology in the future.
r ius_erg_1.pdf,
r ius_erg_2.pdf
Toyota makes publicly available, a guide detailing the operation and technical data of their hybrid power system:
http://www.toyota.com/web/vehicles/prius/safety/p
as well as another guide specifically on emergency procedures: http://www.toyota.com/web/vehicles/prius/safety/p
Divide by zero hurts my brain.