Slashdot Mirror
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."
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
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).
>>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/
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
- 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
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.
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.
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!"
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.
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
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.